Massacres of Albanians in World War I | |
---|---|
Part of World War I and war crimes in World War I | |
Location | Principality of Albania, Kosovo, Vardar Macedonia |
Date | 1914–1918 |
Target | Albanians |
Attack type | Massacres, arson, famine, forced migration, ethnic cleansing |
Deaths | Albanian claim:
Other estimates: |
Victims |
|
Perpetrators | Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of Montenegro, Kingdom of Bulgaria, Kingdom of Greece |
Motive | Anti-Albanian sentiment, Islamophobia, Greater Serbia, Greater Bulgaria, Megali Idea |
The massacres of Albanians in World War I were a series of war crimes committed by Serbian, Montenegrin, Greek and Bulgarian troops against the Albanian civil population of Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo during and immediately before the Great War. These atrocities followed the previous massacres committed during the Balkan Wars. In 1915, Serbian troops enacted a scorched-earth policy in Kosovo, massacring tens of thousands of Albanians. [4] Between 1912 and 1915, 132 Albanian villages were razed to the ground. [5] [6]
Many Albanians in the region of Kičevo were killed by Bulgarian forces between 1915-1918. [7] In 1916, many Albanians in Štrpce and Načallnik starved to death or became sick as a result of Bulgarian soldiers seizing the villagers' wheat, which led to a man-made famine. [8] [9] The number of Albanians (including combatants) that were killed or died during WWI in Albania is estimated to be around 70,000, approximately 8.75% to 10% of the country's population. [2] [10] In a letter to King George V, the Committee of Kosovo claimed in 1919 that the Serbian and Montenegrin armies had killed 200,000 Albanians since the Balkan Wars, including some 100,000 Albanians killed in Kosovo from 1913 to 1915, and that Bulgarian troops had killed 50,000 Albanians from 1915 to 1918. [1] In 1921, Albanian deputies said that 85,676 Kosovo Albanians were killed since the Balkan Wars. [11]
After the Great War, Albanians in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were subject to persecution.
During the Balkan Wars, numerous atrocities were committed against the Albanian population in the territories occupied by the Balkan League, typically by Serbian and Montenegrin forces. According to contemporary accounts, around 25,000 Albanians were killed during the first half of the First Balkan War, before violence climaxed. [1] [12] [13] It is estimated that up to 120,000 or more were killed in either Old Serbia or in all areas occupied by the Serbian Army. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] Additionally, according to Serbian documents, 281,747 Albanians above the age of six were expelled from Old Serbia by late 1914. This figure, however, is disputed and scholars estimate that between 60,000 and 300,000 Albanians were expelled from 1912–1913. [20] [21] [22] The Carnegie Commission characterized the expulsions and massacres as an attempt to transform the ethnic structure of the regions inhabited mostly by Albanians. [23]
In 1913, Serbian forces entered the region of Bytyci and killed 51 men and burned down 2,000 houses. Later, in 1915, the village was attacked again and the entire Ushki family was nearly eradicated, with only one survivor. [24]
In 1914, Serbian troops entered the village of Astrazubi in Malisheva and burned down 1,029 houses and killed 227 civilians, mostly women and children, although the number is believed to be higher according to Albanian sources. In the village of Banjë, the wounded were buried alive. [25]
In 1914 Serbian troops committed many atrocities in Gjilan. [26]
During the Serbian armys retreat, the soldiers set fire to Kamenica, Selac, Gradec and Vranisht, after having slaughtered a number of peasants and carried off the women. On November 1, 1915, the soldiers placed two pieces of light artillery two hundred paces from the village of Vecali, on the Tetovo-Prizren road, and set fire to the village with these pieces of artillery, killing nearly 65 men, women and children. The rest of the peasants managed to flee. Before the bombardment of the village, the peasants had given bread to the Serbian soldiers. [27]
In the region of Pejë in 1914, Serbian troops would execute roughly 25 Albanian civilians daily. [28]
In the village of Lubishtë, Serbian troops massacred 104 men, as well as 24 men in Julekar. In Lubishtë, the head of the Bakiya family, the old grandmother in the Metushi family and two children of the Emin family were burned alive. [29]
In 1915, a young Albanian boy shot a Serbian soldier in the village of Dërbëcë in Tetovo. The Serbian army demanded that the village hand him over. The villagers refused which resulted in the entire village being massacred. [30] [ better source needed ]
