page_title: Zeitenlik
section_title: Cemetery keepers, the Mihailović family
hierarchical_section_title: Zeitenlik / Cemetery keepers, the Mihailović family
caption_attribution_description: English: Đorđe Mihailović in 2012 at age 85.
context_page_description: Zeitenlik is an Allied military cemetery and World War I memorial park in Thessaloniki, the largest military cemetery in Greece. It contains the graves of circa 20,000 Serbian, French, British, Italian Russian and Greek soldiers and Bulgarian POWs, who died in the battles on the Salonika front during World War I. The largest part of the complex is the Serbian Military Graveyard, which contains the remains of c. 7,500 soldiers. The French sector contains the remains of 8,000 French soldiers. The Italian sector holds about 3,000 graves; the British sector holds about 2,000 graves, and there is also the Russian sector with about 400 graves. There are also graves of Bulgarian POW, such as graves of fallen Greeks transferred from the battlefields of Kilkis.
  The complex is located on the place where the Main Hospital of the Serbian Army was located during the war. The name comes from the Turkish word Zeytin which means Olive. It can be translated as Olive plantation. It is located on Lagkada street, about 1.5 kilometres from the city centre of Thessaloniki.
context_section_description: The first keeper of the graveyard was Savo Mihailović, who was the head of the group that was responsible for the exhumation of Serbian soldiers and their transfer to the area of the future military cemetery. Mihailović, a Serb from Grbalj, collected the bodies of his dead friends and comrades, and then protected and guarded the cemetery until his death in 1928. He lived in a house built for him and his family, inside the cemetery proper. After his death, his remains were also buried in Zeitenlik. He was succeeded by his son Đuro Mihailović, who succeeded in preserving the cemetery and relics from Nazi looting during World War II. Đuro died in 1961 and was buried along with his father on Zeitenlik.
  Today, the keeper, host and curator of the Serbian Military Cemetery at Zeitenlik is Đorđe Mihailović, Đuro's son and Savo's grandson, who lives in the keeper's house with his wife and daughter. Although new burials at Zeitinlik are forbidden, a special decree was issued that allows Đorđe to be the last person buried here when he dies.
caption: Đorđe Mihailović in front of the cenotaph
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