Untypically for the time, she was fluent three foreign languages, German, French and Italian. She had to abruptly stop her secondary education because the Bulgarian fascist secret police discovered her clandestine activities in and around Kumanovo, so Vera Kotorka quickly left the town and joined the partisan guerilla fighters in the mountains. In the last liberation battles in 1944 she tragically lost her life. She is remembered as one of the partisan heroes of Kumanovo. My great-grandmother, Danica, provided logistics for the clandestine activities of her first cousin Vera Kotorka, assisting with food, clothes, shelter and delivering messages to the secret resistance cells in occupied Kumanovo.

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Global History

• Macedonian Partisans (1941-1944) – Anti-fascist resistance in Macedonia, led by the Macedonian communists, but also comprised of all the freedom loving patriots from all the political currents. They led the military struggle against the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupiers, and their domestic quislings, as well as the political struggle for the establishment of the new Macedonian state. In 1944, during the first Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), Macedonian Partisans proclaimed the new Macedonian Republic, inspired by short lived Kruševo Republic. Contemporary Macedonia is the continuation of the ASNOM Macedonia.