24.10.2012.

Exhibition on the occasion of the centenary of the Battle of Kumanovo opens at Military Museum

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic opened a representative exhibition "100 years from the Battle of Kumanovo – Serbia in the Balkan Wars 1912-1913” in the Gallery at Kalemegdan Military Museum in the presence of State Secretaries of the Ministry of Defence Zoran Nikolic and Aleksandar Djordjevic, Chief of General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Ljubisa Dikovic, representatives of the Ministry of Defence, the Serbian Armed Forces, embassies and foreign military attaches.

Authors of the exhibition, which includes 102 photos and 52 items from the time of the battle that represents the first major and most important victory of the Serbian Army in the historic mission of liberation of Serbia from Ottoman rule, are curator Lieutenant Dejan Milivojevic and curators Vuk Obradovic and Natasa Tomic.

Opening the exhibition, Prime Minister Dacic said that the Kumanovo battle was not only the beginning of the First Balkan War, but also the final stage of the Serbian revolution, 114 years long.

"This battle commenced coronation of grandiose liberation efforts of the Serbian people who invested in it everything they had. This battle, at the very beginning, virtually decided the outcome of the war, and perhaps it is still not clear, but they all knew at that time, starting from the heir of the throne to the last row in the Serbian Army, that the battle of Kumanovo was in the immediate connection with the Kosovo battle of 1389", the Prime Minister said, adding that this "archetypal battle over all battles" was symbolically completed eighty kilometres southeast of Kosovo Polje and 523 years later.

Dacic said that the victory of Kumanovo wrote one of the most celebrated and the most moving pages in the Serbian history, being a brilliantly executed military operation.

"It must be said that the victory was won by Serbian soldier, properly prepared and motivated to fight for freedom. Only 726 Serbian soldiers and officers and several thousand wounded remained at the battlefield", said the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia and underlined that this exhibition is just devoted to them, the heroes of Kumanovo and all the heroes of the Balkan Wars, and all the heroes in the battles for liberation, whom we will never forget.

The Prime Minister added that these wars are the example how the Balkan states had a common goal and that they jointly participated in them, and recalled that the Balkan wars had the greatest support of the people in the history of the Serbian state.

"It was a consensus among the people that it was high time to finally end the Turkish occupation, and Belgrade at the time was adorned with slogans – for Kosovo, Kumanovo," Ivica Dacic finished.

Sponsor of the exhibition "100 years from the Battle of Kumanovo – Serbia in the Balkan Wars 1912-1913" is the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Affairs, in cooperation with the Belgrade Military Museum and Foundation and the National Library of Serbia.