Sul fronte balcanico. Guerra e crimini contro la popolazione civile in Serbia tra il 1914 e il 1918

Abstract

In 1915, after a year of war during which the Serbian civilian population had already suffered the violence of the Austro-Hungarian invasion, the Kingdom of Serbia was occupied and divided by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bulgaria. The civilians, devastated by restrictions caused by the conflict, typhus epidemic and hunger, entered at that time a period of suffering which would come to an end only at the end of the war. This fact was particularly obvious in eastern and southern Serbia and in Macedonia, regions which were occupied by the Bulgarians. The population was exposed to forced bulgarisation: according to previous orders the Serbian intelligentsia was first eliminated and everything that was representing ’serbity’ was destroyed in order to be substituted by the Bulgarian language and institutions, in particular by the Bulgarian school and church. The violence of the Bulgarian regime appeared especially in the Serbian zones which were opposed to assimilation: in 1917, as a consequence of an insurrection, a terror regime, characterized by repression and mass internments, had its beginning. The years of Bulgarian occupation were also featured by innumerous rapes, maltreatments, extortions, plunders and many kinds of destruction.