There are dates Macedonia does not forget, and June 16 is one of them. On this day, 83 years ago, the Vatasha massacre took place - a Second World War crime in which young people from the Kavadarci-area village of Vatasha were shot. Twelve young lives were extinguished, and the memory of them is to this day deeply embedded in the collective consciousness.

The event happened in 1943, during the fascist occupation, when the resistance of the Macedonian people was punished with a bullet. The site of the execution, the Moklište locality near Kavadarci, has for decades been a place of homage - flowers are laid there every year, and it serves as a reminder of the price the generations before us paid.

Marking anniversaries like this isn't just a ceremony. It's a reminder that the freedom we speak of so easily today was never free. The twelve young people from Vatasha had no choice to grow old - and that is exactly why their story is worth telling, not as a dusty page from a textbook, but as a living warning. Because a people that forgets its past most easily lets history repeat itself.