The mass execution without trial and conviction of people with apronounced Bulgarian self-awareness in January 1945 in the vicinity ofthe town of Veles was one of the emblematic murders in the course of thewave of repressions in Vardar Macedonia, known as the MacedonianBloody Christmas. The tragic event unfolded against the backdrop ofthe newlyestablished Macedonian Unit as part of Tito’s (communist)Yugoslavia. Based on the author’s personal observations, the articlefollows the fate of one of the Veles families, which was directlyaffected by this atrocity. Along with the personal tragedy, the emphasisis placed on the ideological ‘evolution’ that the heirs of the victimshave been forced to demonstrate with each subsequent generation inorder to fit into the Yugoslav communist and post-Yugoslav (North-)Macedonian society. These processes have gone through the inevitablesmaller or larger compromises, naturally reaching a conformism thatis perceived as a choice and in its final stage: to a (most likely) finaldisconnection from their Bulgarian roots.
