Risto Stefov - Articles, Translations & Collaborations

[George S.]

Bulgaria makes priests policemen who struggle with Macedonian Orthodox Church

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n265881

09 December 2011 | 10:00 | FOCUS News Agency

http://www.bulgariasega.com/usa_canada_bulgari/12614.html

Skopje. The Bulgarian church was full of informers, comments the Macedonian television station Alfa.

Emigrants’ newspaper Bulgaria Today published an article by Georgi Hristov, the author of the book “The Church in America,” who claims that the Bulgarian secret police recruited priests in order to prevent the Macedonian Orthodox Church from expanding.

“In the 1970s when finding out that the Communist ideology was collapsing, the State Security carried out a large-scale operation and recruited priests from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in order to cheer up the Bulgarian character and oppose Macedonians’ strong desire to go to Macedonian and not Bulgarian churches. According to Hristov an agent nicknamed Boyko occupied the top place in the hierarchy and he is believed to have been a metropolitan bishop from the American eparchy. He was complaining of the growing influence of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, because it enjoyed the support of the Yugoslav diplomacy, which is bigger than the Bulgarian one. Bulgarian Deputy Interior Minister Lyubomir Popov sent them a message from Sofia that the solution should be sought through sparking conflicts,” the television says.

“When you come across Skopje, slap it.” This is the solution to the problem with the Macedonian Orthodox Church, say the Bulgarian authorities.

That’s why the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had to make a list of priests who had to be trained to complete the task – to terminate the strong influence of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. According to the State Security papers, neither money, nor energy had to be saved, Alfa says.

[George S.]

Почина Ѓорѓи Доневски, предводникот на Егејците


Скопје, 6. декември 2011

Во Скопје синоќа почина Ѓорѓи Доневски, претседател на Здруженијата на децата - бегалци од Егејска Македонија „Незаборав“.



Роден во 1935-та во селото Бапчор во Егејска Македонија, Доневски на 13-годишна возраст е „евакуиран“ односно присилно одделен и одроден од семејството и местото на раѓање за да го продолжи животот во Бела Црква, каде што беше сместен еден од бегалските домови за децата бегалци од Егејска Македонија.


Јавноста, во изминатиот половина век ќе го препознава како неуморен борец за правата на Македонците од Егејска Македонија, по монографиите кои ги напиша, придонесот во публицистиката, стотиците интервјуа и весникот „Незаборав“ на чие чело беше.


Доневски е иницијатор и основач на ФК Индустријалец во раните 60-ти, подоцнежен МИК. Негови дела се и стадионот на ФК Маџари „Борис Трајковски“, како и спортската сала во Автокоманда. Во 70-те го основа КУД „Гоце Делчев“, иницијатор е на еден Фестивал, а во 80-те беше секретар на Туристичкиот сојуз на Скопје.


Доневски, како што истакнуваат неговите соработници во клубот „Незаборав“ каде што ги мина последните денови од животот, замина токму на денот кога Македонија доби правна сатисфакција во процесот кој меѓународно ја верифицираше вистината за Македонија и за Македонците, на која тој и се посвети.


Ѓорѓи Доневски ќе биде погребан на градските гробишта Бутел, утре во 11:30 часот

[George S.]

Rest in peace Georgi Donevski (1935-2011)......

Georgi Donevski was born in 1935 in the village Bapchor, Kostursko located about twenty-nine kilometers from Mount Vicho in Aegean Macedonia. Georgi was only twelve years old in 1948, at the height of the Greek Civil War, when he along with two-hundred and seventy other children from Bapchor were uprooted from their homes and sent away to foreign lands. Georgi left late in April, 1948 with the last of fourteen groups that left Bapchor.

The children left their homes during the height of aerial bombardments and traveled in the night, through rough mountainous terrain across the Greek-Yugoslav border past Prespa into Yugoslavia.

The second international refugee meeting took place in 1998, ten years after the first. The third meeting took place in 2003. Georgi hopes that from now on they will organize annual events and picnics to be held inside Greece in such places as Mounts Gramos, Vicho and Malimadi as well as in the Macedonian cities of Voden, Drama, Kostur, Lerin and every other place where refugee children come from.

With tears in their eyes and hopes of a quick return, many Macedonian villages were emptied of their children, sent to various Eastern Block countries. Unfortunately their wishes to return, even after fifty-seven years, have yet to be fulfilled.

While many children were sent to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, etc., Georgi was sent to Zagreb, Croatia. He was first sent to Tsrkvenitsa and later to Samogor. In 1952 he left Samogor for Skopje, where he lives to this day.

Georgi has been active all his life working for the Macedonian cause. He spent nearly four decades in various socio-political functions. He was active in the Skopje folk song and dance ensemble "Gotse Delchev" and in the "Bapchorki" group of singers. He was also an organizer of the cultural and historic international event "Pesna za Gotse".

As Secretary General of the Association of Refugee Children from the Aegean part of Macedonia, Georgi was instrumental in organizing various international meetings and gatherings for refugee children. The first meeting, which took place in 1988, was a wake up call for the Greek authorities who up to this point had completely ignored the rights of Macedonians, especially the rights of the refugee children who were all born in Greece. As Georgi puts it, "Where else but in Greece is a twelve year old child held accountable for the crimes of his parents?" Georgi's parents fought on the Partisan side during the Greek Civil War, which was considered a crime against the Greek State. Even though these crimes were pardoned for the Greek Partisans (Greek by genus) in 1985 (legal act 1540/85) they have yet to be pardoned for the Macedonians. Greece still has antiquated but active laws that discriminate against the Macedonians.

[George S.]

Почина Гоце Арнаудов

среда, 07 декември 2011,


Познатиот македонски пејач на народна музика Гоце Арнаудов почина синоќа на 52-годишна возраст.

Арнаудов е роден во Струмица на 19 август 1959 година. На десетгодишна возраст почнува да свири гитара и да пее во групата на неговиот татко. По завршувањето на средното образование ја формира групата „Крик“, со која се претставувале низ цела поранешна Југославија. Во Македонија се враќа во 1993 година, а во 1994 година на Фолк фест - Валандово ги освојува сите награди со песната „Дали чекаш стара мајко“.

Пет години е прогласуван за најпопуларна личност на Македонија, а учествата на Фолк-фест Валандово му донеле 22 награди. Неколку пати ја добива наградата за интерпретација на најголемиот пејач „Никола Бадев“ на фестивалот „Гоце Фест“. Редовно учествува на турнеи во Европа, Канада, Америка и Австралија. Ќе остане запаметен по песните „Ех да беше стрела песната", "Дали чекаш стара мајчице", "Ќе пијам ќе лумпувам", "Свири мајсторе", "Полни бре меанџијо"...

Арнаудов ќе биде погребан утре на гробиштата во Струмица.


Rest in peace Gotse Arnaudov

[George S.]

Choices



Greece Refuses



1. Greece refuses to recognize the illegally occupied Macedonian territories, occupied in 1912 without the Macedonian people’s consent. Macedonians were led to believe that Greece entered the 1912 conflict to liberate them from the Ottoman yoke but through deception and intrigues Greece forcibly occupied Macedonia with its partners, Serbia and Bulgaria.


2. Greece refuses to recognize that it (Greece), Serbia and Bulgaria under the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest partitioned Macedonia in three parts without the Macedonian people’s consent. These states in 1913 occupied and partitioned Macedonian lands creating artificial borders that are dividing families. What Greece calls liberation, the Macedonian people call occupation. Having one exiled from his or her ancestral home, his or her lands confiscated, names changed, forced to speak a foreign language, publicly humiliated by being forced to denounce one’s own identity and forced to publicly pledge allegiance to a tyrannical occupier, is no liberation but subjugation.


3. Greece refuses to accept the fact that its army committed atrocities and genocide against the Macedonian people during the Balkan Wars of 1912, 1913.


4. Greece refuses to repatriate the thousands of Macedonians who it forcibly exiled after 1913 simply because they were affiliated with the Bulgarian and Serbian Churches. Greece exiled tens of thousands of Macedonians and confiscated their homes and properties because they, during the last years of the Ottoman occupation, attended liturgy in the Bulgarian and Serbian churches, not in the Greek Church.



5. Greece refuses to allow the return of thousands of Macedonians who it expelled to Turkey during the 1920s and had their homes and properties confiscated simply because they were Muslims.


6. Greece refuses to provide compensation to those Macedonians who’s lands and homes it confiscated in the 1920s to accommodate the imported Christian colonists from Asia Minor and other places. During the 1920s Greece imported 1.1 million colonists from Turkey and settled most in Macedonia.


7. Greece refuses to reverse the imposed name changes the Greek state forced on the Macedonians. During the 1920s Greece introduced assimilation policies in Macedonia to Hellenize every person by changing their first and last names so that they sound Greek. Greece did this without consent from those whose names it changed.


8. Greece refuses to reverse the imposed toponym changes it forced on the Macedonian people during and after the 1920s to Hellenize the region. Greece changed all Macedonian toponyms including cities, towns, villages, lakes, rivers, mountains, etc. from Macedonian to Greek without the Macedonian people’s consent.


9. Greece refuses to reverse the illegal abolition of the Macedonian language. During the 1930s, it introduced anti-Macedonian laws banning the Macedonian language and ordering the destruction of every Macedonian inscription found on buildings, monuments, gravestones and religious icons that contained Macedonian writing. People, even those who spoke no other language, were fined and forced to drink castor oil when caught speaking Macedonian. The Macedonian language is illegal in Greece today.



10. Greece refuses to abolish anti-Macedonian laws and discriminatory practices against Macedonians. Greece over the years has punished Macedonians by public humiliation, beatings, imprisonment and murder for having Macedonian sentiments.


11. Greece refuses to repatriate and return the properties and citizenships to those Macedonians expelled from Greece without a trial for being suspected of aiding the losing side in the Greek Civil War. Greece murdered and expelled tens of thousands of Macedonians and confiscated their properties and citizenship simply because they were suspected of aiding the losing side.


12. Greece refuses to repatriate the 28,000 then children (2-14 years-old) it expelled in 1948 whose citizenship and ancestral properties it confiscated.


13. Greece refuses to scrap the 1982 anti-Macedonian discriminatory law which by birth allows Greeks to return to Greece but excludes Macedonians, even though these Macedonians were born in Greece and in fact are Greek citizens.


14. Greece refuses to end systemic discrimination against the Macedonian people which is ingrained in the Greek government, church, media, schools and other institutions.


15. Greece refuses to recognize the Macedonian population living in Greece today even though it is required to do so in accordance with international agreements to which Greece is signatory.

[George S.]

Free Advice



Macedonia – The Name is an Old Game



“The game” around the name Macedonia is an old game that has nothing to do with the current situation between Macedonia and Greece!



What?



When the States of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia were created by the European Great Powers, as their spheres of influence, why did they not create a Macedonian State? There were far more Uprisings in Macedonia than there ever were in the neighbouring countries. So why then did the “Great Powers” leave Macedonia to continue to be occupied by the Ottomans, even though it was located in the centre of the Balkans and had great strategic significance?



The Ottomans left and instead of giving Macedonia freedom and allowing it to become a state, the “Great Powers” partitioned it and allowed their pawn-states, created on Macedonian territory, to carry out unprecedented genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Macedonian people.



Why?



