Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1918-12-26
coId-BIooded Butchery by Bulga-
rians Without Parallel
in History.
LEADERS ARE SLAUGHTERED
Attempt to Exterminate National
Spirit of Serbia by Killing Off
All Thought Capable Of
Maintaining 1t.
WARD PRICE
in the Chicago Tribune.

Vranja, Serbia.-Here is a story Of
cold-blooded butchery perhaps without
equal even in this war. It is the tale
of deliberate, systematic effort by
the Bulgarians extending over three
months to exterminate the national
spirit Of Serbia by killing everyone in
the parts of the country they occupied
whom they thought capable of main
tanning it.
I have gathered the facts from many
different sources and the information
and evidence establish Bulgarian guilt
beyond all doubt.
After installing Bulgarian mayors,
bishops, tax collectors and military
police the Bulgarians arrested in ev-
cry town and village all the men who
belonged to what may be called the
intellectual class. They chose parlia-
mentary deputies, judges, teachers,
lawyers, priests and employers of la
Dor, formed them into gangs and
marched them away.
5000 Sent to Slaughter.
Men numbering at least 5000 from
the towns and villages of the Vranja
region alone were taken in detach-
ments of about fifty at a time to a
place which the Bulgarians chose as
their slaughter house, and there every
night one party after another from
December, 1915, to March, 1916, had
their threats cut or were stabbed to
death.
One village whose name the Bulga-
rians hAve made terrible is a small
place called Surdulitza, 20 miles north
east of Vranja, near the Bulgarian
frontier. I went there and saw the
bones, the graves and surviving rela-
tives of $500 victims of Bulgarian saw
agery who there met their end.
They were locked up in houses
which I saw, and then at night
marched down a gully tied four or five
together with ropes, they were stabbed
or bayoneted to death and buried
where they lay by local gypsies col
lected for the work by the Bulgarians.
Graves Of hundreds of them were
shown to me. Moldy human bones
were still lying about in little
moldy stream bed where on one VIM
ter's night after another the slaughter
was carried out.
Every night the peasants of Surdu-
litza, who were forbidden to leave
their houses after sunset heard mems
screams coming from nearby wood.
fnran O.
dogs would bring into che streets hui
man arms and even heads, which they
tore off the bodies of the murdered
men.
At Ushevtse, hamlet to the north
of Vranja, 100 men, women and chill
dren = the entire population " were
killed in one day.
Roasted Over Slow Fires.
At Vladichi all the women were col
lected and some Of them violated. The
rest were tied up and left until two
days later, when the Bulgars came
back and completed their work of out
rage.
Last year at Yelashnitsa and Kri-
vafaja innocent peasants were stripped
naked, tied down to braziers and
roasted over slow fires to make them
confess that they possessed hidden
arms.
Leblanc and Lesokvaty probably We're
the worst martyred towns Of all. At
the former place 20 persons were beat
en- literally to death.
What is to be done to punish this
cynically planned and brutally exc
cuted policy of murder? The names
of the Bulgarian officers directly re-
sponsible for these butcheries are
known. The peasants of Vranja and
Surdulitza utter them with the same
dread as that with which men of the
English west country must have spo-
ken of Judge Jeffreys after the bloody
| assiZes.