According to Justin McCarthy, in 1915 Serbian and Bulgarian forces entered the region of Bitola, in Kičevo and Kruševo in Bitola, and burned between 19-36 villages. 503 men, 27 women and 25 children were killed, and 600 houses burned down. [31] [32]
According to an article in the Boston Daily Globe, published on November 8, 1915, the Serbo-Montenegrin troops shot or bayonetted 20,000 Albanian women and children and destroyed 300 villages and 35,000 houses, leaving 330,000 people without asylum. [33] Additionally, during the conflict between Albanians and Greeks in southern Albania during 1914–1915, where Greek forces took advantage of the political instability of Albania and attempted to annex as much Albanian territory into Greece as possible or succeed in creating the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus, at least 145 Albanian villages in southern Albania were looted and destroyed. Accompanying this was the destruction of 48 Bektashi teqes at the hands of the Greek forces. In total, 80 per cent of the teqes in Albania were either extremely damaged or destroyed entirely during 1914–1915. [34]
In November 1915, Montenegrin troops murdered Albanian intellectuals and patriots. Others were captured and sent to Cetinje and executed. Among the martyrs were publicist Moustafa Hilmi Leskoviki, head of the Albanian paper "Kombi". [35]
The Greek army withdrew from the area after the recognition of the Albanian independence and the delineation of the border. A provisional government of Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus was established in February 1914 and organized armed units who clashed with the Albanian militia. They were composed both Orthodox Albanian and Greek-speaking males aged from 15 to 55 and consisted mainly by deserters of the Greek army, many of them natives and bandits. [36] As such the area was subject to a vicious cycle of arson and looting and towns like Tepelenë, Leskovik and Frashër and many villages were burnt down completely. [37] This devastation was accompanied by the massacre of a large part the population, especially the Muslim part. [38]
On April 29, 1914, Greek troops massacred 217 men and boys from Hormovë inside the premises of the monastery of Saint Mary in the neighboring village of Kodra. [39] [40] [41] [42]
Before the First World War, in 1914 based on reports by journalist and Albanian national activist Kristo Dako in May of 1914 Greek forces committed atrocities in the district of Korçë. According to him hundreds of Muslim homes were destroyed and removed the Albanian Christian population from multiple villages. In the process, many civilians were massacred, including Christians. Roughly 20,000 refugees were created in and around Korçë. [43]
After Greek military groups entered Korçë in 1914 under the guise of desertion, they began to loot the shops and homes of Muslim Albanians, as well as committing murders and rapes; Albanian armed groups, including that of Kajo Babjeni, immediately responded by resuming their military activities and eventually forced the Greeks to retreat from the city. After the French army occupied Korçë on 18 October 1916, local Albanian leaders including Sali Butka, Themistokli Gërmenji and Kajo Babjeni coordinated their efforts and took measures to protect against the further fragmentation of Albanian lands; they created the Committee of Defense (Komiteti i Mbrojtjes), surrounded the city with their forces and began negotiations with the French that ultimately culminated in the creation of the Autonomous Province of Korçë. [44]
In 1920, Hasan Prishtina collected information about the atrocities committed on the Albanian civil population by the Serbian troops in 1918-1920. He reported this to the British government that 20,000 men and 1,500 women were massacred, as well as 168 villages razed to the ground, with 4,769 houses burned down. [45]
In 1918, Serbian forces entered Albanian villages with the intent of disarming them resulting in a number of villages being burned. [46] [47] As a result, more atrocities were committed between 1918-1941 by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia against the Albanian population.
Isa Boletini was an Albanian revolutionary commander and politician and rilindas from Kosovo.
Bajram Curri was an Albanian chieftain, politician and activist who struggled for the independence of Albania, later struggling for Kosovo's incorporation into it following the 1913 Treaty of London. He was posthumously given the title Hero of Albania.
Muhaxhir and Muhaxher are Ottoman Albanian communities that left their homes as refugees or were transferred, from Greece, Serbia and Montenegro to Albania, Kosovo and to a lesser extent North Macedonia during and following various wars.