They were afraid of the name. If the name was restored then all invented “theories” by Western historians would have to be demolished, especially the German and Italians, who with all their might and with all kinds of falsifications, tried to convince the world that European Civilization began with the Roman Empire and that European Culture came from the “Greeks” (an invented name).



But the truth has survived and still lives on in the collective memories of the Macedonian people, even in those who today live in the southern part of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The truth has survived and lives on in the books in the Vatican where the protectors of the Roman Empire have hidden them in their basements. The truth lives on in the Macedonian language which is spoken all the way to Russia. If the “Greeks” were that great then how many million people speak the “Greek” language? On the other hand, “one cannot even weigh” the stupidity of the Slavists who claim that the “Slavs” , in only 200 years, destroyed the Macedonian language, but the powerful Ottoman Empire, which ruled for over 500 years, could not change it.



Macedonian academics and historians, where are you?

[George S.]

History



Examples of Human Rights Abuses in Greece

1913 to 1993


In view of the International Court of Justice ruling against Greece in December 2011 for blocking Macedonia’s bid to join NATO in 2008, I believe it important to have the following items publicized along with the question: “When will Greece be found guilty of all the other crimes it has committed against the Macedonian people?”



In 1913 following its victory in the First and Second Balkan Wars, Greece officially annexed 51 per cent of Macedonian territories. This was against the desire of the Macedonian population which fought for an independent and autonomous Macedonia.

In 1916 author John Reed in his book “The War in Eastern Europe” wrote about the aftermath of the First Balkan War and how the Greeks and Serbians tried to legitimize their takeover of the territory while trying to wipe all Macedonian influence.

He wrote “A thousand Greek and Serbian publicists began to fill the world with their shouting about the essentially Greek or Serbian character of the populations of their different spheres. The Serbs gave the unhappy Macedonians twenty four hours to renounce their nationality and proclaim themselves Serbs, and the Greeks did the same. Refusal meant murder or expulsion. Greek and Serbian colonists were poured into the occupied country...The Greek newspapers began to talk about a Macedonia peopled entirely with Greeks - and they explained the fact that no one spoke Greek by calling the people "Bulgarophone" Greeks...the Greek army entered villages where no one spoke their language. "What do you mean by speaking Bulgarian?" cried the officers. "This is Greece and you must speak Greek".”

The Carnegie Commission Report on the Balkan Wars indicated that 161 villages were burned down and more than 16,000 houses were destroyed in the Greek occupied part of Macedonia.

On August 10th, 1920 at Serves, Paris, Britain, France, Italy and Japan concluded an agreement with Greece on the protection of non Greek people. Greece pledged full protection for the Macedonians living in Greece, their language and culture and the opening of Macedonian schools.

In Section 2 of the agreement Greece pledged to extend full care over the life and freedom of all citizens irrespective of their origin, nationality, language or faith.

Clause 7 reads: "All Greek citizens will avail themselves of the same civic and political rights irrespective of nationality, language and faith... and to legally guarantee the freedom of use by each citizen of any language in personal, trade and religious contacts, in print and publications or meetings..."

Clause 8 states: "Greek citizens belonging to national, religious or language minorities will be treated on par with native Greeks."

Clause 9 reads: As regards education, the Greek government will create appropriate facilitations and will safeguard the possibility of learning one's own language in schools of towns and areas inhabited by citizens speaking a language different than Greek."

On September 4, 1925, the office of High Commissioner for National Minorities was established in Solun, northern Greece (Greek occupied Macedonia), for the observance of international agreements concerning national minorities.

However, none of these assurances were put into practice. Instead the Greek government adopted a policy of denationalization and assimilation while simultaneously denying the existence of Macedonians in Greece.

In 1925 the ABECEDAR, a primer in the Macedonian language was published in Athens. This was an elementary book for teaching the Macedonian language and was written in the Latin alphabet. It was designed for Macedonian children. However, it was never distributed to them. After the departure of representatives of the League of Nations, the booklets were destroyed.

This booklet was republished in Perth in 1993 by the Macedonian Information Centre to prove the booklet's existence and the fact that Greece was once accountable to the world for its Macedonian people living in Greece.

In the 1920s Macedonian schools were closed, not opened. Kindergartens were established in Macedonian localities so children could be inculcated in a Greek spirit and to limit the influence of parents. This was despite a November 11, 1930 press conference in Athens at which prime minister Elefterios Venizelos said, "The problem of a Macedonian national minority will be solved and I will be the first one to commit myself to the opening of Macedonian schools if the nation so wishes."

On March 30, 1927 the Greek newspaper Rizospastis wrote that 500,000 Macedonians were resettled in Bulgaria.

On the basis of a Greek thesis: "the faith determines the nation", hundreds of thousands of Turks and Macedonians of Muslim faith were resettled in Asia Minor. They were replaced by 638,253 Christian Turk colonists brought in from Asia Minor.

November 1926: a legal Act was issued to change Macedonian geographic names into the Greek version. The news of the Act was published in the Greek government daily “Efimeris tis Kiverniseos” No. 322 of November 21, 1926. The same newspaper in its No. 346 published the new, official, Greek names. The names of the people were changed too. First names as well as family names were changed to Greek versions. These are still officially binding to this day.

In 1929 a legal Act was issued ‘On the Protection of Public Order’, whereby each demand for “national rights” was regarded as high treason. This law is still in force.

On December 18, 1936 the Metaxas dictatorship issued a legal Act ‘On the Activity Against State Security’. On the basis of this Act, thousands of Macedonians were arrested, tortured, imprisoned or expelled from Greece.

On September 7, 1938 the legal Act 2366 was issued. This banned the use of the Macedonian language. All Macedonian localities were flooded with posters that read "Speak Greek". Evening schools were opened in which adult Macedonians were taught Greek. There was not a single Macedonian school at the time. It is estimated that nearly 5,000 Macedonians were imprisoned or sent to prison camps for having used the Macedonian language.

During the Greek Civil War, the Headquarters of the Democratic Army of Greece reported that from mid-1945 to May 20, 1947 in Western Macedonia alone 13,529 Macedonians were tortured, 3,215 were imprisoned and 268 were executed without trial. In addition, 1,891 houses were burnt down and 1,553 were looted and 13,808 Macedonians were resettled by force.

During the war years, Greek-run prison camps where Macedonians were imprisoned, tortured and murdered included: the island of Ikaria near Turkey, the island of Makronisos near Athens, the jail Averov near Athens, the jail at Larica near the Volos Peninsula, and the jail in Solun. Among other places, there were mass killings on Vicho, Gramos, Kaymakchalan, and at Mala Prespa in Albania.

In 1947, during the Greek Civil War, the legal Act L-2 was issued. This meant that all who left Greece without the consent of the Greek government were stripped of Greek citizenship and banned from returning to the country. The law applied to Greeks and Macedonians, but in its modernized version the Act is binding only on Macedonians. It prevents Macedonians but not Greeks who fought against the winning side to return to Greece and reclaim property. Among those not allowed to return to Greece are the 28,000 child refugees who have not renounced their Macedonian ethnicity.

On January 20, 1948 legal Act M was issued. This allowed the Greek government to confiscate the property of those who were stripped of their citizenship. The law was updated in 1985 to exclude Greeks but it is still binding on Macedonians.

On November 27, 1948 the United Nations issued resolution 193C (III) which called for the repatriation of all child refugees back to Greece. However, discriminatory laws introduced by the Greek government have prevented the free return of many thousands of the Macedonian child refugees. This is still the case in 2011.

On August 23, 1953 legal Act 2536 was issued. This meant that all those who left Greece and who did not return within three years' time could be deprived of their property. This facilitated the confiscation of Macedonian property.

Around the same time a decision was taken to resettle Macedonians. A wide ranging media campaign was launched to induce the Macedonians to leave their native areas voluntarily and to settle in the south of Greece and on the islands. The Greek intention was to separate Macedonians living in Greece from their relatives, living in the Republic of Macedonia, and to create a 60 kilometer-wide belt along the border with the then Yugoslavia where "the faithful sons of the Greek nation" could be settled.

A firm reaction from Yugoslavia saw the cancellation of the plan.

In 1959 legal Act 3958 was issued. This allowed for the confiscation of the land of those (Macedonians) who left Greece and did not return within five years. The law was amended in 1985, but it is still binding on Macedonians.

In 1960 the first secretary of the Greek Communist Party, H. Florakis, was brought to court and charged with high treason for supporting the existence of Macedonians in Greece.

In September 1988 at the press conference in Solun, the same Florakis said that the Greek Communist Party had changed its views and that it now recognized neither the existence of Macedonians nor the existence of a Macedonian national minority.

On August 30, 1989, the same H. Florakis demanded from the Greek parliament the eradication from the currently legally binding Acts the term "Greek by origin" which made it impossible for the Macedonians to return to their homeland and to recover their property. He branded this term “racist”. The Greek press charged him with treason.

In 1961 Michal Gramatnikowski was not allowed to get close to his mother. Michal saw his mother on the Greek frontier from a distance of 100 meters. The Greek border guards would not permit them to come closer.

Filip Wasilew Dimitris from Pozdivista (official Greek name: Halara) of Moscow made repeated attempts to obtain a Greek visa in the Greek embassy in Moscow. The last application he put in was in August 1989 but to no avail.

Georgios Nicolaos Cocos, a Macedonian political refugee who fought against a German armored division in the defense of Greece, was living in Tashkent (former Soviet Union) and wished to return to Greece. But, despite his repeated attempts to enter Greece the Greek authorities would not give him a visa. He even made a direct request to Prime Minister Andrea Papandreou from his death bed and that too did not help him. He died without seeing his family, his home or his homeland.

Sandra Cinika twice tried to go to her village of birth in Greece on an excursion for aged and disabled pensioners. Each time, the Greek embassy in Warsaw would not give her a visa because she was not a Greek by origin. Cinika as well as other Macedonians, including mixed Greek-Macedonian couples, were refused visas.

In 1962, legal Act 4234 was issued. Persons who were stripped of their Greek citizenship were banned from returning to Greece. A ban on crossing the Greek border also extended to spouses and children. This law is still in force for Macedonians, including those who left Greece as children.

Macedonians abroad believe Greek diplomatic posts worldwide are not allowed to issue visas to Macedonians. They have lists of Macedonian refugees from Greece who do not qualify for visas.

In 1969 a legal Act was issued to allow Greeks to occupy and confiscate abandoned Macedonian farms belonging to exiled Macedonians.

The Greek government has continued its ethnic restocking program with the colonization of Greek occupied Macedonia with over one hundred thousand colonists originating from the ex-Soviet Union. These are termed Pontian Greeks.

In 1978 the consul of the Greek embassy in Warsaw, Poland stomped over a travel document issued by Polish authorities which had the Polish national emblem. The reason: the name of the applicant was in Macedonian/Polish and not in Greek. The Macedonian name Mito Aleksowski was written on the document and not the Greek Dimitris Alexiou.

In 1980 Michal Gramatnikowski, a Macedonian, sent a letter to the Greek prime minister asking him to grant him a visa so that he could visit his ill mother in Greece. He received neither a reply nor a visa.

In early 1982 a confidential report by the security branch of the Greek police in Solun came to light. Dated March 8, 1982, the report contained highly controversial and inhumane recommendations and strategies on how to deal with the "Macedonian problem".

