Church-charnel house St. Nedelya in Batak

The church-charnel house St. Nedelya in Batak (West Rhodope Mountain) is a national historical monument of culture. It was built in 1813 by the local people for only 75 days. The priests never officiated in Greek language, but in Church-Slavonic and the sermons were read in Bulgarian. During the April Uprising in 1876 father Petar and father Neicho were priests here. They both were brutally killed. When the mass slaughter began, the Ottomans spared the lives only of those who adopted their faith. Father Petar was already killed when the turn of father Neicho came. He had a son and seven daughters. The tormentors put him in tortures that he bore with stoicism. Then the Ottomans beheaded all his seven daughters in front of his eyes but he still refused to adopt their faith. Finally, when he was already dead – they beheaded him, and threw his head near his daughters’ ones for edification of the other wretched people. The village was burned down. Only the stone church, soaked with blood and full of bodies, stayed to remind of the brutalities and the martyr’s death of Batak-citizens in the name of Christianity. Today the church is a museum where the bones of the killed Bulgarians are kept.