Written by Dr. Sc. Qazim Namani. Translated by Petrit Latifi
On January 6, 1921, the battalion of the 3rd Serbian Army, commanded by Radovan Radovici, and the gendarmerie commanded by Bozhidar Paunovici, began the massacre of the Albanian population in the village of Karaqë, Zagorje, Vushtrri, then the massacres continued in Segashë, Popovë, Majacë, Bellopoje, Gërdocë, Tërnavë, Sharban, Koliqë, Keqekollë and Prapashticë. In 1944, Bulgarian troops committed many atrocities on the population.
“Killings of Albanians during this expedition were also carried out in several other villages. During the march of this military expedition, some Albanians were also killed in Ballaban, Nishec, Orllan, Kalaticë, etc. In all these villages, many children and the elderly were killed, but the largest massacre during that year took place in the villages of Keqekollë and Prapashticë.
On January 10, 1921, it reached Keqekollë and Prapashticë. Upon reaching Keqekollë, they massacred Mulla Adem’s family. In Prapashtica, the Serbian army invites all males over the age of 15 to a meeting at the village mosque. They are ordered that each villager bring some small livestock to provide food for the Serbian army.
I apologize, in this article, I am describing in brief points, the accounts of my close relatives, knowing that every family in these villages keeps in memory the experiences of their relatives, and that many of them significantly exceed the tragedy of the relatives in my family. According to the accounts of my grandfather Brahim Namani, born in (1909), his father Namani, together with Rexhepi, Rama of Haziri and Dibrani, had participated in the meeting of January 10 with the Serbian army.
At the meeting, the Serbian army had ordered those whose homes were far away to sleep with their fellow villagers, whose homes were closer to the mosque, so that the next day, January 11, they would present themselves to the Serbian army at dawn. Since our homes were far from the village mosque, they still decided to return home, to go the next morning.
The next morning, they decided that Namani would go with his cousins Rexhepi and Rama, the next day Dibrani had not gone. Each of the three took a lamb with them, to go to the village mosque. Before going to the mosque, they had also met with several other men from the Balajve neighborhood. During the early morning, the Serbian army had committed several murders and massacres with bayonets in the houses near the mosque.
But when the villagers gathered at the mosque, they were ordered to divide the villagers into four groups according to the neighborhoods. The commander of the Serbian army had ordered his soldiers to immediately begin killing Albanians as soon as the cannon fired. After the cannon fired, the killing of the men of the village began, as well as the burning of their houses and families.
There were very few who had the opportunity to escape alive from this expedition. The Balajve neighborhood had gathered at a location called Baçaviat, and there their execution had begun. In this location, my grandfather’s father, Namani and Rexhepi, had been killed, while Rama had managed to escape the killing. That day there had been a lot of snow, but Rama, walking through the water of a stream, in order not to leave footprints in the snow, entered some dense rakita (a type of shrub), standing with his feet in the water.
Several times the Serbian soldiers had approached them, but he had not moved. As he later explained, from the cold, the screams and the sadness, he had several times thought of getting out of the water. After a while, when the screams of his fellow villagers stopped, Rama carefully began to move down the stream, and with great difficulty, he reached our houses.
As soon as he arrived, he told the story and the murder of Naman, whom he had seen, when a Serbian soldier shot him with a gun and bayonet. After two hours, when the situation calmed down, and the Serbian army began to withdraw, Musa with 4 or 5 other men from the Balajve neighborhood, managed to get to the scene of the incident, where the men of this neighborhood had been killed.
After gathering the killed, they carried them slowly, and brought them to a locality called Rusolia. In the neighborhood, they found some work tools, and began to bury the men of the neighborhood. Rexhepi was not among the killed.
At first, they thought that perhaps he had managed to escape this tragedy, and would return home, but this had not happened. The next day, they went in search of Rexhepi, but they could not find his body. After two days of observing the terrain, walking uphill from Baçavia, they reached the top of the hill and found Rexhepi massacred and frozen, sitting in the snow.
According to the stories, Rexhepi had been found sitting with his hand raised high and frozen, while his forehead and the crown of his head had been cut open by the bayonets of the Serbian soldier. They buried him frozen like that in Rusoliat. Rexhepi, who died during the First World War, had escaped execution in Kicevo, where the Bulgarian army killed many Albanians from Kosovo, thanks to a lira that his family had given him.