On December 29, 1982 legal Act 106841 was issued by the government of Andreas Papandreou. This allowed Greeks by origin that had fled during the Greek Civil War to return to Greece and reclaim their Greek citizenship. Macedonians born in Greece and their families were excluded and remain in exile. Heads of various State administration departments were given the right to use the abandoned properties left by Macedonian refugees.

Greek authorities frequently reject requests from Macedonians for the recovery of their Greek citizenship. This is done despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says that "Everyone has the right to leave every country, including one's own and to return to his own country," that "Each person has the right to have a citizenship," and that "No one can be freely dispossessed of his citizenship."

In 1983 the Greek government decided that it would no longer recognize university degrees from the Republic of Macedonia. Its stated reason was that "the Macedonian language is not internationally recognized." This is incorrect and hides the real motive.

On October 17, 1983 Lazo Jovanovski wrote a letter to the Greek Minister of Internal Affairs asking for the restoration of his citizenship. He has never received a reply.

The same happened to Spiro Steriovski and Kosta Wlakantchovski in 1983.

In 1983 Toli Radovski, living in Gdynia, Poland, wrote a letter to the Greek Ministry of Internal Affairs in Athens asking for the restoration of his citizenship. He did not receive a reply. The lack of reply forced him to ask the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva for help. Thanks to the intervention of the Centre, after four years a reply from Athens arrived. Quoting the relevant legal Acts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs rejected his demand for the recovery of citizenship.

In 1984 Toli Radovski wrote a letter to the Ministry of Internal Affairs asking for a visa. He did not receive the visa or a reply.

In 1984 the Movement for Human and National Rights for the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia, operating in Greece illegally, issued a Manifest for Macedonian Human Rights. This states "In Greece human rights are openly disregarded and our human existence is cursed. We, in Aegean Macedonia, are determined to carry our struggle on various levels, employing all legal means until our rights are guaranteed."

On April 10, 1985 legal Act 1540/ 85 was issued. This amended the previously issued Acts regulating property relations so as to make it impossible for Macedonians to return. This discriminatory Act limits the definition of political refugees to ethnic Greeks and permits the recovery of illegally seized property to "Greeks by origin" only. Once again, the Macedonian refugees from Greece are denied the same rights.

In 1986 former Minister for Northern Greece, N. Martis, addressed a letter to the Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, entitled Falsification of the History of Macedonia, in which he denied the existence of a Macedonian nation.

Several times during the 1980s Greek officials have admonished overseas officials for recognizing a Macedonian nationality. Minister for Macedonia and Thrace (previously for Northern Greece) Stelios Papatamelis sent a letter to Pope John Paul II admonishing him for having uttered his Christmas and New Year greetings in the "non-existent Macedonian language." Greek authorities protested to the US ambassador in the then Yugoslavia for having uttered a few sentences in the "non-existent Macedonian language" while visiting the Republic of Macedonia.

In June, 1986 at its 49th Congress, the international writers' organization, PEN, condemned the denial of the Macedonian language by Greece and sent letters to the Greek PEN Centre and the Greek Minister for Culture. The Greek response was a denial of the existence of a Macedonian minority.

In 1987 Encyclopedia Britannica put the number of Macedonians in Greece at 180,000. This is considerably more than the Greek government will admit to, which is around 80,000, but considerably less than what the Macedonians themselves believe, which varies between 500,000 and one million.

In 1987 Macedonian parents in Aegean Macedonia were forced to send their 2 and 3 year old children to "integrated kindergartens" to prevent them from learning the Macedonian language at home. The ruling was not implemented elsewhere in Greece.

The far right Greek newspaper Stohos has written: "Everyone who will openly manifest his views concerning the Macedonian minority will curse the hour of their birth."

In February 1988, the Athenian newspaper Ergatiki Alilengii criticized the discriminatory policy of Greek authorities towards Macedonians. It also criticized the anti-Macedonian hysteria in certain mass media.

In June 1988, Gona and Tome Miovski of Perth were on their way to Yugoslavia and wished to visit Greece. They were arrested in Athens airport, beaten up and locked in separate underground rooms. They were beaten up again the next day. They were released 24 hours later, after the intervention of the representative of Yugoslav Airlines and were expelled from Greece.

On July 5 and 6, 1988 two groups of Macedonian refugees who had come from Australia and Canada wanted to visit their homeland in Greece. Both coaches were stopped on the Greek frontier. Surrounded by armed policemen the coaches stood in the open air at 42 degrees Centigrade: one for two hours and the other for four hours. Opening of the windows was prohibited. The passengers had a seal stamped in their passports which forbade them to cross the Greek frontier. The vehicles and their passengers had to return.

During late June and early July 1988 a large demonstration of Macedonians who had left Greece as children in 1948 took place in Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The demonstration was attended by several thousand Macedonians from all over the world. A petition to the United Nations and many national governments was addressed.

On August 10, 1988, on the 75th anniversary of the occupation and partition of Macedonia, a large demonstration by Macedonians was held outside the UN building in New York.

On September 4, 1988 Mito Aleksovski addressed an open letter to the Greek embassy in Warsaw asking for a visa. He received no reply.

In the autumn of 1988, the Alagi newspaper in Lerin (Greek name Florina) wrote that the Macedonians do exist and that they should have full rights as a people. The newspaper pledged to fight for those rights until it achieves victory.

In November 1988 the same newspaper published a statement made by Mr. Kostopulos, one of the leaders of the Greek Communist Party, who said that it was a fact that the a Macedonian population existed in Greece.

In its issue No 1/89 the Athens monthly Sholiastis published an article by Mrs. Elewteria Panagiopoulou entitled “Nationalists and the Inhabitants of Skopje”, in which she demanded a halt to the discriminatory policy of authorities and abolition of the inhuman legal acts aimed against the Macedonians. In another article the same author calls Macedonians "the Palestinians of Europe".

In the spring of 1989, 90 Greek intellectuals addressed a note of protest to the Greek government in connection with the common violation of human rights in Greece.

In 1989 during the Bicentenary of Australia, Greece organized an exhibition in Sydney entitled Ancient Macedonia: the Wealth of Greece. The Greek President Sardzetakis toured various Australian cities and disseminated anti-Macedonian propaganda. After a sharp reaction from Macedonians in Australia, the Greek government protested to the Australian government for letting the Macedonian protests to occur.

On May 11, 1989 a Macedonian folk ensemble was expelled from Greece without reason. The ensemble had come to the locality of Komotini for a "Festival of Friendship" at the invitation of its organizers. A similar occurrence took place in 1988.

On May 20, 1989 Minister for Macedonia and Thrace (Northern Greece) Stelios Papatemelis appealed to the Greeks to wage a sacred war against Macedonians.

On May 28, 1989 the Association of Macedonians in Poland sent an invitation to the Greek embassy to attend its first congress. There was no representative from the embassy and there was no answer to the invitation. On June 10, 1989 the participants of the First Congress of the Association of Macedonians in Poland addressed a petition to the Greek government concerning the Macedonian situation. There was no reply. On June 26, 1989 the Association of Macedonians in Poland sent a letter to the Greek embassy in Warsaw concerning visas for Macedonians. The embassy informed the Polish Post Office about the receipt of the letter. Despite this there was no reply.

In May 1989 an international delegation of Macedonians from Australia, Canada and Greece presented the problem Macedonians face in Greece to the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva. They also met with representatives of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

On June 22, 1989 the Helsinki Committee in Poland addressed an appeal to the state cosignatories of the CSCE Final Act concerning the Macedonian situation in Greece.

In the summer of 1989 the New York Times printed an article entitled Macedonians are not Greeks.

Between June 26 and 30, 1989, Greeks held a symposium at Columbia University in New York entitled History, Culture and the Art of Macedonia. The purpose of the symposium was to convince the American people that Macedonia is Greek. The symposium occasioned strong protests from Macedonians in the United States and Canada.

In the summer of 1989 the Atika, the Munich-Athens-Munich express train serviced by Greeks would not take passengers from Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia, despite the availability of seats.

In June 1989, Greek Prime Minister A. Papandreou at a pre-election meeting in the Macedonian locality of Lerin (Florina in Greek) said that if he won the election he would build a factory in which only the locals (that is how he described the Macedonians) would be employed.

He also said that he would abolish law 1540. This law was issued during his rule and of his own initiative in 1985 to deprive the Macedonian refugees of the right to the property they had left behind in Greece.

In July 1989 the Athens Information Agency issued a leaflet in English entitled “The So Called Macedonian Problem”. This leaflet denies the existence of a Macedonian population living in Greece.

At a rally in Solun on July 29, 1989 President Sardzetakis said "Macedonia was, is and will always be Greek."

After parliamentary elections in 1989 thousands of leaflets were found in the ballot boxes in the area of Macedonia in Northern Greece which contained protests against the disregard for human rights in Greece.

On August 30, 1989 a legal Act rehabilitating the participants in the Greek Civil War of 1946-49 was issued. The Act granted damages and disability pensions to fighters in the civil war who now had Greek citizenship. By this measure the Macedonian fighters living in exile who earlier had been stripped of their citizenship were rendered ineligible.

In September 1989 the Athenian newspaper Avriani wrote that the demands of some members of parliament for the abolition in Greek law of the term "Greek by origin" creates a serious threat to the national unity and territorial sovereignty of Greece.

The newspaper also wrote that the "second group" of refugees, i.e. Macedonian refugees as opposed to refugees of Greek origin, could only return to Greece if they unambiguously declare that they are Greeks, i.e. deny their Macedonian ethnicity.

In September 1989 the Ta Maglena newspaper asked "Why are the Macedonians discriminated against?" The newspaper also asked "Why does Greece not observe international legal acts?" At the same time it warned Macedonians against the agents of the Greek Security Service whose number in Macedonian localities was unimaginable.

In November 1989 the Sholiastis monthly published an interview with several members of the illegal Movement for Human and National Rights for Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia.

In December 1989, during a period when there was public discussion about the ‘Macedonian problem’, the Greek press warned "The enemy is at our doorstep."

On January 29, 1990 The Times newspaper published an ethnographic map of Europe which showed that Macedonians were living in Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and the Republic of Macedonia.

In February 1990 The Guardian newspaper wrote "the Macedonian problem is knocking on the door of Europe. It must be solved before the Balkans joins United Europe."

In 1990 a feature film entitled ‘Macedonia was made in Sweden’. It is a six part TV series which correctly presents Macedonian refugees as homeless and wandering.

On February 21, 1990 Constantinos Mitsotakis, then leader of the New Democracy party, said at a press conference in the town of Janina that he is increasingly convinced that the Greek policy in relation to national minorities should be more aggressive. He said "We have nothing to fear. We are clean because Greece is the only Balkan country without the problem of national minorities." He added "The Macedonian minority does not exist and is not recognized by international agreements."

On March 7, 1990 Nikolaos Martis, former Minister for Northern Greece, declared that the Macedonian nation is an invention of the Communist party of Yugoslavia.

On March 25, 1990 in a television address, President Sardzetakis said "Only native Greeks live in Greece."

The Greek government warned the former Yugoslavia that should it not stop discussing the problem of the "so-called Macedonian national minority" Greece will not render it support in cooperating with and eventually joining the EEC.

In 1990 the High Court of Florina under decision 19/33/3/1990 refused to register a Centre for Macedonian Culture. An appeal on August 9 the same year against the decision was also refused. In May 1991 a second appeal was refused by the High Court of Appeals in Solun. In June 1991 the Supreme Administrative Council of Greece in Athens dismissed a further appeal.

