North Mitrovica residents: We paid a heavy price in lives for victory in World War I, the day should be commemorated

Armistice Day in the First World War is a non-working day for employees of institutions operating within the Serbian system in Kosovo, while private businesses are operating as usual. In North Mitrovica, some residents believe the holiday should be commemorated because of the enormous sacrifices made during the war, while others say there are no days off for farmers and private business owners. Some Albanians, meanwhile, say that Armistice Day should also be a non-working day within the Kosovo system.

For Marko Aleksic, today is a day off, which he says he will spend at home.

He has no doubt that the day commemorating victory in the First World War should be observed as a holiday.

“We paid for it with many lives. It is only natural that it should be commemorated,” Aleksic told Kosovo Online.

A vendor at the Mitrovica market said that there were no days off for people like him.

He could not immediately recall the exact name of the holiday, but he was spending it at work nonetheless.

“We work. There are no days off for us. For a farmer, for someone who works the land, there can be no day off,” he said.

Abedin Osmani, an Albanian whom the Kosovo Online team encountered while he was walking through North Mitrovica, believes that the whole of Europe should celebrate the holiday, including both Serbs and Albanians.

“The whole of Europe was at war, so this is a holiday for everyone. We defeated fascism. We were together with the Serbs and with other nations in Europe, and thank God we won, but afterwards we began destroying things ourselves. We already have so many non-working days in Kosovo that it would be good for this one to be included as well, because we observe every European holiday. That is why I think this should also be a non-working day,” Osmani said.

Armistice Day, November 11, is commemorated in remembrance of the end of the First World War, the most devastating conflict the world had witnessed up to that time and one in which Serbia suffered particularly heavy losses.

The consequences were tragic in proportion to the country’s size and population—Serbia lost 28 percent of its population in the war.