It's a difficult journey from the port city of Volos to Trikeri. Along the 75-kilometre road you pass through beautiful villages filled with tourist cafes and restaurants. The leanders add a special beauty, but the pain in the chest and the tension in the stomach do not stop. Every time you climb the road to Trikeri, you see the endless White Sea and excerpts from the story of Vladimir Sis, the Czech writer and publicist, thanks to whom in 1913 the world found out about the mass extermination of the Bulgarians, explode in your mind like an atomic bomb.
Sis makes chilling revelations. He was admitted there thanks to his presentation as a German and that he wanted to visit the monastery of St. Mary the Virgin. Vladimir Sis's book The Graves of Trikeri begins with him talking to the boatman who leads him to the sinister island.
When he is already at sea Vladimir Vis begins to question the boatman. "These are the little Trikeri . No one lives there. But that one behind them, the big one - that's our Trikeri where we're going. Look, you can see the monastery!" says the boatman, and Sis asks naively, "Is this the island where the Bulgarian prisoners were? Yes, sir. How many died there. You can see their graves. But don't think that's all of them. How many were drowned, how many... They are countless...
- Drowned?
- Of course. They will not jump into the sea by themselves. We have been throwing them from the port of Thessaloniki.
- Why?
- Why? They were Bulgarians and nothing more. A thousand or two thousand less - so much the better for us... Our captain said: 'Come, boys, let's see how much the Bulgarians know how to swim. They wanted the sea - let them try it"... We deliberately stopped the steamer in the open sea, quite far from the shore. And we threw the Bulgarians into the sea. There was a lot to see, it was cheerful, yes... Those who knew how to swim reached the shore, those who didn't - the bottom. You look at him - he is flailing his arms, choking, and suddenly he sinks and is lost, as if you had thrown a stone into the sea.
Nowadays there is only one "Boat-taxi" that can transport you to Trikeri. The boatman, a young boy is not very talkative. After agreeing to the first quoted round trip amount he becomes more polite. He admits that he is always amazed by the willingness of tourists to visit Trikery, this backward island. "There are two restaurants and a monastery. That's it." When we ask him if there are monuments and other attractions, he shrugs his shoulders and replies in surprise, "What monuments. Only a few hundred people live there. I don't know if there are even that many," and then he hits himself on the head and says. "Oh, there's a plaque for that British woman who died in 2008."
Among the thousands killed was one of the founders of The internal Macedonian-Edrina revolutionary organization, Hristo Batanjiyev, who at the time was secretary to the spiritual leader of the Saloniki Bulgarians, Archimandrite Evlogy- also killed in a cruel way.
We're already in Trikeri. We quickly pass the restaurant and head towards the monastery. Ravens circle above us and on their descent they crow loudly and suddenly rise again. In front of the monastery we meet two German tourists. After a prolonged knocking on the monastery gates, they turn sadly and say, "No one here knows when the gates open." "No, what happened?" Thousands of Bulgarians were massacred here in 1913. "Why?", they ask, both astonished. "Simply because they were Bulgarians. They were arrested mainly from Aegean Macedonia." "That's terrible, why isn't there a single plaque?", the two reply and, hand in hand, walk back. After about a hundred meters we see them sitting on a bench. The man waves to us and with a shaking voice repeats two or three times, "I'm not sorry we didn't see the monastery. What we learned ruined us. What we step on... What we step on."
Trikery, like everywhere in Greece, is dotted with centuries-old olive trees. In between are countless eco trails and a main paved road leading to the monastery. A new cemetery opposite. When you look down from above, you see buildings nestled here and there among these olive trees. The inhabitants of the island may know, but it is more likely that they do not know what happened 111 years ago. Like the residents, like every tourist, we step on human bones and obliterated graves. Returning again to what Vladimir Sis wrote, we think that his covenants have also remained unfulfilled. "I felt unspeakable grief. It seemed to me that I was walking through places where my brothers had died, died of sorrow for their native land. Yes, my brothers are indeed those who have perished here. Bow before their ashes! The day will come and perhaps all too soon you will be avenged. I believe this more than any other time, I believe this right here, the place of your suffering. Yes, you will not be forgotten. There, somewhere on the shores of the continent, will come stormy regiments. You will know their banners, their bugles, their hurrahs... Harsh but tenderly loving warriors will come here and throw a handful of native earth on your lonely graves..."
And we Bulgarians, when we come here to Trikeri, let's carry a handful of earth and throw it in the air over the island, it will surely fall to the ground and reach someone's Bulgarian bones, or maybe to distant Czech Republic, where Vladimir Sis for his love of the Bulgarian people paid with his life as a "Czech fascist" in Czechoslovak prisons. In 1958 he died in Leopoldov prison. | BGNES
