Roads of Serbian army-Thessaloniki, Corfu, Vido island

Zejtinlik Cemetary

In this post I will present you Zejtinlik Cemetary, Corfu and Vido island which are important for Serbian history. Thise places are also visited by Serbian tourist, pilgrims and excursions.

A few kilometres from the city centre of Thessaloniki, in the quarter called Zejtinlik (the Oil Market in Turkish), you'll find the Serbian cemetery from the WWI. 21,000 allies (the French, Italian and English), including 8,000 Serbs, were buried here. 

The cemetery was built between 1933 and 1936, according to the plans of Aleksandar Vasic and Nikolai Krasnov.

You'll be greeted by old Djordje Mihajlovic, the keeper, who will take you on a short journey into the past and show you the nearby mausoleum with a chapel.Serbian Royal Army retreated from Serbia (over Albania which caused the death of 120. 000 soldiers who were killed or died along the way) and after swift revival that same army led the way to the Breach of Thessaloniki Front (Solunski Front).

Vido is an island of the Ionian Islands group of Greece. It is a small island (less than a kilometer in diameter) at the mouth of the port of Corfu .During the First World War, the island of Corfu served as an island hospital and quarantine for sick Serbian soldiers following the epic retreat of the Serbian army and part of the civilian population through Montenegro and Albania in 1915 following the Austro-German-Bulgarian invasion of Serbia .While the main camps of the recuperating army were on Corfu itself (a contingent was sent to Bizerte as well, and many of the civilian refugees were accepted by France), the sick and near-dying, mostly soldiers, were treated on Vido to prevent epidemics. In spite of Allied material help, the conditions of both the improvised medical facilities and many of the patients on the island resulted in a high fatality rate. Due to small area of the island and its rocky soil, it soon became necessary to bury the dead in the sea (by weighting the corpses with rocks to prevent them from floating). Over 5,000 people were buried at sea near the island of Vido.The waters around Vido island are sometimes referred to as the Blue Sea Tomb , after a poem written by Milutin Bojić after World War I.

Interior of mausoleum