MACEDONIAN REVOLUTIONARY ALEXANDER TURUNDZEV

Alexander Turundzev was a Macedonian revolutionary in the period when Macedonia was under Ottoman rule (about 5 centuries). He was born in 1872 in the village of Ekshi Su (Gorno Vrbeni), Lerin, Aegian Macedonia.
My grandfather was born in the same village and our families were in godfather connections, that is why I always feel tremble when the name of Turundzev is mentioned.

In the ranks of TMORO he got involved very young, first as a member and then as a duke. Alexander participated in the Ilinden Uprising and together with the company of Mikhail Chekov and Georgi Pop Hristov attacked the barracks in Ekshi Su, where 200 villagers from Ekshi Su rose up. After the uprising he took part in the renewal of the revolutionary network in his region and entered the new headquarters of the Lerin higher management. By the end of 1904, in the village of Aytos, Lerin, he was handed over by the spy Mitre Ginkov for 150 golden coins. He was captured and taken to the Bitola investigative prison. There he was subjected to great torture and held for a year. The Turkish court in Bitola sentenced him to death on August 29, 1905, and the sentence was executed with public hanging in Bitola's At Pazar on August 30, 1905.

Alexander Turundzev's hanging

Turundzev was first exposed in the square in Bitola with shackles on his hands and feet. The procession started from the Clock Tower, near the Bezisten, the Dragor River, and all the way to At-Pazar. More than 3000 people from Bitola joined the procession. The bewildered priest before the execution asked him "What are your last words?" Then Alexander stepped on some kind of basket, grabbed the rope, raised his eyes to the sky and shouted "MACEDONIA WILL BE FREE!" After the shout, he put the rope around his own neck and hanged himself.

The tomb of Alexander Turundzev in Bitola