The Albanians of Kosovo, also commonly called Kosovo Albanians, Kosovan Albanians or Kosovars, constitute the largest ethnic group in Kosovo.
Albanians in Serbia are a recognized national minority in Serbia. According to the 2022 census, the population of ethnic Albanians in Serbia is 61,687, constituting 0.93% of the total population. The vast majority of them live in the southern part of the country that borders Kosovo and North Macedonia, called the Preševo Valley. Their cultural center is located in Preševo.
Idriz Seferi was an Albanian nationalist, revolutionary leader and guerrilla fighter who played a prominent role in the Albanian uprisings against the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Serbia and Kingdom of Bulgaria during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During his 56-year military career, he fought in 35 battles.
Azem Bejta, commonly known as Azem Galica, was an Albanian nationalist, resistance fighter and rebel who fought for the unification of Kosovo with Albania. He is known for leading the Kachak Movement against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Independent Albania was proclaimed on 28 November 1912. This chapter of Albanian history was shrouded in controversy and conflict as the larger part of the self-proclaimed region had found itself controlled by the Balkan League states: Serbia, Montenegro and Greece from the time of the declaration until the period of recognition when Albania relinquished many of the lands originally included in the declared state. Since the proclamation of the state in November 1912, the Provisional Government of Albania asserted its control over a small part of central Albania including the important cities of Vlorë and Berat.
The massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were perpetrated on several occasions by the Serbian and Montenegrin armies and paramilitaries during the conflicts that occurred in the region between 1912 and 1913. During the 1912–13 First Balkan War, Serbia and Montenegro committed a number of war crimes against the Albanian population after expelling Ottoman Empire forces from present-day Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press. Most of the crimes occurred between October 1912 and the summer of 1913. The goal of the forced expulsions and massacres was statistical manipulation before the London Ambassadors Conference to determine the new Balkan borders. According to contemporary accounts, around 20,000 to 25,000 Albanians were killed in the Kosovo Vilayet during the first two to four months, before the violence climaxed. The total number of Albanians that were killed in Kosovo and Macedonia or in all Serbian occupied regions during the Balkan Wars is estimated to be at least 120,000. Most of the victims were children, women and the elderly. In addition to the massacres, some civilians had their lips and noses severed. Multiple historians, scholars, and contemporary accounts refer to or characterize the massacres as a genocide of Albanians or the Muslim population in the Balkans as a whole. Further massacres against Albanians occurred during the First World War and continued during the interwar period.
The colonization of Kosovo was a programme begun by the kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia in the early twentieth century and later implemented by their successor state Yugoslavia at certain periods of time from the interwar era (1918–1941) until 1999. Over the course of the twentieth century, Kosovo experienced four major colonisation campaigns that aimed at altering the ethnic population balance in the region, to decrease the Albanian population and replace them with Montenegrins and Serbs. Albanians formed the ethnic majority in the region when it became part of Yugoslavia in early twentieth century.
The Kingdom of Serbia was one of the major parties in the two Balkan Wars, gaining land in both conflicts. It experienced significant territorial gains in the Central Balkans, nearly doubling its territory.
In World War I, Albania had been an independent state, having gained independence from the Ottoman Empire on 28 November 1912, during the First Balkan War. It was recognised by the Great Powers as the Principality of Albania, after Turkey officially renounced all its rights in May 1913. Being a fledgling new country, it quickly unravelled and just a few months after taking power, its German ruler, Prince Wilhelm, was forced to flee. After World War I broke out, anarchy took hold of the country as tribes and regions rebelled against central rule. To protect the Greek minority, Greek control was established in the southern districts replacing the Northern Epirote units beginning in October 1914. In response to this, Italy, although officially neutral at the time, also sent troops into the port of Vlorë, while Serbia and Montenegro took control of northern regions. In 1915 Serbia was overrun by combined German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces; the Serbian army retreated across the mountain passes of northern Albania, towards the Adriatic. Italian troops drove the Greeks from southern Albania and brought almost all Albanian territory under their control. Austrian forces invaded in June 1916; Austro-Hungarian forces remained in Albania until the end of the war when a multinational Allied force broke through and pushed them out in 1918.
The Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo was an Albanian organization founded in Shkodër on 1 May 1918. It mainly consisted of the political exiles from Kosovo and was led by Hoxha Kadri from Pristina. It had existed in looser form since May 1915.
The Great Retreat, also known in Serbian historiography as the Albanian Golgotha, refers to the retreat of the Royal Serbian Army through the mountains of Albania during the 1915–16 winter of World War I.
During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Muslim inhabitants living in Muslim-minority territories previously under Ottoman control often found themselves persecuted after borders were re-drawn. These populations were subject to genocide, expropriation, massacres, religious persecution, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing.
The Battle of Lumë, also referred by the Albanians as the Uprising of Lumë, was a series of clashes between the Albanian locals of the region of Lumë in Ottoman Albania against the invading Serbian army in 1912 during the First Balkan War period. As the Kingdom of Serbia sought to gain access to the Adriatic Sea, the Serbian army met significant resistance from Albanian militia in the Luma region, resulting in the defeat of the Serbian forces. In securing the central Adriatic coast in Albania, Albanian political figureheads were able to disembark in Durrës and proceed with their plans for the eventual Albanian Declaration of Independence.
Albania's Golgotha: Indictment of the Exterminators of the Albanian People, is a German published document of 1913 which was written by the Austrian publicist and politician Leo Freundlich (1875-1953). The document is a compilation of news which he gathered when traveling in the Vilayet of Kosovo during the Serbian invasion of 1912-1913, explaining in detail the full-scale massacres, rape, expulsions, torture and abuse which Albanian civilians suffered under rule by the Serb army and Chetnik paramilitaries. According to the documents of Freundlich, 25,000 Albanians were massacred in the Kosovo Vilayet halfway through the First Balkan War. The document describes the methods of ethnic cleansing which was used to remove the Albanian population of North Macedonia, Northern Albania, and Kosovo. The document was re-translated by Robert Elsie. The reports were confirmed by the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan War.
Menduh Zavalani (1889–1914) was an Albanian revolutionary and political leader active during the last years of the Albanian National Awakening. He formed his own revolutionary band and was one of the leaders that liberated Përmet and the environs from the Ottoman Empire. Menduh was an appointed delegate from his hometown Korça to the Albanian National Congress that proclaimed the Independence of Albania. In the intellectual level Menduh was noted for the translation of Friedrich Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell into Albanian. He was assassinated at a very young age near Pogradec by a local collaborationist band.
The Bulgarian occupation of Serbia during World War I started in Autumn 1915 following the invasion of Serbia by the combined armies of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. After Serbia's defeat and the retreat of its forces across Albania, the country was divided into Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian occupation zones.
According to Serbian Social Democrat politician Kosta Novakovic, from October 1912 to the end of 1913, the Serbo-Montenegrin regime exterminated more than 120,000 Albanians of all ages, and forcibly expelled more than 50,000 Albanians to the Ottoman Empire and Albania.
During the Balkan wars, in total '120,000 Albanians were exterminated', hundreds of villages' were shelled by artillery and 'a large number of them were burned down' across Kosova and Macedonia. The figures do not include people killed in present-day Albania and the devastated houses, villages and towns that Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers left behind when they were eventually forced to retreat.'
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)As the unrest reached a fever pitch, Orthodox Greek villagers formed paramilitary bands to counter pro-Albanian groups. These Orthodox bands were composed of both Albanian and Greek-speaking males ages 15 to 55 ... although some members of the Greek army did join the movement, many of those soldiers originated from the region.
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: CS1 maint: postscript (link)Një pjesë e konsiderueshme e fshatrave të prefekturës së Gjirokastrës, Leskovikut, Skraparit e Korçës u dogjën e u rrënuan plotësisht, ndërsa një pjesë e madhe e popullsisë, veçanerisht asaj myslimane, u masakrua. Qytetet e Tepelenës dhe të Leskovikut u shkatërruan.
Të dielën, në 27 prill, në fshatin Homovë u përkujtua 100-vjetori i masakrës së burrave të atij fshati këtu e një shekull më parë. Pikërisht, në 29 prill 1914, bandat e ushtarëve dhe të andartëve grekë masakruan 220 burra e djem hormovitë brenda ambienteve të manastirit të Shën Mërisë, mbi fshatin Kodër.