After Rexhepi was buried in Baçavia, His whereabouts are unknown today, just like many family members in the neighborhood, who do not know how to correctly identify the graves of their fathers. My grandfather Brahimi was 11 years old at the time, and as soon as the snow had melted in the spring of that year, he had begged his uncle Musa to send him to the graves to find out where his father was buried.
From that time on, several times a year he would go and visit the grave of his father Naman, where he would pray, remove the grass and surround the grave with the chosen stones he found. His visits to the cemetery of this tragedy continued until the mid-1970s.
My grandfather’s great desire was to exhume his father and bring him to the cemetery of his close family in the neighborhood. He had expressed this several times to my father Ilazi. Without my grandfather knowing, one day my father Ilazi had ordered a white marble stone with his grandfather’s name and the year of his grandfather’s murder.
When my father brought the stone home, my grandfather was very happy, and he went to Humdia i Sejdië, a close neighbor from the Canolli neighborhood in Marec, to accompany him to exhume his father’s bones. Hamdiu had accompanied him and together, they had brought Naman’s skeleton to the new cemetery.
1000 Albanians killed
In the village of Prapashticë, more than 1,000 inhabitants were killed, burned and massacred, many entire families were burned, many others disappeared without a trace and some escaped wounded. For a long time, leaving no family members and having no one to take care of the graves of the murdered, very few people know about the graves of their relatives.
From some families, only those who had not been in the family on the critical night were saved, that is, those who had been visiting their relatives in other villages that night. It is worth noting that among the families that suffered great tragedy in this case is the Çarkani family. Latif Çarkani, who had the good fortune to escape this massacre, when he returned home, found his family members massacred.
He had managed to bury his family members in the Graves, and the descendants of this family have continuously taken care of the cemeteries of their ancestors. Also, several decades ago, with the contribution of the Çarkani family, their graves were arranged, marking with the name and surname of all the members of their family who were massacred in Prapashtica.
Massacre of the Çarkani family
I have often heard my grandfather and grandmother tell about the massacre of the Serbian army in the Çarkani family. My grandfather and grandmother had a daughter who, at the age of 16, had died of tuberculosis in the 50s of the 20th century. Both of them were very sad about this girl. Latif Çarkani had also heard about the death of this girl, and he had come to see my grandparents.
In the course of the conversation, Latif said to my grandfather Brahim, I see that you are very sad, but you have to bear the pain. Latif continued his story about the massacre of Prapashtica, telling how he had found his family members massacred by the Serbian army.
He had told a girl of the same age that when he had approached the massacred corpses in the yard of his house, he had seen with his own eyes the cat eating her intestines, and since that incident I have been very sad to see cats with my own eyes, Latifi had said. The story had been so touching and very painful, that my grandparents had coped much more easily with the death of their daughter from tuberculosis.
Among the touching cases of survival of the inhabitants of Prapashtica, there is no doubt that the little baby Selim Salihu, who had remained alive amidst the snow and frost of that winter. According to the stories, when the massacre of the civilian population began, Selmi’s mother, with the little baby in her cradle, and two other women of Veli Salihu’s family from the Govorve neighborhood, left their house and tried to leave the village.
Without even leaving 200m from their homes, the Serbian army begins to shoot them. Two other women are killed on the spot while Selim’s mother remains seriously injured. So wounded, she falls to the ground near a rock almost covered with snow.
With her hand, she removes as much snow as she can from the rock, turning the cradle, with the small baby, placing the “Kaptjell” (a semicircle, used to rock babies) of the cradle on the rock, so that the baby’s face does not have contact with the snow. After a few moments, Selim’s mother also dies. Selim is left alone in the middle of the snow.
A day later, some Montenegrin Serbs from the Medvedja region had crossed the border and entered Prapaštica with the intention of looting and stealing everything of value they could find. The Serbs had also taken some women with them.
Based on the accounts that later emerged from the Serbs themselves participating in this expedition to plunder, it is said that as soon as they approached those corpses, they heard the wailing and crying of little Selim. The Serbs ordered one of them and a Serbian woman to approach the baby and see if it was a girl or a boy. The Serb who went to the baby was instructed that if it was a girl, they should take the baby with them, and if it was a boy, they should kill him with a bullet.
When the Serbian woman approached and saw the baby in that condition and the three Albanian women killed near the cradle, she said that it was a boy. The Serb turned his rifle and fired a bullet outside the cradle, but did not kill Selim because he saw that he would die anyway.
