When, entering Greece, I stopped next to a complex with a monument dedicated to World War I, I made a promise to myself that this year I would visit one of the larger allied necropolises from World War I, the military cemetery Zeitenlik in Thessaloniki.
There are cemeteries and ossuary in France with a far greater number of fallen soldiers, but this cemetery in Thessaloniki is often called the largest because it is where more nations of allied soldiers are buried, who died in the decisive battle in World War I, which led to the collapse of the Axis powers in the Balkans and the near end of the war - the Breakthrough of the Thessaloniki Front.
There are many martyred soldiers in those large cemeteries in France.
The Necropolis of Notre-Dame de Lorette) near Arras, has 40,000 names of French soldiers.
The military cemetery in Verdun, where the bones of about 130,000 French and German soldiers, who died in the bloodiest battle in the First World War, are buried.
Or the British cemetery in Thiepval, where there is a monument to the missing with the names of 72,000 soldiers whose graves are unknown...
Great suffering of soldiers on both sides.
As well as on the Thessaloniki front.
And all those soldiers have their own grave.
During the actions in Macedonia, and during the breakthrough of the Thessaloniki front, which began on September 15, 1918, all wounded Serbian soldiers were brought to the Polish military hospital, which was located in the immediate vicinity of a large olive grove (Zeytinlik in Turkish), from where the whole area was called Zeytinlik.
Soldiers who died were buried between olive trees. After the end of the war, the Greek authorities decided to donate the land, so that a military cemetery could be built in that place in honor of the fallen soldiers.
The action of exhumation of soldiers' graves, as well as the collection of corpses of fallen Serbian soldiers on the Thessaloniki front immediately after the end of the war, is led by Sava Mihajlović, a surviving soldier.
After the formation of the cemetery in 1926, Sava guarded the first brick ossuary in the Serbian military cemetery until his death, when his son Djuro succeeded him in the role of guardian, and he was succeeded by his son Djordje, Sava's grandson. Djordje, an old man who was the guardian of the cemetery from 1960 until his death in 2023.
He was a symbol of Zeyntinlik and after his death, he was buried in the grave of his grandfather and father. It is the only grave in which civilians are buried, not fallen soldiers.
The Zeyntinlik military cemetery complex is best shown on the board in front of the French section of the cemetery.
Next to the French part, which is the largest, right below the Serbian cemetery, there is a Russian one, as well as an English one, and an Italian one on the side.
Although the French cemetery is the largest in terms of area, the majority of the dead were Serbs.
The reason for this is that 5,580 Serbian heroes were buried in the mausoleum, an ossuary that occupied a small space. The other 1,448 Serbian soldiers were buried in individual graves on 10 plots, and each one has its own stone cross.
There are also two common graves with the remains of 78 unknown soldiers and another with 217 unknown Serbian warriors brought from Constantinople.
After the end of World War II, 126 partisans who died in the battles around Thessaloniki or as victims in one of the camps were buried in this cemetery.
In the center of the complex is the Mausoleum, an impressive cross-shaped structure, built of stone from Mount Venčac near Aranđelovac.
It is the ossuary that dominates the cemetery and is the central place, built in honor of all the Serbian soldiers who died in the breakthrough of the Thessaloniki front.
In the chapel of St. George, next to the altar, the frescoes list the divisions of the Serbian army that participated in the breakthrough of the Thessaloniki front and which, with their brave advance and defeat of the opposing army, amazed even the great commanders of the Allied armies.
The most striking details in the chapel are the verses dedicated to the heroes.
Unknown stranger, when you accidentally pass by
Next to this holy common grave,
Know, here they found eternal refuge
The greatest heroes of our time!
Their parent is: the brave Serbian people,
A giant in the world's historical military,
Who has passed all the paths of temptation
And whose fighters are worthy of admiration!
They fell from the grain, from hunger and thirst,
Crucified on the cross, on
Golgotha they hung,
But their firm faith in the final victory
Never, not for a moment, did they lose...
