Rudolphe Archibald Reiss - A VISIT TO THE LIBERATED VILLAGES - January 13, 1917.

The Bulgars were in the habit of proclaiming everywhere that Macedonia was essentially Bulgarian, that its inhabitants were nearly all Bulgars, and that, consequently,  the land was theirs by right.  

Orphans at village Brod

So when the Government  of Ferdinand of Coburg, with the powerful help of Germany  and Austria-Hungary, succeeded in laying hands upon  the whole of Macedonia, it was to be expected that it  would leave no stone unturned to bring happiness at last  to this population, which, according to the Bulgars, had  suffered so cruelly under foreign domination and especially  under that of the Serbs.
At the present moment more than fifty villages and  one town in Southern Macedonia have been reconquered  by the Serbs. I have already visited the greater number  and made an inquiry touching the manner in which the  Bulgars have behaved in these "completely Bulgarized"  boroughs.
I will give a brief summary of the results of  this inquiry, merely stating in advance that I possess  unimpeachable proofs of all I am putting forward. In  one of my forthcoming letters I will relate what I learnt  in Monastir.

When the Bulgars arrived in the villages, the first thing  they did was to depose the " kmets, " or mayors, who had  held office under the Serbian regime. 

These were replaced,  either by cowed villagers who would never dare to protest  against the excesses committed by the soldiery, or by  comitadjis, or perhaps by men who had long been affiliated  to the Bulgarian Revolutionary Organization.
As the  villages in this part of Macedonia are not very large, several  of them together form one "commune" which, as such,  has a president. This president was invariably a member  of the Bulgarian Macedonian Organization and had come  straight from Bulgaria.
Thus the commune consisting  of the villages of Brod, Bac, Dobroveni and Slivica was  ruled by a certain Vilip Indov, who had as his very  active coadjutor one Delo Talev, the famous "kmet" of  Bac.
The posts of " pandur " (police agent) and rural  policeman were also almost always in the hands of Bulgarian  comitadjis who had been sent specially from the centres  of  Bulgarian revolutionary activity in Greek territory  from Banica, Neokazi, Lerina, etc.
All these people,  including the presidents, acted in blind obedience to a  Committee, whose headquarters were in Monastir and  which consisted of three delegates of the Central Macedonian Organization in Sofia, the so-called " Makedonska  Odrinska," and of four of its agents selected locally.  Numerous comitadji leaders, or " vojvodas," among whom  I must mention the brigand pope Krsta Leonda, called  Londev who always wore the arms and uniform of a  comitadji underneath his priest's cassock Rizov, George  Popov, Dorev, Altiparmakov, Panta Siskov, Pavle Hris-tov, etc., who prowled about the country to keep a watch  on the population and their own subordinates as well.
As to what the peasants had to suffer from this comitadji  regime, I was able to obtain ample proof of it on the spot.  They were robbed of almost all they possessed.
All who  were known to entertain feelings of loyalty towards Serbia  or who tried to oppose the pillage of their property, were  cruelly maltreated.

Thus, Delo Vragovic, of Bac, was  so severely beaten that he succumbed two days later;
Aleksa Kostovic, of the same village, received so many  blows " that he had to kill a sheep and apply the bleeding  skin to his back to ease the pain." He had to lie up for  six weeks.
Osman Mehmed, an old man of Kenali, was  laid up in bed for four weeks by the wounds caused by  being beaten with a stick.
Spase Stanojlovic', aged 80,  who tried to defend his pigs his sole property from the  plundering Bulgarian soldiers, received a shot through  the right arm, causing a wound of which I verified the scar. 

The comitadji officials and their understrappers profited  by their all-powerful position to extort money from the  peasants by the following means.

They went to them  and said :

" You are a suspect.
Your case is serious ;  because you are to be arrested and sent to Sofia, and who  knows, something even more serious may happen to you.
But you can ransom yourself by giving us a sum of money  which will be assessed in proportion to your possessions."  

Sometimes they even arrested their men and then made  them pay for their release. As a rule they would only  accept gold and refused Bulgarian notes.

Thus, Omer  Rasid, of the village of Kenali, paid 5 louis d'or,  Mustafa Rusan, of Medzidli, T68 in gold ; Stojco Ristic, of Skocivir, 30 louis d'or, etc. 

In acting thus, by the  way, the comitadjis merely followed the example of the  Bulgarian officials in Monastir.
Nor were the military any kinder to the unfortunate  population of Southern Macedonia.
During the earlier  days of the occupation they still occasionally paid for the  provisions, cereals, and cattle they requisitioned.
The  prices, however, were so low as to be ridiculous.
For  instance, Rista Gacevic, of Sovic, was paid 180 francs  for 180 sheep.
Sheep at a franc a head are not dear !
Cows were valued at from 5 to 12 francs.
Later on, the  peasants were paid in requisition tickets" raspiske,"  as they are called here.
Only, these raspiske were never  redeemed, and I possess a fine collection of them in my  dossier. Finally, since last spring, the soldiers ceased to  stand on any ceremony and simply helped themselves to  all they wanted.
When the fighting began in this region, the inhabitants  were evacuated from the villages, and when they returned  they found absolutely nothing.
The Bulgars had cleared  out everything !
The countryside, once prosperous, has  been ruined for many years to come.
The peasants were forced to work without pay for the  Bulgarian army.
They had to make roads, cart provisions and munitions and dig trenches. In some villages  even the women were compelled to work upon the fortifications.
Thus Visa Boskovic, of Gruniste, was forced to  work at the Bulgarian defences although she was ill.  There is, however, a paragraph in the Hague Convention  signed, if I am not mistaken, by Bulgaria just the same  as by her allies Germany and Austria-Hungary which  expressly forbids the employment of the civil population  of invaded regions upon military works !
The men and lads of Macedonia were temporarily recruited under the tyranny of the rulers of Sofia and, more  especially, under that of the Revolutionary Committee of  that city, although this, too, is a flagrant contravention  of international law.
In several villages the Bulgars not  only requisitioned almost everything, but the villagers  were compelled with the little that was left to them to  feed the soldiers billeted in the place. "
You are Serbs,  we will be the death of you," they would say to the  inhabitants of  Bistrica and Zabjani, while robbing them  of all they possessed. "
You will die before us, and then,  as we shall have nothing left when we have eaten what  we are taking from you, we shall die too."
In many places  the soldiers assaulted the women. The peasants of Zabjani,  for instance, were obliged to send their wives and daughters  to Monastir to protect them from these assaults.
Executions of peasants were fairly rare in this part of  Macedonia. This paucity in the matter of executions is  explained by the fact that the Bulgars could not very  well give themselves the lie direct by killing too many of  those whom they had always proclaimed to be "their  brothers."
According to the information I possess, executions were far more frequent in certain essentially Serbian  districts which have not yet been liberated.
In conclusion  I will quote literally what was said to me by an old Mussulman of the Albanian village of Ostrec :
" We are a flock  of sheep and must follow him who comes to lead us. You  (the Serbs) have never done us any harm, and they (the  Bulgars) have taken all we had. Of course, we are glad  that you have come back."

Excerpt from the book:
THE KINGDOM OF SERBIA: INFRINGEMENTS OF THE RULES AND LAWS OF WAR COMMITTED by the AUSTRO-BULGARO-GERMANS: LETTERS OF A CRIMINOLOGIST ON THE SERBIAN 
MACEDONIAN FRONT By Rudolphe Archibald Reiss
Published 1919