After this Serbian expedition passed, some Albanian kaçaks passed by these corpses. The kaçaks came across the corpses and the cradle resting on stones. The Kaçaks take the cradle and go down to an abandoned house in the village of Keqekollë.
As soon as they enter that house, they light a fire in the middle of the house. When they light the fire, they put a jug of water and sugar in it to warm it. One of the Kaçaks takes the jug and, using his finger, begins to wet Selim’s wet lips. After a few moments, Selim begins to move his tongue and lips to suck the syrup through the Kaçak’s finger. After Selim warms up and drinks the syrup, he begins to wake up.
The Kaçaks begin to undress Selim, but according to the stories, his wet skin on some parts of his body remained on Selim’s clothes. After warming Selim, they wrap him up again in his clothes, and leave him alone, near the fire in that house.
After leaving the baby in that state, the Kaçaks go out to the village of Koliq, and tell the story. Selami’s uncle, Veliu, had been in Koliq and he had set off running to find Selim. Veliu took Selim and sent him to the village of Koliq. Selimi stayed in Koliq for about 3 months.
Selimi’s mother and my grandfather Kada’s mother had been sisters from the Sijarine family, Sahiti from Dabisheci. When my grandfather’s father Naman was killed in this massacre, Kada was pregnant, and after 3 months she gave birth to a boy. The little boy who was born was baptized with the name Naman. A week after the birth, Kada asked to bring her little Selim to raise him together with Naman. Little Selim was brought to our house, and Kada fed the two little babies, until Selim started walking, when he returned to his uncle Veliu.
Nazim Gafurri, a well-known Albanian personality who lived in Pristina, was elected representative of the Albanians of the Pristina district in those years, in the parliament of the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom. Nazim collects information from the field, sells part of his property, and goes to Skopje, to notify the media and government institutions in Belgrade, and the League of Nations, via telegram.
Nazim also informs the Kosovo Liberation Committee about this tragedy. The data collected from the field, about the massacres in Albanian villages, were first published in the newspaper “Hak”, which was published by Xhemjeti. Several Serbian and foreign newspapers have also written about this case. These Serbian crimes against Albanians were also mentioned in several parliaments of European countries.
After Nazim Gafurri’s commitment to internationalize Serbian crimes against the Albanian population, the Serbian services organize their servants to insult Nazim, isolate him, and bypass him. The Serbian services pushed the children to insult Nazim even when he was walking on the street, the children threw tomatoes, eggs, stones at him with the sole purpose of making Nazim react to them, so that the government would take measures against him. The Serbs, seeing Nazim as a dangerous person for their government, as usual paid an Albanian to kill Nazim Gafurri.
As can be seen, the Prapashtica massacre is one of the largest massacres planned by the army of the Serb-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, against an unprotected population, where in just one day it managed to massacre children, women and the elderly just because they were Albanians.
After the extermination of the Albanian population, the Serb-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, colonized the Albanian lands with Serbs and Montenegrins.
This tragedy had included all the villages of Shala, Llapi and Gallapi, and many other villages through which this military expedition did not pass, they lost, they lost their grandmothers, aunts, sisters, who had previously been married in the massacred villages. All these villages were overcome by a pain, and as a sign of respect for these victims, for several years not even weddings with music were organized in these parts.
Based on my grandfather’s stories, after this massacre the first wedding with tupan was held in 1927, in the village of Krilevë. In 1927, in the village of Krilevë, Zeneli and Halili were married. To start the wedding, the leaders of the village of Krilevë had gathered and had decided, before starting the wedding with tupan, to get the permission of the inhabitants of the village of Prapashticë.
Some men from the village of Krilevë had come to the chamber of Musë e Shushnicëve in the village of Prapashtica to discuss this case. A pleasant, friendly conversation had taken place there, and Musë had given them the promise, and the courage, to hold that wedding with a tupan. Musë had said that he would discuss this issue with Musë Govori and other villagers from Prapashtica, and with full conviction none of us would oppose this wedding.
As usual, this issue had been discussed in Prapashtica, and everyone had agreed. Before the wedding began, some representatives from the village of Krilevë had again gone to Musë to tell him that you, Prapashtica, are all invited to come to our wedding. On the day of the wedding, the men from Prapashtica go to the wedding that they had organized at the “Bara” locality in Krilevë.