In June 1990 at the Copenhagen Conference on Human Rights (CHD), the Greek delegation requested that the executive secretary of the conference remove the Macedonian Human Rights delegation's literature from the non-government organization's desk. The request was refused.

Later, two Macedonian human rights campaigners from Aegean Macedonia who participated in the CHD experienced official State harassment upon their return to Greece.

One, Hristo Sideropoulos, was transferred through his work to Kefalonia, several hundred kilometres from his home place. The other participant, Stavros Anastasiadis, was given discriminatory tax penalties and dismissed from his job.

On July 20, 1990 at the village of Meliti near Lerin (Florina) a Macedonian folk festival was broken up by force by Greek authorities and police.

In its June, 1991 edition the Atlantic Monthly magazine ran an extensive story detailing many of the atrocities committed in Macedonia by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria against the Macedonian population during the Balkan Wars and following the partition of Macedonia.

The author, Robert Kaplan, also said "Greece, for its part, according to a Greek consular official whom I visited in Skopje, does not permit anyone with a "Slavic" name who was born in northern Greece and now lives in Yugoslav Macedonia to visit Greece, even if he or she has relatives there. This means that many families have been separated for ever."

On December 10, 1991 the Greek Central Committee of the Australian Labor Party in Victoria sent a letter addressed to all Victorian Labor Federal parliamentarians and all State Labor parliamentarians. The letter explicitly denies the existence of a Macedonian minority in Greece. Point 4 refers to "Misinformation claiming that an ethnic "minority" of Macedonians in Greece is being denied its cultural rights. Greece has no ethnic minority other than a Moslem religious minority."

In January, 1992, six members of the OAKKE anti-nationalist group were condemned to 6 and a half months imprisonment for putting up posters for the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia.

In February, 1992 the Guardian newspaper published an article about the town of Florina in Greece and the struggle of its Macedonian inhabitants to maintain their identity in the face of Greek repression.

On March 12, 1992 the Canberra Times ran an article, ‘What's in a Name? For Greeks a Great Deal’, by Peter Hill, the author of the section Macedonians in the official Australian Bicentenary encyclopedia the Australian People. The article affirmed the existence of a large Macedonian minority in Greece and the existence of official discrimination and the denial of human rights.

Mr. Hill said "The claim by the Greek Republic that their part of Macedonia has "one of the most homogenous populations in the world (98.5 per cent Greek)" is quite absurd. In fact, some parts of it, such as the county of Florina (Lerin), do not have any indigenous Greek inhabitants at all."

In March, 1992 the organizers of the Moomba Festival in Melbourne asked the Macedonian community participants not to use the name Macedonia on their float after representations were made to the Moomba organizers by the Greek lobby in Australia and by the Victorian Minister for Ethnic Affairs. The Macedonians refused. The ministry later said that threats to the Macedonians' safety had been received.

On April 2, 1992 the Ambassador of Greece to Australia, VS Zafiropoulos, wrote a letter to the Canberra Times newspaper in which he said "Macedonia, Greece's most northerly province, does not contain a significant minority who are ethnically related to the Slavs across the border".

"In fact, Greece is the most homogenous country in Europe and if a small number of Greeks on the border speak, beside Greek, a Slavic idiom, this bilingualism does not constitute a minority."

In May, 1992 Australian journalist Richard Farmer visited Aegean Macedonia and published an article in the Sunday Telegraph, Sydney entitled Freedom Fragile in Macedonia. The article described numerous examples of human rights abuses witnessed by Farmer, including the jamming by Greek authorities of Easter services broadcast in the Macedonian language from the Republic of Macedonia and listened to by Macedonians in Greece.

The Greek lobby in Australia subsequently took Farmer to the Press Council but were unable to deny him his right to publish.

In July, 1992 Archimandrite Nikodemos Tsarknias, a priest with the Greek Orthodox Church and a well known Macedonian human rights campaigner, and a parishioner, Photios Tzelepis, were issued with a Writ of Summons to appear in the Magistrate's Court of Solun. The priest was charged with insulting his Archbishop. He was also accused of being a homosexual and a Skopjan (Republic of Macedonia) spy.

However, a KYP (Greek Secret Service) report published in a Greek newspaper revealed that the minor charge in the Summons was a pretext to harass the priest for his human rights activism. The report says the authorities "did not find the courage to say that they kicked him out of the church for his anti-Hellenic stance and to ask for his committal to trial for high treason but instead they removed him with the lukewarm "justification" which we reveal today so that it will stain with shame all those who contributed to it."

In July 1992 the Macedonian Human Rights Association of Newcastle (Australia) published the book “The Real Macedonians” by Dr. John Shea, an Irish academic at Newcastle University. The book gives a great number of reference sources about the ethnicity of the Macedonian people, the partition of Macedonia, the ethnic cleansing and repopulation of Aegean Macedonia, and the Greek Civil War. Chapter 13 is titled “Denial Of Human Rights For Macedonian Minorities”.

On August 15, 1992 The Spectator magazine published an article, The New Bully of the Balkans, by Noel Malcolm. The article discusses the plight of the main ethnic minorities in Greece including the Macedonians, the Vlachs, and the Turks.

On the Macedonians, Mr. Malcolm asks "How many of these Slavs still live in Greece is not known. The 1940 census registered 85,000 'Slav-speakers'. The 1951 census (the last to record any figures for speakers of other languages) put it at 41,000; many who had fought on the losing side in the civil war had fled, but other evidence shows that all the censuses heavily underestimate the Slav's numbers. The lack of a question on the census-form is not, however, the only reason for their obscurity."

Mr. Malcolm says "One group of these Slavs has started a small monthly newsletter, with an estimated readership of 10,000. But they have great difficulty finding a printer (even though it is in Greek), and they say that if copies are sent through the post they tend to 'disappear'. ‘Even if we find a sympathetic printer,’ one told me, ‘he's usually too scared to take the work: he's afraid of losing his other contracts, or perhaps of getting bricks through his window."

In 1992 a spokesman for the Pan Macedonian Association of Victoria, a Greek racist organization, was interviewed on SBS television. The spokesman said that there are no Macedonians in Florina. This was a direct lie as Florina (formerly Lerin in Macedonian) is well known to have an almost exclusively Macedonian population. In fact a large number of Macedonian immigrants now living in Melbourne and Perth are from Florina. This organization has on other occasions made similar claims on SBS television.

In November, 1992 Amnesty International published a report entitled “Greece: Violations of the Right to Freedom of Expression”. This gave details on a number of human rights abuses by Greece including the repression of the Macedonian human rights campaigners, Hristos Sideropoulos and Tasos Boulis.

In November, 1992 Pollitecon Publications of Sydney published the book “What Europe Has Forgotten: The Struggle Of The Aegean Macedonians”. The book was written by the Association of Macedonians in Poland and was one of the first English language books to detail human rights abuses against the Macedonians in Greece.

On December 5, 1992 The Sydney Morning Herald published an article titled “The Balkan Dance of Death” by Bob Beale. Mr. Beale says "Greece's record of dealing with its Greek Macedonian minority is poor. A specialist in Balkan ethnic minorities, Hugh Poulton, has noted that in the wake of the bitter civil war - during and after World War II - Greece actively sought to remove Slav Macedonians from its north as ‘undesirable aliens’."

"At various times since, it has forbidden Macedonians in Greece from using the Macedonian forms of their names, removed them from official posts in Greek held Macedonia and suppressed their language - measures that led many to emigrate to places like Australia."

In January, 1993 Amnesty International published another report – “Greece: Violations of the Right to Freedom of Expression: Further Cases of Concern”. This report detailed the case of Michail Papadakis, a 17 year old school boy who had been arrested on December 10, 1992 for handing out a leaflet that said "Don't be consumed by nationalism. Alexander the Great: war criminal. Macedonia belongs to its people. There are no races; we are all of mixed descent."

In January, 1993 the Macedonian Movement for Prosperity in the Balkans held its first congress, in Sobotsko, Greece. The MMPB issued a statement highlighting Greece's discriminatory policy towards the Macedonian population and in particular the denial of basic human rights.

The MMPB said ethnic Macedonians in Greece and Macedonians in the Diaspora should cooperate closely to further ethnic, religious, linguistic and social freedoms for all people in Greece. The organization urged the Greek government to allow Macedonian political and economic refugees to return to Greece if they desired.

In February 1993 a meeting was held between the Macedonian Forum for Human Rights and the Greek Balkan Citizens' Movement to open up dialog to help solve existing problems between the two countries.

In February, 1993, Kiro Gligorov, president of the Republic of Macedonia, speaking at the United Nations on the possible admission of Macedonia to the body, criticized Greece for its treatment of its Macedonian population.

Mr. Gligorov, among other things, said "It is surprising that the Republic of Greece disputes article 49 of our Constitution which refers to the care of the Republic of Macedonia for our minority in the neighbouring countries. It should be pointed out that there is a similar provision in the Greek constitution. It is a well known fact that the Republic of Greece does not admit to the existence of Macedonians living in Greece.” From this we derive the following logical questions.

"A. If such a people does not exist in the Republic of Greece, then this article does not refer to this country and their reactions are surprising."

"B. If such a people does exist, which is indisputable, why does Greece not fulfill at least their basic rights as provided by the UN Charter, the Helsinki Document, the Charter of Paris, etc., of which it is a signatory party?"

"C. "Most important of all, is this the reason why the Republic of Greece opposes the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name?"

In March 1993, the Archimandite Nikodemos Tsarknias was defrocked and expelled from the Greek Orthodox Church for his human rights activism.

On March 26, 1993, five members of the OSE organization were put on trial for publishing and distributing a pamphlet entitled Crisis in the Balkans: the Macedonian Question and the Working Class. They were charged with exposing Greece’s friendly relations with foreign countries and the risk of disturbance; spreading false information and rumours that might cause anxiety and fear in the citizens; and inciting citizens to rivalry and division leading to disturbance of the peace.

On April 1, 1993 Macedonian human rights campaigners Hristos Sideropoulos and Tasos Boulis were put on trial after they made comments about the existence of a Macedonian population which were published in ENA magazine in March 1992. They were charged with spreading false information and rumours that might cause anxiety and fear to the citizens. They were sentenced to five months imprisonment.

The World Macedonian Congress said that the defense counsel was not allowed to present its views. An appeal was launched to the higher court in Athens.

In April, 1993 the Macedonian Information Centre in Perth republished the booklet the ABECEDAR, originally published by the Greek government in 1925 as a teaching aid for Macedonian children, but which was never distributed.

In April, 1993 the Belgian press was quoted as saying that Greece was quickly losing its democratic reputation. The press was quoted as saying that "Greece, undermining the European principles of respecting basic human rights, is placing itself at the margins of Europe."

In May, 1993 the Macedonian Movement for Balkan Prosperity, based in Arideja, Greece, said that it wanted to participate in the Macedonian-Greek dialog underway under the auspices of the United Nations to settle the issue of the name of the Republic of Macedonia. The Movement said the participation of the Macedonians in Greece was imperative and that it was time to determine the status of the Macedonians in Greece as well as those forced to leave during the Greek Civil War.



