Written by: Sabedin Sherifi

A massacre documented even in Serbian archives – Albanians were tied up and sent to previously opened graves. In the history of Lubishta in Viti, there is a chapter that has remained alive for more than a century in the memory of families, in the stories of the elderly, and in the places where the victims were buried.It is the story of the massacre of 1912–1913, in the early days of the establishment of Serbian power in this part of Kosovo.

But this is not just an orally inherited story.

Part of it is also recorded in Serbian military documentation of the time.

And it is precisely this document that makes the Lubishta tragedy one of the most important cases for documenting violence against Albanians in Upper Morava.

Lubishta under the new occupation

In the fall of 1912, the First Balkan War brought the Serbian army to Kosovo and the areas around Gjilan.

After the deployment of Serbian forces, raids, arrests, burning of houses, confiscations and murders began in many Albanian villages.

Lubishta was among the villages that was hit hard.

Its inhabitants were Albanians and some of them had been involved in the resistance against the occupation.

For this reason, the village became the object of violence that was not limited to military clashes.

It directly affected the civilian population.

December 1912

According to historical data, 18 people were killed in Lubishte in December 1912.

But that was only part of the tragedy.

In the months that followed, the violence escalated even further.

Murders were no longer just isolated episodes.

They turned into mass executions.

The day the village turned into a scene of executions

On February 15, 1913, the local command in Gjilan sent a report to the Kosovo Division Command.

That report describes a Serbian army operation in Lubishte.

According to the document, a military unit had entered the village and destroyed several houses with dynamite and burned some of them.

Then the search for residents began.

The Albanian adults gathered.

They were not sent before any court.

No legal process is prescribed for them.

In the document they are shown as arrested and bound.

There were 68 Albanians.

Bound, they were taken out of the village and headed towards a forest.

But what happened next is the most shocking part of the document.

The graves were opened before the victims arrived.

According to the Serbian military report, in the place where the Albanians were to be sent, the pits had been dug earlier by residents of Vërboc.

So, the graves were prepared in advance.

The detainees were not being sent to an unknown location.

They were being taken to a place where their burial had been prepared.

Bound and defenseless, they were taken into the forest.

There, according to the document, the Serbian army carried out what the report describes as a “short procedure”.

After this execution, the victims were buried in previously dug pits.

Thus, a Serbian military document of the time recorded the very mechanism of execution.

We are not just dealing with evidence collected many years later.

We have a report drafted by the Serbian military structure and sent to its chain of command.

How many Albanians were killed in Lubishte?

Here, documents and evidence do not just provide a number.

The Serbian military document of February 15, 1913 speaks of 68 Albanians being executed.

Historical studies also record 18 victims in December 1912 and another large number of victims in February 1913.

Meanwhile, local sources and testimonies from residents of Lubishta place the total number of victims of the tragedy at 95 people, while some testimonies give even higher figures.

Therefore, the scale of the tragedy cannot be reduced to just 68 victims.

68 is the number of Albanians that the Serbian military document directly links to that particular execution.

While 95 is the figure that documentary and local sources give for the overall tragedy of Lubishta.

Mass graves

Years and generations later, Lubishta’s memory continued to point to the place where the victims were buried.

In 2012, during works to erect a tombstone near Podgorci, mortal remains were discovered.

Human bones, bullet casings, and metal parts and clothespins were found.

There are suspected to be three mass graves in that area, where it is believed that around 80 to 90 people were buried.

This discovery made the testimony passed down from generation to generation even more tangible.

What had remained for decades in the memory of families resurfaced from the ground.

A testimony that did not disappear

In Lubishte, the history of the massacre is not only preserved in documents.

It has been preserved in the family.

In the stories about men who were taken from their homes.

In memories of those who never returned.

And above all, in places where families continued to search for the graves of their relatives.

Some local testimonies also speak of wounded people who were buried without being completely dead.

This part should be treated with caution as transmitted evidence, but it is consistent with the memory preserved in Lubishte of the horrific way the victims were treated.

Document that cannot be deleted

More than a century after the event, the document of February 15, 1913 remains one of the most important pieces of evidence.

Because the document does not come from a narrative written decades later. It comes from the Serbian military structures themselves.

It records the number of Albanians tied up, the destruction of their homes, their deportation to the forest, and the fact that the burial pits had been dug beforehand by residents of Vërboc.

The document is located in the military archive funds and has been used by researchers in documenting the crimes committed in Upper Morava.

This makes the case of Lubishta particularly important.

Because its history does not rest solely on memory.

It has also left its mark on the archives of the government that carried out the operation.

95 names that should not be forgotten

The Lubishta massacre is not just a distant chapter in the history of 1912.

It is the story of people who had names, families, and homes.

It was a small Albanian village that faced a wave of extraordinary violence.

At least 95 residents of Lubishta remained victims of this tragedy, according to the figure preserved in commemorative and documentary sources.

Some were shot. Some disappeared. Some were buried in mass graves.

And for some of them, even today the place where they rest is not known for certain.

Over a century later, the land of Lubishta and Podgorica continues to preserve traces of that time.

The discovered remains, the mass graves, and the Serbian military document from 1913 give us the same message: The Lubishte Massacre is not just an inherited narrative. It is a documented historical event.

And the document written then, in the offices of the Serbian army itself, remains today a silent testimony of what happened in Lubishte in 1912–1913.

Source

Mediafokus. https://mediafokus.info/lubishta-1912-1913-95-shqiptare-te-vrre-vrret-ishin-hapur-paraprakisht/?