page_title: Gotse Delchev
section_title: Death and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Gotse Delchev / Biography / Death and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Postcard with Gotse Delchev and IMARO cheta
context_page_description: Georgi Nikolov Delchev, known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev, was an important Bulgarian revolutionary figure in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Thrace at the turn of the 20th century. He was the most prominent leader of what is known today as Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, a paramilitary organization active in Ottoman territories in the Balkans, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Delchev was its representative in Sofia, the capital of Principality of Bulgaria. As such he was elected also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee, participating in the work of its governing body.
  Born into a Bulgarian family in Kilkis, then in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, in his youth he was inspired by the ideals of earlier Bulgarian revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev, who envisioned the creation of a Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious equality, as part of an imagined Balkan Federation.
context_section_description: Meanwhile, on 28 April, members of the Gemidzii circle started terrorist attacks in Thessaloniki. As a consequence martial law was declared in the city and many Turkish soldiers and "bashibozouks" were concentrated in the Salonica Vilayet. This led eventually to the tracking of Delchev's cheta and his subsequent death. He died on 4 May 1903, in a skirmish with the Turkish police near the village of Banitsa, probably after betrayal by local villagers, as rumours asserted, while preparing the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising. Thus the liberation movement lost its most important organizer, at the eve of the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising. After being identified by the local authorities in Serres, the bodies of Delchev and his comrade, Dimitar Gushtanov, were buried in a common grave in Banitsa. Soon afterwards SMARO, aided by SMAC organized the uprising against the Ottomans, which after initial successes, was crushed with much loss of life. Two of his brothers, Mitso Delchev and Milan Delchev were also killed fighting against the Ottomans as militants in the SMARO chetas of the Bulgarian voivodas Hristo Chernopeev and Krstjo Asenov in 1901 and 1903, respectively. In 1914, by a royal decree of Tsar Ferdinand I, a pension for life was granted to their father Nikola Delchev, because of the contribution of his sons to the freedom of Macedonia. During the Second Balkan War of 1913, Kilkis, which had been annexed by Bulgaria in the First Balkan War, was taken by the Greeks. Virtually all of its pre-war 7,000 Bulgarian inhabitants, including Delchev's family, were expelled to Bulgaria by the Greek Army. The same happened to the population of Banitsa, the village where Delchev was buried. During World War I, when Bulgaria was temporarily in control of the area, Delchev's remains were transferred to Xanthi, then in Bulgaria. After Western Thrace was ceded to Greece in 1919, the relic was brought to Plovdiv and in 1923 to Sofia, where it rested until after World War II. During World War II, the area was taken by the Bulgarians again and Delchev's grave near Banitsa was restored. In May 1943, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was set in Banitsa, in the presence of his sisters and other public figures. Until the end of the WWII Delchev was considered one of the greatest Bulgarians in the region of Macedonia.
  The first biographical book about Delchev was issued in 1904 by his friend and comrade in arms, the Bulgarian poet Peyo Yavorov. The most detailed biography of Delchev in English is written by Mercia MacDermott: "Freedom or Death: The Life of Gotse Delchev".
caption: Bulgarian postcard (1904) representing Delchev and an IMARO cheta. The inscription above reads: "The immortal Delchev."
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