15.12.2016.
The remains of Dimitrije Tucovic transferred to the Alley of the Greats
In the highest state and military honours the remains of Dimitrije Tucovic have been transferred today to the Alley of the Greats at the New Cemetery and laid in the tomb with the sound of “Tamo daleko“ song.
The high state and military delegations paid tribute, laid wreaths, and the soldiers fired the honorary salvo. Dimitrije Tucovic now lies at the plot 777 among the greatest Serbian giants – next to Petar Kocic, Serdar Janko Vukotic, next to Kaimaktsalan winner, General Milos Vasic.
Minister for Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs Aleksandar Vulin said that someone deserves a place in the Alley of the Greats with his/her life, someone with his/her death, and Dimitrije Tucovic deserved his place both with life and death.
“Brilliant, brave, his home and nation proud of him, he managed to leave behind himself the trace too deep, which we can follow for a long time”, Vulin said, leading the state ceremony on transfer of the remains of Dimitrije Tucovic.
According to Vulin, Tucovic was ahead of his time, ahead of all times, and 102 years have passed since his death and that time is not enough for “Serbia to stop dreaming about being united and safe, to reconcile her sons and the dead and alive ones, 102 years are not enough for Serbia to stop hoping to gather and collect all forgotten bones, each name, to remember the one who has been forgotten by history.”
"Serbia is tired of discord, wandering, trying at all costs to please the ones who do not want to be pleasant to her, of copying other people's law, of the acceptance of life of someone else, tired of the great allies, who are with her only when her youth should feed guns and clear minefields, and when the time of peace comes, then they turn their heads and start to make agreements about sharing water, air”, Vulin said.
Minister said that Serbia is tired of distant world storms, which it neither understands nor it can accept as its own, from constantly repenting the sins of others and apologizing for other people's injustice, tired of being left something else, tired of wish to appeal to those who do not like it.
“She is tired of wandering, discord, and therefore at uncertain and difficult times Serbia does what her ancestors taught her, goes back to herself, the only safe place, where there is no betrayal, crime. She goes back to herself, to the foundations of the existence, the statehood, the foundations of her values. Go back Dimitrije Tucovic to your own, too”, Vulin said.
The City Manager Goran Vesic pointed out that, on this day, 102 years ago, the great victory of the Serbian army marked the end of the battle of Kolubara and in that great victory Lieutenant Dimitrije Tucovic gave his life as someone who believed, though against war, that his obligation was to defend his homeland.
“It passed 102 years since Dimitrije Tucovic has been buried in the Alley of the Greats, among the greatest Serbian giants, where he belongs. These 102 years and the wandering of Dimitrije Tucovic, that is our wandering, best show how the condition of our society and our country looked like. We needed so much time to pay decent tribute to Dimitrije Tucovic for what he did for our country and our society”, Vesic said.
For these 102 years, the City Manager says, his city of Belgrade was destroyed four times, and that fact also talks about what we have undergone as the society.
“The remains of Dimitrije Tucovic are now buried among the greatest Serbian giants, next to Petar Kocic, Serdar Janko Vukotic, next to General Milos Vasic, the winner from Kaimaktsalan. His place is there”, Vesic said.
The President of the Association of Uzice citizens in Belgrade and a descendant of Dimitrije Tucovic, Milos Tucovic, said that his ancestor went a hard and long way to the Alley of the Greats in order to correct injustice and put him in the place he deserves.
“Our lieutenant Dimitrije Tucovic, the commander of the 1st Platoon of the 1st Company of the 4th Battalion of the 1st Regiment of Prince Milos the Great Morava Division, his history is only in one part six volumes long. Starting from the corners 239 on the Vrace Hill in 1914, the village Susnjar in 1914, the military cemetery in Lazarevac in 1915, the crypt of St. Demetrius Church in 1938, Slavija Square in 1949 and finally the Alley of the Greats in 2016”, Tucovic said.
The organizer of the state ceremony of transfer of the remains of Dimitrije Tucovic is the Committee for preserving traditions of Serbian liberation wars in cooperation with the city of Belgrade and the Association of Uzice citizens in Belgrade.
Dimitrije Tucovic was born in the village of Gostilje on 13th May 1881, and he died on 20th November 1914 as the commander of Morava Division in the fight against Austro-Hungarian army in the Battle of Kolubara in World War I in the western part of the Vrace Hill in the area of the village Celije on the right bank of the Kolubara river in the vicinity of Lajkovac.