Prohibiting Macedonian folk dances in Greece



These reports were also published in the following Greek newspapers: ,,Elinikos Voras" Thessaloniki, 4.8.1959; ,,Vima" - Athens, 78.7.1959; ,,Elpheteria" - Athens, 7.7.1959; Elinikos Voras, 8.8.1959

The Stohos newspaper on 16.4.1987 wrote: “We made a list of all persons, singing in a dialect at fairs, weddings, etc. Do not sing in another language or in this ‘idiom’ except in Greek because you will curse the day you were born.”



The Stohos newspaper on 21.8.1986 wrote: “Speaking and singing in any other language other than Greek is not allowed. Cut their tongues off so we can save Greece.”



The Mahitis newspaper on 6.8.1987 wrote: “There was a wedding with folk music in the village Melitis (Vostarevo). Four cars with members of KIP (Greek Intelligence) blocked the wedding from all sides and recorded the music and the language spoken at the wedding.”


DESTROYING MACEDONIAN GRAVES IN GREECE


With the aim to wiping out any evidence of the existence of Macedonians in Greece the newspaper Stohos on 3.08.1987 wrote:



“Search well everywhere and wherever you find, in a village or in a city, a grave with Slav letters - destroy it! Do not be afraid. If someone tries to stop you tell them that your country has ordered you to do it. Place Greece, Orthodoxy and the Armed Forces in your hearts! You are Greek! Do not forget that!”


DEPRIVATION OF RIGHTS FOR MACEDONIANS

In an article in the newspaper “Ta Moglena”, published in May-June 1989, the following was written under the heading “Why”:



- Why are files, with our Macedonian names, are opened every day?
- Why do they bypass us and do not promote us to important posts?
- Why are there no Macedonians Generals in the Greek army?
- Why are Macedonians not appointed to Secretary Generals or Prefects in Macedonia?
- Why are there no Macedonian Bishops?
- Why are Macedonians recently being laid off and removed from their jobs?


Here is some advice for you: Keep yourself well informed. If you see a BMW or a Mercedes stopped in front of the café be aware that its occupants may be KIP or EUP (Intelligence services) people so be careful what you say in the café.”


ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF PROPERTY

In the first issue of the “Zora” newspaper published in Greek in October 1993, there was an article entitled “Inquiries of the Minister of Finance and Agriculture” in which facts were revealed regarding the 300 hectares of land belonging to the "St. Pantaleimon" community which was unlawfully given to the so called “Pontian Greeks” who recently immigrated from the USSR. At the meeting between the concerned citizens of Macedonian decent and the Lerin prefect they were told the following:



“Let them take not only your land but also your houses and I will do nothing because these people, the citizens of the Vetora village, are Pontian Greeks and you are Slavo-phones. Go ask for your rights at Skopje or at Sofia.”


ANTI-MACEDONIAN LAWS, REGULATIONS AND DECREES

Here are several important acts designed to deprive Macedonians of their Greek citizenship and property:



1. Decree No.LZ/47 enacted in 1947 called for: “All persons working against the Greek State will be stripped of their Greek citizenship”. By this decision all persons, supporting DAG “Democratic Army of Greece) and the CPG (Communist Part of Greece) were stripped of their Greek citizenship.


2. Decree M/48 enacted in January 1948 called for: “The confiscation of part or of the entire property of the participants or those assisting the participants, in the Partisan Movement”.


3. Decree No.48 enacted in April 1948 called for: “Anyone participating in anti-state activities would lose their properties.”


In the years following 1949 more decrees were passed, such as Decree Nos. 944, 258, 800 enacted on April 3rd and July 20th, 1951. Decree No.976/46 was enacted to repatriate people living near the Greek borders. New laws were enacted later because these were considered insufficient.

DIPLOMAS ISSUED BY MACEDONIAN UNIVERSITY NOT RECOGNIZED

The Minister of National Education and Religion considering
a) provisions of Article 46 of the Law No. 1238/82;
b) Decision No. 1/5421: proclaims that the diplomas issued by the University “St. Cyril and Metodius” in Skopje were not recognized by the Greek Ministry.

OFFICIAL DENATIONALIZATION POLICY

According to a denationalization policy, adopted in 1913, the use of Macedonian names was forbidden. Typical Greek endings were added to existing names or the names were changed entirely. The use of the word “Macedonian” was forbidden in order to avoid the possibility of claiming another ethno cultural identity outside of Greek.

RENAMING OF TOWNS AND VILLAGES


Until several years ago, Greek occupied Macedonia was officially called “Northern Greece” then in August 1988, when it became obvious the Republic of Macedonian was going to assert its independence from Yugoslavia, it was renamed to “Macedonia”.



The Greek state newspaper “Efimeriostis Kivemistos” issue # 332, November 21,1926, published the law for obligatory change of the names of all of the villages and the towns, as well as the names of the rivers, mountains and regions. By this law 588 towns and villages received names totally different from the Macedonian names that had existed for more than 12 centuries. The treacherous purpose of that action was to erase everything that was Macedonian.

__________________


How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to be so proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are acquainted with antiquity

Greek writers themselves, that they knew but little on any good foundation when they set to write, but rather wrote their histories from their own conjectures?

Josephus, Against Apion Book 1.3



SOURCE: Aegean Macedonian Association of Australia and its report The Human Rights Situation of Macedonians in Greece and Australia - Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade: Human Rights Sub-Committee, July 1993.

http://www.pollitecon.com/html/life/The_Human_Rights_Situation_of_Macedonians_in_Greece_and_Australia.htm

[George S.]

History



Examples of Human Rights Abuses in Greece

1913 to 1993


In view of the International Court of Justice ruling against Greece in December 2011 for blocking Macedonia’s bid to join NATO in 2008, I believe it important to have the following items publicized along with the question: “When will Greece be found guilty of all the other crimes it has committed against the Macedonian people?”



In 1913 following its victory in the First and Second Balkan Wars, Greece officially annexed 51 per cent of Macedonian territories. This was against the desire of the Macedonian population which fought for an independent and autonomous Macedonia.

In 1916 author John Reed in his book “The War in Eastern Europe” wrote about the aftermath of the First Balkan War and how the Greeks and Serbians tried to legitimize their takeover of the territory while trying to wipe all Macedonian influence.

He wrote “A thousand Greek and Serbian publicists began to fill the world with their shouting about the essentially Greek or Serbian character of the populations of their different spheres. The Serbs gave the unhappy Macedonians twenty four hours to renounce their nationality and proclaim themselves Serbs, and the Greeks did the same. Refusal meant murder or expulsion. Greek and Serbian colonists were poured into the occupied country...The Greek newspapers began to talk about a Macedonia peopled entirely with Greeks - and they explained the fact that no one spoke Greek by calling the people "Bulgarophone" Greeks...the Greek army entered villages where no one spoke their language. "What do you mean by speaking Bulgarian?" cried the officers. "This is Greece and you must speak Greek".”

The Carnegie Commission Report on the Balkan Wars indicated that 161 villages were burned down and more than 16,000 houses were destroyed in the Greek occupied part of Macedonia.

On August 10th, 1920 at Serves, Paris, Britain, France, Italy and Japan concluded an agreement with Greece on the protection of non Greek people. Greece pledged full protection for the Macedonians living in Greece, their language and culture and the opening of Macedonian schools.

In Section 2 of the agreement Greece pledged to extend full care over the life and freedom of all citizens irrespective of their origin, nationality, language or faith.

Clause 7 reads: "All Greek citizens will avail themselves of the same civic and political rights irrespective of nationality, language and faith... and to legally guarantee the freedom of use by each citizen of any language in personal, trade and religious contacts, in print and publications or meetings..."

Clause 8 states: "Greek citizens belonging to national, religious or language minorities will be treated on par with native Greeks."

Clause 9 reads: As regards education, the Greek government will create appropriate facilitations and will safeguard the possibility of learning one's own language in schools of towns and areas inhabited by citizens speaking a language different than Greek."

On September 4, 1925, the office of High Commissioner for National Minorities was established in Solun, northern Greece (Greek occupied Macedonia), for the observance of international agreements concerning national minorities.

However, none of these assurances were put into practice. Instead the Greek government adopted a policy of denationalization and assimilation while simultaneously denying the existence of Macedonians in Greece.

In 1925 the ABECEDAR, a primer in the Macedonian language was published in Athens. This was an elementary book for teaching the Macedonian language and was written in the Latin alphabet. It was designed for Macedonian children. However, it was never distributed to them. After the departure of representatives of the League of Nations, the booklets were destroyed.

This booklet was republished in Perth in 1993 by the Macedonian Information Centre to prove the booklet's existence and the fact that Greece was once accountable to the world for its Macedonian people living in Greece.

In the 1920s Macedonian schools were closed, not opened. Kindergartens were established in Macedonian localities so children could be inculcated in a Greek spirit and to limit the influence of parents. This was despite a November 11, 1930 press conference in Athens at which prime minister Elefterios Venizelos said, "The problem of a Macedonian national minority will be solved and I will be the first one to commit myself to the opening of Macedonian schools if the nation so wishes."

On March 30, 1927 the Greek newspaper Rizospastis wrote that 500,000 Macedonians were resettled in Bulgaria.

On the basis of a Greek thesis: "the faith determines the nation", hundreds of thousands of Turks and Macedonians of Muslim faith were resettled in Asia Minor. They were replaced by 638,253 Christian Turk colonists brought in from Asia Minor.

November 1926: a legal Act was issued to change Macedonian geographic names into the Greek version. The news of the Act was published in the Greek government daily “Efimeris tis Kiverniseos” No. 322 of November 21, 1926. The same newspaper in its No. 346 published the new, official, Greek names. The names of the people were changed too. First names as well as family names were changed to Greek versions. These are still officially binding to this day.

In 1929 a legal Act was issued ‘On the Protection of Public Order’, whereby each demand for “national rights” was regarded as high treason. This law is still in force.

On December 18, 1936 the Metaxas dictatorship issued a legal Act ‘On the Activity Against State Security’. On the basis of this Act, thousands of Macedonians were arrested, tortured, imprisoned or expelled from Greece.

On September 7, 1938 the legal Act 2366 was issued. This banned the use of the Macedonian language. All Macedonian localities were flooded with posters that read "Speak Greek". Evening schools were opened in which adult Macedonians were taught Greek. There was not a single Macedonian school at the time. It is estimated that nearly 5,000 Macedonians were imprisoned or sent to prison camps for having used the Macedonian language.

During the Greek Civil War, the Headquarters of the Democratic Army of Greece reported that from mid-1945 to May 20, 1947 in Western Macedonia alone 13,529 Macedonians were tortured, 3,215 were imprisoned and 268 were executed without trial. In addition, 1,891 houses were burnt down and 1,553 were looted and 13,808 Macedonians were resettled by force.

During the war years, Greek-run prison camps where Macedonians were imprisoned, tortured and murdered included: the island of Ikaria near Turkey, the island of Makronisos near Athens, the jail Averov near Athens, the jail at Larica near the Volos Peninsula, and the jail in Solun. Among other places, there were mass killings on Vicho, Gramos, Kaymakchalan, and at Mala Prespa in Albania.

In 1947, during the Greek Civil War, the legal Act L-2 was issued. This meant that all who left Greece without the consent of the Greek government were stripped of Greek citizenship and banned from returning to the country. The law applied to Greeks and Macedonians, but in its modernized version the Act is binding only on Macedonians. It prevents Macedonians but not Greeks who fought against the winning side to return to Greece and reclaim property. Among those not allowed to return to Greece are the 28,000 child refugees who have not renounced their Macedonian ethnicity.

