Reveals the January 1945 “Macedonian Bloody Christmas,” when hundreds of Macedonian Bulgarians were executed under the forcibly imposed new authority in Skopje.

Mass graves for the murdered, monuments for their killers. This is not Belarus, nor some distant African dictatorship.
Here in the Balkans, freedom has always carried a heavy price — and Macedonia has borne the highest cost.

That story is at the heart of the BGNES documentary “Dictate: The Killings of the Serbian Regime in Macedonia.”

At the end of 1944, the newly imposed authorities in Skopje branded their own people as the enemy, issuing a chilling command: “Kill the enemy!” What followed was the January 1945 terror, remembered as the “Macedonian Bloody Christmas,” when hundreds were executed. First came the elimination of those deemed inconvenient, then the imposition of a perverse creed: Love the oppressor, despise your forefathers.

“These people were never tried in court. They were executed in the most horrific way simply because someone at the time decided it should be so. For seventy years we have been living under a myth,” says Professor Georgi Trendafilov of Veles in the film.