59962 | 5 May 2025 | 07:55
The massacre of 5,000 people from the village of Batak during the suppression of the April Uprising is one of the darkest dates in the history of Bulgaria.
The slaughter was carried out by bashibozuks - mainly by Pomaks from neighboring villages, under the direct command of Ahmed Agha Barutanyat. After the slaughter, he was sentenced and sent to exile in Diyarbakir, but later pardoned by Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
After the conversion to Islam of Tsepino in 1657, Batak was surrounded by Muslim villages and for a certain period of time represented an "island" of the Christian faith. In the church of "Sveta Nedelya", the Christian religion was preached in Church Slavonic, unlike other cities where priests served in Greek. This was a privilege that the Turkish authorities could not allow for the Bulgarians in Batak. However, they were long kept in the dark about the "violation" due to Batak's location in the highlands of the Rhodope Mountains.
During the April Uprising on April 20, 1876, Batak was assigned an important role - to occupy the storages in the surrounding villages and provide supplies to the rebels in the nearby areas, to block important roads and thus prevent the Turkish soldiers from receiving shipments.
Part of the armed and capable men from the population of Batak, led by voivode Petar Goranov and voivode Stefan Trendafilov Kerelov - peshman rebelled against the Turkish authority. As planned, the rebels removed some of the Turkish authorities, when a 5,000 army of başibozukis was sent against them, led by Ahmed Aga Barutanliya. The leader of the uprising in Batak - Petar Goranov is a delegate of the local revolutionary committee in the assembly in Oborishte.
The forces are unmatched.
On May 1, 1876, the leaders of the village and their chieftains decided that they had to save the lives of the locals and for this reason, they called upon Barutyanliata, to hand over their weapons, with the promise that he would leave immediately after receiving the ammunition of the rebels.
Barutyanliata requested that the prominent people of the village go to his camp with the Başıbüyükas, to hand over all the weapons of the Batakans and to calm the population. In the enemy's camp, the mayor of Batak - Trendafil Toshov Kerelov was sent, along with Vranko Dimitrov Paunov, Georgi Serafin, Petar Trendafilov Kerelov, Petar Kahvedzhievski and Georgi Vulyuv.
It was understood that if they handed over their weapons to the village, the bashibozuk would leave, as all prominent people who had gone for peace were taken hostage - their weapons or their lives.
The ammunition was loaded onto horses and taken to the camp.
After the rebels surrendered their weapons, the bashibozuk attacked them and decapitated their heads. However, during the "handover" of weapons, some of the villagers managed to escape. The village was then surrounded, so no one could leave.
The bashibozuk dispersed throughout the houses and began looting. Many of the houses in the outskirts of the village were burned, and the bashibozuk fired aimlessly at anything that moved or not. People have started hiding in the buildings with stronger structures in the village, such as the church and the school, but also some of the houses of the chorbajis (rich merchants).
This marked the beginning of the slaughter, which lasted for days.
On May 2, those who were hiding in Bogdanova's house surrendered, believing the aga's promise that if they give up their weapons, they will receive mercy from his army. More than 200 men, women, children, and elderly were taken out of the house, searched for valuable items, stripped down to avoid staining their clothes with their blood, and finally killed. Women, girls, and children were massacred in houses and on the streets, while men were taken to the woodpiles, where they were beheaded with sabers. Pregnant women were ripped open and their unborn babies were stabbed with the bayonets of the bashibozuks.
“All hostages were impaled on stakes and burned alive or beheaded.
The remaining ones once again sought shelter in the church and the school. The church of “Sveti Nedelya” and the school next to it were the last hope for the locals in Batak for salvation. 200 people sought refuge in the school building, where they were burned alive.” Almost simultaneously with the destruction of the school, the bashibozuks started digging holes in the fence of the churchyard and shooting at the people gathered there.
The most horrifying part of the massacre in Batak took place on the night of May 2nd to May 3rd in the church. In the morning, a bashibozuk managed to break into the churchyard and kill the people inside, but the entrance door of the temple did not give in, as it was "locked" by the people who were inside the church.
The defense of "Sveti Nedelya" continued for three days, during which the shootouts in the village did not cease. The effort of the residents of Batak to protect their church angered the Turks, who started throwing beehives and burning straw with gas into the church. As a result, many people died due to lack of oxygen.
The church had no water, so the barricaded people used the oil from the candles and the blood of the slaughtered to quench their thirst. They dug with their bare hands to find ground water.
On the third day, the survivors decided to come out after realizing that they were doomed inside.
When they opened the doors of the church, Ahmed Agha Barutanliya was waiting outside with his soldiers. A merciless slaughter began - only those who were willing to convert to Islam were left alive, the rest were beheaded.
This scene is described by Zahari Stoyanov as follows:
"The half-dead population did not believe in the enemy's promises, which they had tried many times before, but with no other way to survive and seeing that they would also be killed in the church, they opened the door."
For the second time, wickedness had once again imagined that even a man's hat has a human heart, that even a predatory bashi-bazouk can show empathy, can be moved with pity when seeing the situation of the imprisoned, suffocated and trampled children at the door, the other terrified ones, who together with their unfortunate mothers and sisters cried and tore at the hearts of those present. This scene, as you can see, is one of the most terrifying and heart-wrenching, but a scene, we repeat, for a person with a soul and a heart, not for a bashi-bazouk.
