Historian Todor Cepreganov responded to comments from Bulgarian member of the European Parliament Aleksandar Yordanov, over October 11th, the day when Macedonia marks the start of the anti-fascist partisan struggle in the Second World War. Bulgaria dismisses the struggle, as it was aimed against its occupying forces, and Yordanov said that the opening shots, carried out on October 11th 1941 in Prilep and Kumanovo, were the work of “terrorists”.

Yordanov says that several terrorists attacked the police station in Prilep, cut the telephone wires and killed the father of three children. The person who was killed wore a Bulgarian uniform and guarded the Bulgarian police station. He was symbol of the Bulgarian fascist government and occupation, regardless whether he was a Macedonian, Serb, Roma, Albanian or Vlach, Cepreganov told PressingTV.

The historian adds that the attacks in Prilep and Kumanovo were well planned and were the beginning of the struggle “of Macedonian partisans against Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and other fascist countries”.

Yordanov, your compatriots killed children and youths, and had them massacred to the point that their parents couldn’t recognize them. Only because they were communists and anti-fascists, who sought an independent Macedonian state, of the Macedonians, with a Macedonian language. Not to mention the Bulgarian complicity in one of the biggest crimes in the history of humanity – the Holocaust – when 7,140 Jews from Macedonia were sent to the Treblinka death camp – 2,000 of them were children, Cepreganov added.