The Krilevës honor the Prapashtica by seating them in the first row. When the wedding guests gather and sit down, one of them calls Musa of Shushnicëve, who, as the oldest, had been assigned to sit at the head of the wedding guests, saying to him. O Musa, today you are honored to open our wedding, because we have the honor that you Prapashtica are honoring us at this wedding.
Musa takes the floor and makes the wedding a joy and calls Aziz of Misimit. O Aziz, start a song so that we can start this wedding. Aziz, who had sung beautifully, sings the song of the murder of the Russian consul in Mitrovica. When Aziz finishes the song, the drums begin to play. Aziz of Misimit was a young man from Prapashtica, who had managed to escape the massacre, but was very seriously injured.
As he was wounded, he was healed by Musa of Shushnicëve, and he had great respect for Musa. After all those sufferings, and no prospects for life, in the early 1930s he moved to live in Turkey.
Until the Second World War, the population of Prapashtica lived as it is worst. The village along the road leading to Pristina was filled with settlers. The lands of the Albanians were taken by the settlers. Some Albanians who had survived had returned to their lands, and did not give up their ownership, but began to work their land.
In these circumstances, conflicts began between the settlers and the villagers of Prapashtica. Veli Govori was especially prominent against the settlers, who often put his life in danger to protect the lands of his ancestors. The hostility with the Serbs did not stop until the beginning of the Second World War.
After the capitulation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in the Second World War without firing a single shot against the German forces. The German army forces entered Pristina on April 10, 1941. In these circumstances, the Albanian population had mobilized to defend themselves from an unexpected attack by Serbian armed groups. As soon as the German army units arrive in Medvedja, Radovan Šakić holds a conversation with the commander of the German military unit.
The Serbs urge a German army unit to enter Prapaštica, telling them that there is a nursery of communists there, who have also expelled the Serbs from their lands in Prapaštica. The Germans, accompanied by groups of Serbian settlers who had left Prapaštica and had gathered in Medvedja and the surrounding area, go to the border. The Serbs, in order to incite the conflict between the Albanians and the Germans, shoot from behind an Albanian who had been plowing his field in the village of Dabišec.
Upon hearing the shots, the villagers of Prapaštica, who had shot at the village mosque that Friday, thinking that they were attacked by the Serbs, take up their weapons and take up positions to defend the village near the border. To protect the border, other Albanians from the villages around Prapashtica were quickly mobilized.
The fighting took place on April 24, 1941 and lasted several hours. For the first time, the Germans suffered heavy losses, leaving about 20 soldiers in this battle, and several others who retreated wounded. The residents of Prapashtica managed to capture two German soldiers, and when they realized that they had fought with the Germans, they handed both soldiers over to the German army command in Pristina. On the Albanian side, one was killed and two were wounded.
To clarify the case before the German army, Xhafer Deva had confessed, clearly explaining the Serbian scenario. Although the German army had understood the case and the deception on the Serbian side, the order was given to burn the entire village of Prapashtica. On May 3, 194, the German army undertook a military campaign to attack Prapashtica and the surrounding villages.
In this action, some Albanians were killed and others were taken prisoner, but the majority of the inhabitants had managed to abandon the village beforehand. The German army used the most modern military arsenal to surround Prapashtica and burn it completely, leaving no neighborhood unburned. With the bombing of Prapashtica, this event was the fourth time that Prapashtica had been burned.
After the capitulation of Bulgaria, in September 1944, the Bulgarian army was forced by the Russian army to enter the war against the German army. Seeing the end of the war and the defeat, the German army began to withdraw from Thessaloniki and other southern cities of the peninsula. In order to strike the Germans, the Russian army had ordered the Bulgarian army to block the roads for the withdrawal of the German army into the territory of present-day Kosovo.
The Albanian army, which was also commanded by some soldiers from Albania, had mobilized to defend the border. The entire Albanian population of Kosovo, capable of shooting with weapons, had been mobilized on the border. Now the Albanian national army had been mobilized on the border. For the first time, the Albanians in this battle were supplied with weapons and helped by German military personnel to defend the border.
The Bulgarian army, which had the Russian army in the rear, aimed to penetrate Pristina as quickly as possible by attacking the border line in Prapashtica, to concentrate on the Kosovo Plain. The command of the Albanian army in defense of the border was located in the Shaban’s room of Musa of Shushnica, while the majority of the army was concentrated on the houses of this neighborhood in the “Rrafshin e Kodrës”. In the Shaban’s room stood Captain Petri, Shyqeria and Demiri from Albania, while other most famous military men of that period from Kosovo often frequented Prapashtica.
