The Bloody Christmas (Bulgarian: Кървава Коледа, Karvava Koleda) or the Bloody Bozhik (Кървав Божик, Karvav Bozhik) was a campaign in which 1,200 people with openly-proclaimed Bulgarian national self-consciousness were killed by the Yugoslav communist authorities in the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia between January 7–9, 1945.[1][2]
Acting on the order of Josip Broz Tito, 1,200 Bulgarians were executed according to specially-prepared lists by Lazar Koliševski. The idea was to weaken the Bulgarian intelligentsia in Macedonia, to eradicate the Bulgarian self-consciousness of the population in Vardar Macedonia and to speed-up the process of Macedonisation. During the terror of 1945, on the road between the lake Ohrid and lake Prespa, on the hills of the Galichica Mountain near the village of Teševo and other villages, 23,000 more Bulgarians were executed. Most of the bodies were disposed of in the Prespa lake. Nearly all inhabited places in Vardar Macedonia provided victims for the campaign. As a result of the purge, 130,000 Bulgarians were deported, displaced, persecuted or sent to concentration camps of the Former Yugoslavia. In Bulgaria, the campaign is referred to as the "Bulgarian Katyn".