When the latter burst through the door, holding naked daggers in their hands, all the imprisoned fell to their knees begging, the women showing their children, and in order to appease their bloodthirsty captors, they asked them to kiss the handles of their bloodied daggers, calling them sons, brothers and fathers. All in vain! убивани; The Bashibozuks calmly looked at all of this; they stepped over the bodies piled up in front of the gates like logs and started spinning their yataghans again. And so, the slaughter continued for several hours in the church yard.
At first, the victims were robbed and tortured to reveal their wealth, and then they were slaughtered, i.e. killed. Their lives were spared for a few minutes, while satisfying the plundering thirst of the robbers, many men saved their lives by lying among the slaughtered and pretending to be dead.
When the atrocities in Batak, Perushtitsa, Klisura, Panagyurishte become known to the world, a conference is convened on the situation of the people in Bulgarian lands and the responsibility for the atrocities is placed on Turkey, rather than on the lawless bashibozuk gangs.
Even Turkey's traditional allies - England and Austria-Hungary - are astonished by the cruelty of these acts.
In a letter dated August 2, 1876, from Pazardzhik, which the coal miner Petar Mateev identifies in his book "Great Benefactors of the Bulgarian People" as "the letter that sparked the Russo-Turkish War", we read:
"They told us that 3000 people were lying only in the churchyard and we could not not believe it." The spectacle was terrible, so terrible that we cannot forget it for our whole lives. There were decapitated heads among the decaying piles, smeared with heavy stones, steps no bigger than your fingers, on which the meat had dried up from the heat before it could decompose; little children's hands stretched out for help; children, killed by the horrors of the shining swords and the fiercely red eyes of the executioners, who lifted them and put them down; girls who died, crying and pleading for mercy; mothers who died, trying to protect their little ones with their weak bodies. They all lay there, piled up, rotting on a disgusting table.
They are all silent now. There are no tears, no cries, no terrifying screams, no pleas for mercy. The victims decay in the fields, and the reapers - here in the cemetery.
We looked at the church... A large number of bodies had been burned there and the charred black remains, filling the space up to half the height of the arches, made them lower and darker, laying there in an indescribable state of decomposition. I had never imagined anything so horrific.
We all moved away, shaken, barely conscious, from this cursed house, glad that we could get back on the road.
Several years later, Ivan Vazov wrote the dramatic poem: "I am from Batak, uncle. Do you know Batak?"
Plovdiv, 1881,
"I’m from Batak, uncle. Do you know Batak?"
Ha, it’s there, beyond the forests... very far away.
I have no father, no mother: I am an orphan,
and I shiver a bit, winter has already come.
You haven’t heard of Batak, but I am from there:
I remember the massacre and that terrible time.
We were nine brothers, and I was left alone.
If I told you, fear would grip your heart.
I saw them butchered, uncle, with my own eyes...
With axes they chopped them, just like that... on a block;
and I was crying, but I was also afraid.
Only big brother Penyu cried out loud...
And he died, poor Penyu... And one of the outlaws
slaughtered my grandmother under the old eaves,
and the blood flowed through our rooftop gutter...
But I was small then, and they didn’t kill me.
My father came out of the house then
with an axe in his hands and said something...
But they were too many: they fired at once,
and he fell on his back, the bullet killed him.
And my mother rushed out from somewhere—I don’t know from where—
and threw herself over father, wailing, weeping...
But they cut her down with a large knife,
that’s why, uncle, I’m now an orphan.
It was such a terrible place to be.
I don’t know why they didn’t slaughter me too:
but the barn caught fire and started to crackle,
and the cow and the ox were mooing in terror.
Then I ran away crying outside.
But later, when the horror passed—
they said that in that great fire
my uncle, grandfather, and aunt were burned.
And our church, uncle, burned to the ground,
and the school went up in flames, and two hundred girls
were turned to charcoal—someone locked them in...
And many more children and brides, too.
My sister and aunt, and other women
were tortured for two days, then killed too.
I can still hear, uncle, how they screamed!
And many children were impaled on stakes.
They destroyed everyone! How were they not cursed?
Only old Angel survived, the fool.
He collected coins in a pot for them;
but Father Trendafil they nailed with iron spikes!
And though it was terrifying, I wasn’t scared,
I trembled only, but didn’t cry again.
They took me and other children with them
and wrapped us each in torn rags.
In a Pomak village—I don’t know which—
they kept me somewhere underground.
I looked through a hole at the blue sky
and cried every day for mama, for papa.
It would've been better to die, but I wouldn’t turn Turk!
When they released us, I lived in Batak again...
After two years we welcomed the Gurkas!
Then bad times came for them too:
We slaughtered them just like they had slaughtered us;
but our village, uncle, was left desolate,
and papa and mama never rose again.
You, uncle, have never heard of Batak?
But I’m from there... it’s very far away...
I’ve been starving here for two days, for I am an orphan,
and I shiver a bit: winter has already come.
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