Vancho Pitosheski

He was only 22 years old. He was in the prime of his youth. Exuberant, energetic, full of enthusiasm, fulfilling, always approachable. Unable to suffer injustice and taught by the hard life he had passed through his youth, he lived with the ideal that only in freedom can you build a better future and live a better life. Carried away by that idea, one August day in 1944, he joined the ranks of the Ohrid-Struka Brigade.

But not for long. In a direct fight with the German occupier on the approaches to Struga, he was mortally wounded in a dark, fateful night, between October 18 and 19, 1944. The Macedonian land was soaked with the blood of another young life, in the plethora of fighters who died on the defense of the motherland. Vancho's life ended when he should have lived..

Vancho was the second child of the middle-class family of Mihajlo and Anastasia (known as Tasha) in the Ohrid neighborhood Gorna Vlaska Maala. Tihomir was born before him, and after him three more brothers: Nikola, Pero and Alexander. With the modest railway salary, the Pitoshevci family of seven could barely make ends meet, so the children, from their early years, they were engaged in securing their own livelihood. So did Wancho, after finishing the fourth grade, without the possibility of further education, he was hired to learn the hospitality trade at Radić's hotel, near the town square.

His childhood passed unnoticed among the restaurant tables, the kitchen and the many guests who visited the hotel. Vancho, with undisguised enthusiasm, approached the study of the cooking trade and quickly became a master. of culinary skills. The circumstances under which he worked gave him the opportunity to contact various profiles of intelligence, so that, from early youth, he was imbued with revolutionary ideas and became a faithful activist of the Skov organization.

The fateful October night tightened even more, as if it wanted to protect the dead body of young Vancho Pitošeski. Under the cover of night, his dead body was already buried in the cemetery near the village of Orovnik. His mother was the first to learn the news of her son's tragic fate. He came to make sure of the fatal news, and then put on the black scarf, to mourn his child for the rest of his life. But still, she remained proud because he is also one of those who sacrificed themselves on the altar of freedom.

In his honor, after the end of the war, all catering establishments in Ohrid bore his name. Even today, with reverence for this former catering worker, the Municipal Secondary Catering-Tourist School in Ohrid bears his name, as well as another street in the city.

In this way, Vancho lives in our memories