Blessed are the descendants who mourn for them
Because they were the pride of their race
Blessed are they too, because they fell gloriously
For the Fatherland, the King and Freedom
In front of the gates of the homeland
In their victorious march they perished like giants
For unity and freedom,
Their deeds will be celebrated
Until the last judgment days, Glory to the flock of immortals!
Peace be to the ashes of the giants!
When you go down the stairs into the crypt, you come across niches in which there are objects left during the visits of the descendants of the victims, various statesmen, military delegations.
In the central part of the crypt there is an altar with the Serbian flag, and on the left and right sides of the extension with corridors, with the graves of known and unknown heroes.
The perfect silence of this place is not disturbed, but the impression is enhanced by the melody of the song Tamo daleko ( "Far away".) where penalized Serbian soldiers who survived the Albanian Golgotha and who were returning from Corfu to their Serbia via the Thessaloniki front.
All those buried in this crypt, known with a name and nameless heroes, sang this song as they charged the enemy lines...
I looked through the books of the buried and there is none of my ancestors among the names.
My ancestors gave their lives in the battles in the west of Serbia in the Battle of Cer, about which I may make another post, when I have the opportunity to visit the monument of one of them.
I left the crypt and walked around the plots among the graves of Serbian heroes.
Strong emotion and great respect for their victims is felt by everyone who finds themselves here.
On the monuments are the names of our ancestors, both soldiers and officers, but also ordinary people, civilians, who fought side by side with trained military personnel...
Right below the plots of Serbian graves, I come across Russian graves. 493 of them from the Russian volunteer detachment that fought on the Thessaloniki front.
The stone crosses look the same to me, the only way to tell from the names is that they are Russian graves.
There used to be a small wooden chapel on part of the Russian cemetery, which was removed during the reconstruction of the cemetery.
On the right, when you pass under the cypress branches, brought from Hilandar, you pass into the French cemetery.
Monuments to French soldiers are also stones in the shape of a cross, and in the center of the cemetery there is a striking red chapel.
In this cemetery, with 8,098 crosses of French soldiers, the central monument to all French aviators dominates.
1,648 graves with tombstones on a green surface with flower planting, the only such in this cemetery, represent the graves of British and Commonwealth soldiers.
In that part of the cemetery, there is a Cross of Sacrifice monument, a cross with a metal dagger, such as is found in many British military cemeteries around the world.
And the only monument, with a cross on the tombstone, is a monument to the only woman in this cemetery.
Evelyn Car, nicknamed Mother or Madame Harley by the Serbian army, was an Englishwoman, a volunteer, a nurse, who accompanied Serbian fighters on the fronts, organized hospitals and took care of wounded soldiers and civilians.
Because of her great merits, the additional command of Serbian officers considered this English woman their own, and in the middle of the English part of the cemetery, she erected a monument that stands out from all the others.
It is the only one with a cross, and with always fresh flowers, which are maintained by visitors and guardians of the Serbian cemetery as a thank you for the sacrifice she made in World War I.
The epitaph shows great gratitude:
Great woman, on your tomb instead of flowers, the gratitude of the Serbs shell blossom there, for your wonderful acts your name shall be known from generations to generations.
In order to reach the Italian part of the cemetery, it is necessary to cross the road and go through the gate.
In the Italian part of the cemetery, there are similar stone crosses, as in the other three cemeteries.
At the entrance to the marble chapel, there is a large monument with the figure of a soldier, and in the plots there are also monuments erected by family members to their loved ones.
Not to mention the Greek soldiers, there is also a monument to all those who fell in the breakthrough of the Thessaloniki front.
A monument of white marble, with a wall of black symbolizing the front that was to be breached.
An olive tree was planted next to the monument on the centenary of the end of the Great War, as a symbol of reconciliation and peace.
A war that took many human lives and left behind cemeteries like this all over the world...
I fulfilled my promise and took the visit of this cemetery off the "Must visit" list.
This was a promise I made to myself a long time ago and with this post I pay tribute to the ancestors of my compatriots. May they rest in peace and glory.
This tourist tour of mine, I share with you in a new community and I hope that soon I will have the opportunity to look at some of your posts with a tour of monuments around the world.