Families typically mark the occasion by gathering with loved ones and sharing symbolic items, including ceremonial bread (slavski kolač), boiled wheat (koljivo), red wine and a lit wax candle. Folk traditions also associate Saint Luke with the protection of livestock, and in some rural Serbian communities, people traditionally avoid strenuous agricultural work on his feast day to safeguard their animals.
I have always written poetry myself, which has made me an avid reader of and supporter of other poets’ work. This week, I felt I could not go without reading Krvava Bajka (A Bloody Fairy Tale) by Desanka Maksimović. The poem commemorates the October 21, 1941, massacre at Šumarice Memorial Park, also known as October Memorial Park. Although brief, it powerfully captures the anguish of young students whose bright futures were cut short in a sudden, horrific wave of violence.
The massacre was part of a brutal campaign of collective punishment following attacks on German troops in the nearby Gornji Milanovac area earlier that month. Resistance fighters from the communist Partisans and nationalist Chetniks had killed 10 German soldiers and wounded another 26. In retaliation, German commander General Franz Böhme enforced Hitler’s order to execute 100 civilians for every German soldier killed and 50 for each one wounded. Maksimović’s poem gives a lasting voice to the victims, and for me, reading it was a small, but meaningful, way to help ensure that the lives stolen in Kragujevac are remembered long after their deaths.