On January 20, 1948 legal Act M was issued. This allowed the Greek government to confiscate the property of those who were stripped of their citizenship. The law was updated in 1985 to exclude Greeks but it is still binding on Macedonians.

On November 27, 1948 the United Nations issued resolution 193C (III) which called for the repatriation of all child refugees back to Greece. However, discriminatory laws introduced by the Greek government have prevented the free return of many thousands of the Macedonian child refugees. This is still the case in 2011.

On August 23, 1953 legal Act 2536 was issued. This meant that all those who left Greece and who did not return within three years' time could be deprived of their property. This facilitated the confiscation of Macedonian property.

Around the same time a decision was taken to resettle Macedonians. A wide ranging media campaign was launched to induce the Macedonians to leave their native areas voluntarily and to settle in the south of Greece and on the islands. The Greek intention was to separate Macedonians living in Greece from their relatives, living in the Republic of Macedonia, and to create a 60 kilometer-wide belt along the border with the then Yugoslavia where "the faithful sons of the Greek nation" could be settled.

A firm reaction from Yugoslavia saw the cancellation of the plan.

In 1959 legal Act 3958 was issued. This allowed for the confiscation of the land of those (Macedonians) who left Greece and did not return within five years. The law was amended in 1985, but it is still binding on Macedonians.

In 1960 the first secretary of the Greek Communist Party, H. Florakis, was brought to court and charged with high treason for supporting the existence of Macedonians in Greece.

In September 1988 at the press conference in Solun, the same Florakis said that the Greek Communist Party had changed its views and that it now recognized neither the existence of Macedonians nor the existence of a Macedonian national minority.

On August 30, 1989, the same H. Florakis demanded from the Greek parliament the eradication from the currently legally binding Acts the term "Greek by origin" which made it impossible for the Macedonians to return to their homeland and to recover their property. He branded this term “racist”. The Greek press charged him with treason.

In 1961 Michal Gramatnikowski was not allowed to get close to his mother. Michal saw his mother on the Greek frontier from a distance of 100 meters. The Greek border guards would not permit them to come closer.

Filip Wasilew Dimitris from Pozdivista (official Greek name: Halara) of Moscow made repeated attempts to obtain a Greek visa in the Greek embassy in Moscow. The last application he put in was in August 1989 but to no avail.

Georgios Nicolaos Cocos, a Macedonian political refugee who fought against a German armored division in the defense of Greece, was living in Tashkent (former Soviet Union) and wished to return to Greece. But, despite his repeated attempts to enter Greece the Greek authorities would not give him a visa. He even made a direct request to Prime Minister Andrea Papandreou from his death bed and that too did not help him. He died without seeing his family, his home or his homeland.

Sandra Cinika twice tried to go to her village of birth in Greece on an excursion for aged and disabled pensioners. Each time, the Greek embassy in Warsaw would not give her a visa because she was not a Greek by origin. Cinika as well as other Macedonians, including mixed Greek-Macedonian couples, were refused visas.

In 1962, legal Act 4234 was issued. Persons who were stripped of their Greek citizenship were banned from returning to Greece. A ban on crossing the Greek border also extended to spouses and children. This law is still in force for Macedonians, including those who left Greece as children.

Macedonians abroad believe Greek diplomatic posts worldwide are not allowed to issue visas to Macedonians. They have lists of Macedonian refugees from Greece who do not qualify for visas.

In 1969 a legal Act was issued to allow Greeks to occupy and confiscate abandoned Macedonian farms belonging to exiled Macedonians.

The Greek government has continued its ethnic restocking program with the colonization of Greek occupied Macedonia with over one hundred thousand colonists originating from the ex-Soviet Union. These are termed Pontian Greeks.

In 1978 the consul of the Greek embassy in Warsaw, Poland stomped over a travel document issued by Polish authorities which had the Polish national emblem. The reason: the name of the applicant was in Macedonian/Polish and not in Greek. The Macedonian name Mito Aleksowski was written on the document and not the Greek Dimitris Alexiou.

In 1980 Michal Gramatnikowski, a Macedonian, sent a letter to the Greek prime minister asking him to grant him a visa so that he could visit his ill mother in Greece. He received neither a reply nor a visa.

In early 1982 a confidential report by the security branch of the Greek police in Solun came to light. Dated March 8, 1982, the report contained highly controversial and inhumane recommendations and strategies on how to deal with the "Macedonian problem".

On December 29, 1982 legal Act 106841 was issued by the government of Andreas Papandreou. This allowed Greeks by origin that had fled during the Greek Civil War to return to Greece and reclaim their Greek citizenship. Macedonians born in Greece and their families were excluded and remain in exile. Heads of various State administration departments were given the right to use the abandoned properties left by Macedonian refugees.

Greek authorities frequently reject requests from Macedonians for the recovery of their Greek citizenship. This is done despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says that "Everyone has the right to leave every country, including one's own and to return to his own country," that "Each person has the right to have a citizenship," and that "No one can be freely dispossessed of his citizenship."

In 1983 the Greek government decided that it would no longer recognize university degrees from the Republic of Macedonia. Its stated reason was that "the Macedonian language is not internationally recognized." This is incorrect and hides the real motive.

On October 17, 1983 Lazo Jovanovski wrote a letter to the Greek Minister of Internal Affairs asking for the restoration of his citizenship. He has never received a reply.

The same happened to Spiro Steriovski and Kosta Wlakantchovski in 1983.

In 1983 Toli Radovski, living in Gdynia, Poland, wrote a letter to the Greek Ministry of Internal Affairs in Athens asking for the restoration of his citizenship. He did not receive a reply. The lack of reply forced him to ask the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva for help. Thanks to the intervention of the Centre, after four years a reply from Athens arrived. Quoting the relevant legal Acts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs rejected his demand for the recovery of citizenship.

In 1984 Toli Radovski wrote a letter to the Ministry of Internal Affairs asking for a visa. He did not receive the visa or a reply.

In 1984 the Movement for Human and National Rights for the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia, operating in Greece illegally, issued a Manifest for Macedonian Human Rights. This states "In Greece human rights are openly disregarded and our human existence is cursed. We, in Aegean Macedonia, are determined to carry our struggle on various levels, employing all legal means until our rights are guaranteed."

On April 10, 1985 legal Act 1540/ 85 was issued. This amended the previously issued Acts regulating property relations so as to make it impossible for Macedonians to return. This discriminatory Act limits the definition of political refugees to ethnic Greeks and permits the recovery of illegally seized property to "Greeks by origin" only. Once again, the Macedonian refugees from Greece are denied the same rights.

In 1986 former Minister for Northern Greece, N. Martis, addressed a letter to the Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, entitled Falsification of the History of Macedonia, in which he denied the existence of a Macedonian nation.

Several times during the 1980s Greek officials have admonished overseas officials for recognizing a Macedonian nationality. Minister for Macedonia and Thrace (previously for Northern Greece) Stelios Papatamelis sent a letter to Pope John Paul II admonishing him for having uttered his Christmas and New Year greetings in the "non-existent Macedonian language." Greek authorities protested to the US ambassador in the then Yugoslavia for having uttered a few sentences in the "non-existent Macedonian language" while visiting the Republic of Macedonia.

In June, 1986 at its 49th Congress, the international writers' organization, PEN, condemned the denial of the Macedonian language by Greece and sent letters to the Greek PEN Centre and the Greek Minister for Culture. The Greek response was a denial of the existence of a Macedonian minority.

In 1987 Encyclopedia Britannica put the number of Macedonians in Greece at 180,000. This is considerably more than the Greek government will admit to, which is around 80,000, but considerably less than what the Macedonians themselves believe, which varies between 500,000 and one million.

In 1987 Macedonian parents in Aegean Macedonia were forced to send their 2 and 3 year old children to "integrated kindergartens" to prevent them from learning the Macedonian language at home. The ruling was not implemented elsewhere in Greece.

The far right Greek newspaper Stohos has written: "Everyone who will openly manifest his views concerning the Macedonian minority will curse the hour of their birth."

In February 1988, the Athenian newspaper Ergatiki Alilengii criticized the discriminatory policy of Greek authorities towards Macedonians. It also criticized the anti-Macedonian hysteria in certain mass media.

In June 1988, Gona and Tome Miovski of Perth were on their way to Yugoslavia and wished to visit Greece. They were arrested in Athens airport, beaten up and locked in separate underground rooms. They were beaten up again the next day. They were released 24 hours later, after the intervention of the representative of Yugoslav Airlines and were expelled from Greece.

On July 5 and 6, 1988 two groups of Macedonian refugees who had come from Australia and Canada wanted to visit their homeland in Greece. Both coaches were stopped on the Greek frontier. Surrounded by armed policemen the coaches stood in the open air at 42 degrees Centigrade: one for two hours and the other for four hours. Opening of the windows was prohibited. The passengers had a seal stamped in their passports which forbade them to cross the Greek frontier. The vehicles and their passengers had to return.

During late June and early July 1988 a large demonstration of Macedonians who had left Greece as children in 1948 took place in Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The demonstration was attended by several thousand Macedonians from all over the world. A petition to the United Nations and many national governments was addressed.

On August 10, 1988, on the 75th anniversary of the occupation and partition of Macedonia, a large demonstration by Macedonians was held outside the UN building in New York.

On September 4, 1988 Mito Aleksovski addressed an open letter to the Greek embassy in Warsaw asking for a visa. He received no reply.

In the autumn of 1988, the Alagi newspaper in Lerin (Greek name Florina) wrote that the Macedonians do exist and that they should have full rights as a people. The newspaper pledged to fight for those rights until it achieves victory.

In November 1988 the same newspaper published a statement made by Mr. Kostopulos, one of the leaders of the Greek Communist Party, who said that it was a fact that the a Macedonian population existed in Greece.

In its issue No 1/89 the Athens monthly Sholiastis published an article by Mrs. Elewteria Panagiopoulou entitled “Nationalists and the Inhabitants of Skopje”, in which she demanded a halt to the discriminatory policy of authorities and abolition of the inhuman legal acts aimed against the Macedonians. In another article the same author calls Macedonians "the Palestinians of Europe".

In the spring of 1989, 90 Greek intellectuals addressed a note of protest to the Greek government in connection with the common violation of human rights in Greece.

In 1989 during the Bicentenary of Australia, Greece organized an exhibition in Sydney entitled Ancient Macedonia: the Wealth of Greece. The Greek President Sardzetakis toured various Australian cities and disseminated anti-Macedonian propaganda. After a sharp reaction from Macedonians in Australia, the Greek government protested to the Australian government for letting the Macedonian protests to occur.

On May 11, 1989 a Macedonian folk ensemble was expelled from Greece without reason. The ensemble had come to the locality of Komotini for a "Festival of Friendship" at the invitation of its organizers. A similar occurrence took place in 1988.

On May 20, 1989 Minister for Macedonia and Thrace (Northern Greece) Stelios Papatemelis appealed to the Greeks to wage a sacred war against Macedonians.

