"St. Dimitar" in Tetovo preserves the memory of the glorious Bulgarian family of Mara Buneva

The church "St. Dimitar" in Tetoto, in the western part of today's North Macedonia, preserves the memory of the glorious family of Mara Buneva. The legendary Bulgarian woman of today shot the Bulgaria-hater Velimir Prelich on the Vardar River bridge in Skopje 96 years ago, BGNES reported.
"St. Dimitar" was built with the funds of Mara Buneva's grandfather - Zahari Manoilov. To this day, the Bulgarian roots and the Bulgarian past are clearly visible in and around the temple. Tombstones with the old Bulgarian spelling have been preserved in the courtyard, but some of the traces were erased during the complete reconstruction of the church in the early 1990s.
Mara Buneva is the younger sister of the famous revolutionary from VMRO Boris Bunev, who attracted her to the ranks of the organization.
The roots of her feat were born in December 1927. At that time, a trial was held in Skopje against members of the Macedonian Youth Secret Revolutionary Organization (MMTRO). On the court stand 20 Bulgarian students who, during the trial, were tortured in an extremely barbaric way by the prosecutor Velimir Prelich. By order of the Serbian inquisitor, the heads of the Macedonian Bulgarians were clamped in a vise, and their arms and legs were broken. Unheard-of atrocities, even during the Ottoman rule, left no other choice - the Ivan Mihailov-led VMRO issued a death sentence to Prelich.
Mara Buneva, who had returned to her native Tetovo a year earlier, was blamed for the assassination. The heroine settles in Skopje, and not just anywhere, but in the house next door to Prelić's home. He manages to get close to the Serbian prosecutor and win his trust, which is proof of the extraordinary conspiratorial talent not only of Buneva, but also of all the brave actors of the VMRO of the era.
On January 13, Buneva killed Prelich on the Stone Bridge of the Vardar, and then, in order not to be captured by the tyrants of Macedonia, she shot herself in the chest and died a day later. When asked why she killed Prelich, Mara Buneva answered: "Because of the torture he inflicted on my fellow students. Because I love my homeland."
The self-sacrificing action reawakens the interest of the European press in the unresolved Macedonian question.
The major French newspaper "La France" wrote: "The truth that France must know is that these acts of terrorism are not actually the work of vulgar thugs, but of an insurgent people!".
The Austrian "Tagepost" exclaims: "The slogan of the organization is: Freedom or death! Her followers do not surrender alive to the enemy. They know only one thing: struggle against foreign violent domination. VMRO is the sword of Damocles in the Balkans – it cannot be caught and wherever its armed hand is placed, there are bloody traces. She is everywhere and nowhere."
The French newspaper Jover called Mara Buneva the "Macedonian Charlotte Korde".
Mara Buneva died for the right to a free and dignified life of the Macedonian Bulgarians, punishing one of the symbols of decades of Serbian oppression in Macedonia, because she and other great figures of the VMRO refused to bow their heads to the Serbs raging in the land of their ancestors. /BGNES
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Velislav Iliev, BGNES News Agency