In addition to Prapashtica, the mobilization of Albanians was also carried out at other strategic points along the north-eastern border of Kosovo. Since mid-October 1944, the Bulgarian army and Serbian army units began attacking the Albanian army. Fierce fighting took place especially in Prapashtica.
On October 18, the two units of the Bulgarian army turned back after leaving many dead in Prapashtica, by the Albanian national defense forces. The Bulgarians suffered heavy losses in Prapashtica on October 23 and 25 when they attempted to enter Kosovo. The Bulgarian army, now after heavy losses, had lost its morale for the war. On October 29, 1944, the Bulgarian army again suffered heavy losses in men and military arsenal in Prapashtica.
In this battle, my late grandfather told how he managed to capture a horse of the Bulgarian army, which had been loaded with ammunition. According to his stories, in this battle, my grandfather and an Albanian from Bajgora, had taken up positions at the wall of Nedelku’s house (a settler who had previously been located in the center of the village of Prapashticë). There, fierce fighting was taking place around us, between the Bulgarian and Albanian armies. Our rifles had heated up so much that they did not even shoot properly.
Without waiting, a loaded horse came near us. With great speed and care, I managed to grab that horse by the bridle, and led it to Nedelku’s house, my grandfather said. The horse had been loaded with weapons and ammunition. We provided him with other weapons to continue the fight, and for a while, the two of us were left alone. After a while, they heard our villagers calling, we went out and joined them.
When we went to Xhehem, we entered the house of Bulit Brahimi. He remembered that there had been three killed Albanian soldiers there, who had been carried after being killed at the front. My grandfather had taken that horse and sent it home. After a few years, my grandfather had put this horse on a lam to sweep the grain, and when he had approached this horse to change the direction of its walk on the lam, the horse without waiting had torn off half of its ear.
Grandfather was angry at this horse, and after hearing that the Italians were buying horses in Leskocë, he and another Albanian, had sent the horses for two days and sold them in Leskoc.
After a resistance of several weeks, the Bulgarian army, helped by Serbian army units and Russian officers, managed to break the border and penetrate towards Pristina. During this war, the Bulgarian army burned many houses in the village of Prapashtica and other villages, and also committed crimes against the civilian population by killing the elderly, children and raping women.
Based on the accounts of my grandmother who, to escape from the Bulgarian army, had taken refuge with her relatives in Viti, the village of Marec, she said that when we returned to our homes, the Bulgarian soldiers had burned, demolished and looted the house. According to her accounts, all the cheese vats (tinars) had been defiled, even by defecating on the cheese.
This was the fifth burning of Prapashtica within five decades. On November 19, the Bulgarian and Serbian armies entered Pristina, and took revenge on the Albanian population, shooting nearly 100 of the most eminent figures of the city of Pristina.
After the end of World War II and until 1999, Prapashtica and the inhabitants of this village had gone through suffering, imprisonment, beatings in the action of arms, a little revival in the seventies, then differentiations, imprisonment, murder and burning again in the war of the last century of the twentieth century.
The contribution of the inhabitants of Prapashtica to the liberation of Kosovo was quite great. In the early 90s, the first meeting on the form of organizing the national resistance was held at the Bajram Fana mill in Prapashtica. This meeting was attended by many figures of the Albanian political scene of today. Also, after the start of the KLA War, 1998/99, in March 1998, my uncle Kajtaz Namani offered his house in the Vreshtave neighborhood in Prishtina for military services.
The greatest contribution to this war was made by the national martyr Ismet Asllani, Commander of the Logistics of the 153rd KLA Brigade. I apologize for not mentioning other contributors to this war, and there are undoubtedly many who, during the nineties, turned their houses into schools and sheltered families who had come to Prishtina from war zones.
On April 18, the Serbian army, with its heaviest military arsenal, begins an offensive against the KLA units and the civilian population in the village of Prapashtica. The Serbian army burns the village and kills about 30 men and women from Prapashtica. This date also marks the sixth burning of Prapashtica by the Serbian and Bulgarian armies during the 20th century.
As can be seen, Prapashtica was burned six times by the Serbian army during the 20th century, losing thousands of inhabitants, so it is considered to be the most damaged settlement during the 20th century.
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Balkan Academia 