On May 28, 1989 the Association of Macedonians in Poland sent an invitation to the Greek embassy to attend its first congress. There was no representative from the embassy and there was no answer to the invitation. On June 10, 1989 the participants of the First Congress of the Association of Macedonians in Poland addressed a petition to the Greek government concerning the Macedonian situation. There was no reply. On June 26, 1989 the Association of Macedonians in Poland sent a letter to the Greek embassy in Warsaw concerning visas for Macedonians. The embassy informed the Polish Post Office about the receipt of the letter. Despite this there was no reply.

In May 1989 an international delegation of Macedonians from Australia, Canada and Greece presented the problem Macedonians face in Greece to the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva. They also met with representatives of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

On June 22, 1989 the Helsinki Committee in Poland addressed an appeal to the state cosignatories of the CSCE Final Act concerning the Macedonian situation in Greece.

In the summer of 1989 the New York Times printed an article entitled Macedonians are not Greeks.

Between June 26 and 30, 1989, Greeks held a symposium at Columbia University in New York entitled History, Culture and the Art of Macedonia. The purpose of the symposium was to convince the American people that Macedonia is Greek. The symposium occasioned strong protests from Macedonians in the United States and Canada.

In the summer of 1989 the Atika, the Munich-Athens-Munich express train serviced by Greeks would not take passengers from Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia, despite the availability of seats.

In June 1989, Greek Prime Minister A. Papandreou at a pre-election meeting in the Macedonian locality of Lerin (Florina in Greek) said that if he won the election he would build a factory in which only the locals (that is how he described the Macedonians) would be employed.

He also said that he would abolish law 1540. This law was issued during his rule and of his own initiative in 1985 to deprive the Macedonian refugees of the right to the property they had left behind in Greece.

In July 1989 the Athens Information Agency issued a leaflet in English entitled “The So Called Macedonian Problem”. This leaflet denies the existence of a Macedonian population living in Greece.

At a rally in Solun on July 29, 1989 President Sardzetakis said "Macedonia was, is and will always be Greek."

After parliamentary elections in 1989 thousands of leaflets were found in the ballot boxes in the area of Macedonia in Northern Greece which contained protests against the disregard for human rights in Greece.

On August 30, 1989 a legal Act rehabilitating the participants in the Greek Civil War of 1946-49 was issued. The Act granted damages and disability pensions to fighters in the civil war who now had Greek citizenship. By this measure the Macedonian fighters living in exile who earlier had been stripped of their citizenship were rendered ineligible.

In September 1989 the Athenian newspaper Avriani wrote that the demands of some members of parliament for the abolition in Greek law of the term "Greek by origin" creates a serious threat to the national unity and territorial sovereignty of Greece.

The newspaper also wrote that the "second group" of refugees, i.e. Macedonian refugees as opposed to refugees of Greek origin, could only return to Greece if they unambiguously declare that they are Greeks, i.e. deny their Macedonian ethnicity.

In September 1989 the Ta Maglena newspaper asked "Why are the Macedonians discriminated against?" The newspaper also asked "Why does Greece not observe international legal acts?" At the same time it warned Macedonians against the agents of the Greek Security Service whose number in Macedonian localities was unimaginable.

In November 1989 the Sholiastis monthly published an interview with several members of the illegal Movement for Human and National Rights for Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia.

In December 1989, during a period when there was public discussion about the ‘Macedonian problem’, the Greek press warned "The enemy is at our doorstep."

On January 29, 1990 The Times newspaper published an ethnographic map of Europe which showed that Macedonians were living in Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and the Republic of Macedonia.

In February 1990 The Guardian newspaper wrote "the Macedonian problem is knocking on the door of Europe. It must be solved before the Balkans joins United Europe."

In 1990 a feature film entitled ‘Macedonia was made in Sweden’. It is a six part TV series which correctly presents Macedonian refugees as homeless and wandering.

On February 21, 1990 Constantinos Mitsotakis, then leader of the New Democracy party, said at a press conference in the town of Janina that he is increasingly convinced that the Greek policy in relation to national minorities should be more aggressive. He said "We have nothing to fear. We are clean because Greece is the only Balkan country without the problem of national minorities." He added "The Macedonian minority does not exist and is not recognized by international agreements."

On March 7, 1990 Nikolaos Martis, former Minister for Northern Greece, declared that the Macedonian nation is an invention of the Communist party of Yugoslavia.

On March 25, 1990 in a television address, President Sardzetakis said "Only native Greeks live in Greece."

The Greek government warned the former Yugoslavia that should it not stop discussing the problem of the "so-called Macedonian national minority" Greece will not render it support in cooperating with and eventually joining the EEC.

In 1990 the High Court of Florina under decision 19/33/3/1990 refused to register a Centre for Macedonian Culture. An appeal on August 9 the same year against the decision was also refused. In May 1991 a second appeal was refused by the High Court of Appeals in Solun. In June 1991 the Supreme Administrative Council of Greece in Athens dismissed a further appeal.

In June 1990 at the Copenhagen Conference on Human Rights (CHD), the Greek delegation requested that the executive secretary of the conference remove the Macedonian Human Rights delegation's literature from the non-government organization's desk. The request was refused.

Later, two Macedonian human rights campaigners from Aegean Macedonia who participated in the CHD experienced official State harassment upon their return to Greece.

One, Hristo Sideropoulos, was transferred through his work to Kefalonia, several hundred kilometres from his home place. The other participant, Stavros Anastasiadis, was given discriminatory tax penalties and dismissed from his job.

On July 20, 1990 at the village of Meliti near Lerin (Florina) a Macedonian folk festival was broken up by force by Greek authorities and police.

In its June, 1991 edition the Atlantic Monthly magazine ran an extensive story detailing many of the atrocities committed in Macedonia by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria against the Macedonian population during the Balkan Wars and following the partition of Macedonia.

The author, Robert Kaplan, also said "Greece, for its part, according to a Greek consular official whom I visited in Skopje, does not permit anyone with a "Slavic" name who was born in northern Greece and now lives in Yugoslav Macedonia to visit Greece, even if he or she has relatives there. This means that many families have been separated for ever."

On December 10, 1991 the Greek Central Committee of the Australian Labor Party in Victoria sent a letter addressed to all Victorian Labor Federal parliamentarians and all State Labor parliamentarians. The letter explicitly denies the existence of a Macedonian minority in Greece. Point 4 refers to "Misinformation claiming that an ethnic "minority" of Macedonians in Greece is being denied its cultural rights. Greece has no ethnic minority other than a Moslem religious minority."

In January, 1992, six members of the OAKKE anti-nationalist group were condemned to 6 and a half months imprisonment for putting up posters for the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia.

In February, 1992 the Guardian newspaper published an article about the town of Florina in Greece and the struggle of its Macedonian inhabitants to maintain their identity in the face of Greek repression.

On March 12, 1992 the Canberra Times ran an article, ‘What's in a Name? For Greeks a Great Deal’, by Peter Hill, the author of the section Macedonians in the official Australian Bicentenary encyclopedia the Australian People. The article affirmed the existence of a large Macedonian minority in Greece and the existence of official discrimination and the denial of human rights.

Mr. Hill said "The claim by the Greek Republic that their part of Macedonia has "one of the most homogenous populations in the world (98.5 per cent Greek)" is quite absurd. In fact, some parts of it, such as the county of Florina (Lerin), do not have any indigenous Greek inhabitants at all."

In March, 1992 the organizers of the Moomba Festival in Melbourne asked the Macedonian community participants not to use the name Macedonia on their float after representations were made to the Moomba organizers by the Greek lobby in Australia and by the Victorian Minister for Ethnic Affairs. The Macedonians refused. The ministry later said that threats to the Macedonians' safety had been received.

On April 2, 1992 the Ambassador of Greece to Australia, VS Zafiropoulos, wrote a letter to the Canberra Times newspaper in which he said "Macedonia, Greece's most northerly province, does not contain a significant minority who are ethnically related to the Slavs across the border".

"In fact, Greece is the most homogenous country in Europe and if a small number of Greeks on the border speak, beside Greek, a Slavic idiom, this bilingualism does not constitute a minority."

In May, 1992 Australian journalist Richard Farmer visited Aegean Macedonia and published an article in the Sunday Telegraph, Sydney entitled Freedom Fragile in Macedonia. The article described numerous examples of human rights abuses witnessed by Farmer, including the jamming by Greek authorities of Easter services broadcast in the Macedonian language from the Republic of Macedonia and listened to by Macedonians in Greece.

The Greek lobby in Australia subsequently took Farmer to the Press Council but were unable to deny him his right to publish.

In July, 1992 Archimandrite Nikodemos Tsarknias, a priest with the Greek Orthodox Church and a well known Macedonian human rights campaigner, and a parishioner, Photios Tzelepis, were issued with a Writ of Summons to appear in the Magistrate's Court of Solun. The priest was charged with insulting his Archbishop. He was also accused of being a homosexual and a Skopjan (Republic of Macedonia) spy.

However, a KYP (Greek Secret Service) report published in a Greek newspaper revealed that the minor charge in the Summons was a pretext to harass the priest for his human rights activism. The report says the authorities "did not find the courage to say that they kicked him out of the church for his anti-Hellenic stance and to ask for his committal to trial for high treason but instead they removed him with the lukewarm "justification" which we reveal today so that it will stain with shame all those who contributed to it."

In July 1992 the Macedonian Human Rights Association of Newcastle (Australia) published the book “The Real Macedonians” by Dr. John Shea, an Irish academic at Newcastle University. The book gives a great number of reference sources about the ethnicity of the Macedonian people, the partition of Macedonia, the ethnic cleansing and repopulation of Aegean Macedonia, and the Greek Civil War. Chapter 13 is titled “Denial Of Human Rights For Macedonian Minorities”.

On August 15, 1992 The Spectator magazine published an article, The New Bully of the Balkans, by Noel Malcolm. The article discusses the plight of the main ethnic minorities in Greece including the Macedonians, the Vlachs, and the Turks.

On the Macedonians, Mr. Malcolm asks "How many of these Slavs still live in Greece is not known. The 1940 census registered 85,000 'Slav-speakers'. The 1951 census (the last to record any figures for speakers of other languages) put it at 41,000; many who had fought on the losing side in the civil war had fled, but other evidence shows that all the censuses heavily underestimate the Slav's numbers. The lack of a question on the census-form is not, however, the only reason for their obscurity."

Mr. Malcolm says "One group of these Slavs has started a small monthly newsletter, with an estimated readership of 10,000. But they have great difficulty finding a printer (even though it is in Greek), and they say that if copies are sent through the post they tend to 'disappear'. ‘Even if we find a sympathetic printer,’ one told me, ‘he's usually too scared to take the work: he's afraid of losing his other contracts, or perhaps of getting bricks through his window."

In 1992 a spokesman for the Pan Macedonian Association of Victoria, a Greek racist organization, was interviewed on SBS television. The spokesman said that there are no Macedonians in Florina. This was a direct lie as Florina (formerly Lerin in Macedonian) is well known to have an almost exclusively Macedonian population. In fact a large number of Macedonian immigrants now living in Melbourne and Perth are from Florina. This organization has on other occasions made similar claims on SBS television.

In November, 1992 Amnesty International published a report entitled “Greece: Violations of the Right to Freedom of Expression”. This gave details on a number of human rights abuses by Greece including the repression of the Macedonian human rights campaigners, Hristos Sideropoulos and Tasos Boulis.

In November, 1992 Pollitecon Publications of Sydney published the book “What Europe Has Forgotten: The Struggle Of The Aegean Macedonians”. The book was written by the Association of Macedonians in Poland and was one of the first English language books to detail human rights abuses against the Macedonians in Greece.

