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Vlado
CHERNOZEMSKI
Birth name:
Velichko Dimitrov Kerin
Classification: Murderer - Assassin
Characteristics: Regicide -
Bulgarian revolutionary
Number of victims: 4
Date of murder: 1924 / 1930 / 1934
Date of birth: October 19, 1897
Victim profile: Dimo
Hadjidimov (leader of Bulgarian Communist Party) / A member of the left wing of IMRO
(Internal Macedonian
Revolutionary Organization) / King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, and
his chauffeur
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: Bulgaria
/ France
Status:
Sentenced to death in 1928, but was granted an amnesty
in 1932. Cut down by the sword of a mounted French policeman, and then
beaten to death by the crowd on October 9, 1934
Vlado Chernozemski (19 October 1897 – 9
October 1934), born Velichko Dimitrov Kerin (Bulgarian:
Величко Димитров Керин), was a
Bulgarian revolutionary.
He was born in the village of Kamenitsa (now part
of Velingrad, Bulgaria). He joined the Internal Macedonian
Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in 1922. After killing Dimo
Hadjidimov, leader of Bulgarian Communist Party in 1924 he was
sentenced to death in 1928, but was granted an amnesty in 1932. He
also murdered another member of the left wing of IMRO in 1930 on the
order of Ivan Mihaylov. He had cooperated with the Croatian movement
Ustaše.
Chernozemski also entered the region of Vardar
Macedonia with IMRO bands and participated in more than 15 battles
with the Serbian police.
In 1927, Chernozemski proposed to the Central
Committee of the IMRO to enter and detonate the main conference
building of the League of Nations in Paris, with grenades attached to
his person, in order to attract the attention of the world publicity
over the question of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, but his proposal was
not accepted.
He was one of the finest marksmen in the IMRO. He
assassinated Alexander I of Yugoslavia in the port of Marseille,
France on 9 October 1934, and was himself killed immediately
afterwards, 10 days before his 37th birthday. He was also thought to
have shot and killed French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou until 1974,
when it was revealed that the bullet actually came from a French
policeman reacting to the shooting of King Alexander.
Assassination of Alexander I of Yugolasvia
As a result of the previous deaths of three family
members on a Tuesday, Alexander refused to undertake any public
functions on that day of the week. On Tuesday 9 October 1934, however,
he had no choice, as he was arriving in
Marseilles to start a
state visit to the Third
French Republic, to strengthen the two countries' alliance in the
Little Entente. While Alexander was being driven in a car through
the streets along with French
Foreign Minister
Louis Barthou, a gunman,
Vlado Chernozemski, stepped from the street and shot the King and
the chauffeur. Barthou was accidentally shot by a French policeman and
died later.
It was one of the first
assassinations captured on film; the shooting occurred straight in
front of the cameraman, who was only feet away at the time. The
cameraman captured not merely the assassination but the immediate
aftermath; the body of the chauffeur (who had been killed instantly)
became jammed against the brakes of the car, allowing the cameraman to
continue filming from within inches of the King for a number of
minutes afterwards.
The assassin,
Vlado Chernozemski, was a Bulgarian, member of the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) Macedonian:
Внатрешна македонска револуционерна организација (BMRO) and an
experienced marksman. Immediately after assassinating King Alexander,
he was cut down by the sword of a mounted French policeman, and then
beaten by the crowd. By the time he was removed from the scene, he was
already dead. The IMRO was a political organization that fought for
secession of
Vardar Macedonia from Yugoslavia. The leader of the organization
in that time was
Ivan Mihailov.
According to the UKTV History program Infamous
Assassinations-King Alexander, IMRO worked in alliance with the Croatian Ustaše
group led by
Ante Pavelić, under the secret sponsorship of Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini.
The film record of Alexander I's assassination
remains one of the most notable pieces of newsreel in existence,
alongside the film of Tsar
Nicholas II of Russia's
coronation, the funerals of Queen
Victoria of the United Kingdom and Emperor
Franz Josef of Austria, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
King Alexander I was buried in the Memorial Church
of St. George, which had been built by his father. The Holy
See gave special permission to bishops
Aloysius Stepinac,
Antun Akšamović, Dionisije Njaradi and
Gregorij Rožman to attend the funeral in an Orthodox church.
As his son
Peter II was still a minor, Alexander's first cousin Prince
Pavle Karadjordjevic took the regency of the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia.
This assassination has been fictionalized at the
beginning of The Second Assassin, by Christopher Hyde, as being a
Nazi-backed Ustasa plot. In the book, it was a Croatian assassin, plus
the titular second gunman.