On December 5, 1992 The Sydney Morning Herald published an article titled “The Balkan Dance of Death” by Bob Beale. Mr. Beale says "Greece's record of dealing with its Greek Macedonian minority is poor. A specialist in Balkan ethnic minorities, Hugh Poulton, has noted that in the wake of the bitter civil war - during and after World War II - Greece actively sought to remove Slav Macedonians from its north as ‘undesirable aliens’."

"At various times since, it has forbidden Macedonians in Greece from using the Macedonian forms of their names, removed them from official posts in Greek held Macedonia and suppressed their language - measures that led many to emigrate to places like Australia."

In January, 1993 Amnesty International published another report – “Greece: Violations of the Right to Freedom of Expression: Further Cases of Concern”. This report detailed the case of Michail Papadakis, a 17 year old school boy who had been arrested on December 10, 1992 for handing out a leaflet that said "Don't be consumed by nationalism. Alexander the Great: war criminal. Macedonia belongs to its people. There are no races; we are all of mixed descent."

In January, 1993 the Macedonian Movement for Prosperity in the Balkans held its first congress, in Sobotsko, Greece. The MMPB issued a statement highlighting Greece's discriminatory policy towards the Macedonian population and in particular the denial of basic human rights.

The MMPB said ethnic Macedonians in Greece and Macedonians in the Diaspora should cooperate closely to further ethnic, religious, linguistic and social freedoms for all people in Greece. The organization urged the Greek government to allow Macedonian political and economic refugees to return to Greece if they desired.

In February 1993 a meeting was held between the Macedonian Forum for Human Rights and the Greek Balkan Citizens' Movement to open up dialog to help solve existing problems between the two countries.

In February, 1993, Kiro Gligorov, president of the Republic of Macedonia, speaking at the United Nations on the possible admission of Macedonia to the body, criticized Greece for its treatment of its Macedonian population.

Mr. Gligorov, among other things, said "It is surprising that the Republic of Greece disputes article 49 of our Constitution which refers to the care of the Republic of Macedonia for our minority in the neighbouring countries. It should be pointed out that there is a similar provision in the Greek constitution. It is a well known fact that the Republic of Greece does not admit to the existence of Macedonians living in Greece.” From this we derive the following logical questions.

"A. If such a people does not exist in the Republic of Greece, then this article does not refer to this country and their reactions are surprising."

"B. If such a people does exist, which is indisputable, why does Greece not fulfill at least their basic rights as provided by the UN Charter, the Helsinki Document, the Charter of Paris, etc., of which it is a signatory party?"

"C. "Most important of all, is this the reason why the Republic of Greece opposes the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name?"

In March 1993, the Archimandite Nikodemos Tsarknias was defrocked and expelled from the Greek Orthodox Church for his human rights activism.

On March 26, 1993, five members of the OSE organization were put on trial for publishing and distributing a pamphlet entitled Crisis in the Balkans: the Macedonian Question and the Working Class. They were charged with exposing Greece’s friendly relations with foreign countries and the risk of disturbance; spreading false information and rumours that might cause anxiety and fear in the citizens; and inciting citizens to rivalry and division leading to disturbance of the peace.

On April 1, 1993 Macedonian human rights campaigners Hristos Sideropoulos and Tasos Boulis were put on trial after they made comments about the existence of a Macedonian population which were published in ENA magazine in March 1992. They were charged with spreading false information and rumours that might cause anxiety and fear to the citizens. They were sentenced to five months imprisonment.

The World Macedonian Congress said that the defense counsel was not allowed to present its views. An appeal was launched to the higher court in Athens.

In April, 1993 the Macedonian Information Centre in Perth republished the booklet the ABECEDAR, originally published by the Greek government in 1925 as a teaching aid for Macedonian children, but which was never distributed.

In April, 1993 the Belgian press was quoted as saying that Greece was quickly losing its democratic reputation. The press was quoted as saying that "Greece, undermining the European principles of respecting basic human rights, is placing itself at the margins of Europe."

In May, 1993 the Macedonian Movement for Balkan Prosperity, based in Arideja, Greece, said that it wanted to participate in the Macedonian-Greek dialog underway under the auspices of the United Nations to settle the issue of the name of the Republic of Macedonia. The Movement said the participation of the Macedonians in Greece was imperative and that it was time to determine the status of the Macedonians in Greece as well as those forced to leave during the Greek Civil War.



Prohibiting Macedonian folk dances in Greece



These reports were also published in the following Greek newspapers: ,,Elinikos Voras" Thessaloniki, 4.8.1959; ,,Vima" - Athens, 78.7.1959; ,,Elpheteria" - Athens, 7.7.1959; Elinikos Voras, 8.8.1959

The Stohos newspaper on 16.4.1987 wrote: “We made a list of all persons, singing in a dialect at fairs, weddings, etc. Do not sing in another language or in this ‘idiom’ except in Greek because you will curse the day you were born.”



The Stohos newspaper on 21.8.1986 wrote: “Speaking and singing in any other language other than Greek is not allowed. Cut their tongues off so we can save Greece.”



The Mahitis newspaper on 6.8.1987 wrote: “There was a wedding with folk music in the village Melitis (Vostarevo). Four cars with members of KIP (Greek Intelligence) blocked the wedding from all sides and recorded the music and the language spoken at the wedding.”


DESTROYING MACEDONIAN GRAVES IN GREECE


With the aim to wiping out any evidence of the existence of Macedonians in Greece the newspaper Stohos on 3.08.1987 wrote:



“Search well everywhere and wherever you find, in a village or in a city, a grave with Slav letters - destroy it! Do not be afraid. If someone tries to stop you tell them that your country has ordered you to do it. Place Greece, Orthodoxy and the Armed Forces in your hearts! You are Greek! Do not forget that!”


DEPRIVATION OF RIGHTS FOR MACEDONIANS

In an article in the newspaper “Ta Moglena”, published in May-June 1989, the following was written under the heading “Why”:



- Why are files, with our Macedonian names, are opened every day?
- Why do they bypass us and do not promote us to important posts?
- Why are there no Macedonians Generals in the Greek army?
- Why are Macedonians not appointed to Secretary Generals or Prefects in Macedonia?
- Why are there no Macedonian Bishops?
- Why are Macedonians recently being laid off and removed from their jobs?


Here is some advice for you: Keep yourself well informed. If you see a BMW or a Mercedes stopped in front of the café be aware that its occupants may be KIP or EUP (Intelligence services) people so be careful what you say in the café.”


ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF PROPERTY

In the first issue of the “Zora” newspaper published in Greek in October 1993, there was an article entitled “Inquiries of the Minister of Finance and Agriculture” in which facts were revealed regarding the 300 hectares of land belonging to the "St. Pantaleimon" community which was unlawfully given to the so called “Pontian Greeks” who recently immigrated from the USSR. At the meeting between the concerned citizens of Macedonian decent and the Lerin prefect they were told the following:



“Let them take not only your land but also your houses and I will do nothing because these people, the citizens of the Vetora village, are Pontian Greeks and you are Slavo-phones. Go ask for your rights at Skopje or at Sofia.”


ANTI-MACEDONIAN LAWS, REGULATIONS AND DECREES

Here are several important acts designed to deprive Macedonians of their Greek citizenship and property:



1. Decree No.LZ/47 enacted in 1947 called for: “All persons working against the Greek State will be stripped of their Greek citizenship”. By this decision all persons, supporting DAG “Democratic Army of Greece) and the CPG (Communist Part of Greece) were stripped of their Greek citizenship.


2. Decree M/48 enacted in January 1948 called for: “The confiscation of part or of the entire property of the participants or those assisting the participants, in the Partisan Movement”.


3. Decree No.48 enacted in April 1948 called for: “Anyone participating in anti-state activities would lose their properties.”


In the years following 1949 more decrees were passed, such as Decree Nos. 944, 258, 800 enacted on April 3rd and July 20th, 1951. Decree No.976/46 was enacted to repatriate people living near the Greek borders. New laws were enacted later because these were considered insufficient.

DIPLOMAS ISSUED BY MACEDONIAN UNIVERSITY NOT RECOGNIZED

The Minister of National Education and Religion considering
a) provisions of Article 46 of the Law No. 1238/82;
b) Decision No. 1/5421: proclaims that the diplomas issued by the University “St. Cyril and Metodius” in Skopje were not recognized by the Greek Ministry.

OFFICIAL DENATIONALIZATION POLICY

According to a denationalization policy, adopted in 1913, the use of Macedonian names was forbidden. Typical Greek endings were added to existing names or the names were changed entirely. The use of the word “Macedonian” was forbidden in order to avoid the possibility of claiming another ethno cultural identity outside of Greek.

RENAMING OF TOWNS AND VILLAGES


Until several years ago, Greek occupied Macedonia was officially called “Northern Greece” then in August 1988, when it became obvious the Republic of Macedonian was going to assert its independence from Yugoslavia, it was renamed to “Macedonia”.



The Greek state newspaper “Efimeriostis Kivemistos” issue # 332, November 21,1926, published the law for obligatory change of the names of all of the villages and the towns, as well as the names of the rivers, mountains and regions. By this law 588 towns and villages received names totally different from the Macedonian names that had existed for more than 12 centuries. The treacherous purpose of that action was to erase everything that was Macedonian.

__________________


How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to be so proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are acquainted with antiquity

Greek writers themselves, that they knew but little on any good foundation when they set to write, but rather wrote their histories from their own conjectures?

Josephus, Against Apion Book 1.3



SOURCE: Aegean Macedonian Association of Australia and its report The Human Rights Situation of Macedonians in Greece and Australia - Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade: Human Rights Sub-Committee, July 1993.

http://www.pollitecon.com/html/life/The_Human_Rights_Situation_of_Macedonians_in_Greece_and_Australia.htm

[George S.]

Book and other Reviews



Free downloads of Macedonian literature and memoirs at MacedonianLit.com



I just want to draw your attention to free downloads of works that I have made available at my website MacedonianLit.com which include English language translations of the folktale Silyan the Stork and the memoir of Dr. Toma Batev of his imprisonment on Goli Otok in1948, original title Mislata I dushata vo obrach. I have also made available my own memoirs: Mt. Athos, visit to a holy mountain, and Siberian Journal, which is an account of a period of teaching in Russia in 1993.



Best wishes,

Michael Seraphinoff







OPENING SPEECH BY VICTOR BIVELL AT THE BOOK LAUNCH PROMOTION ON FRIDAY 2ND DECEMBER 2011 AT The Macedonian Cultural and Education Centre “Ilinden”


Challenging Greek History-By-Slogans

By Victor Bivell



Thank you Dushan and the Australian Macedonian Literary Association. I'm very happy to launch these two short and very interesting books - The Little Book of Big Greek Lies by Risto Stefov in Canada, and Ancient Greek and Other Ancient Testimonies About the Unique Ethnic Distinctness of the Ancient Macedonians by Aleksandar Donski in Macedonia.

Let me start with the obvious - that Greek Government lies are every topical at present. They are on the front pages of the newspapers and often the lead stories on the nightly TV news. They've been there for a couple of years, and that is where they are likely to stay for a few more years while the Eurozone debt crisis gets sorted, and the Greek economy continues in recession.

We've all seen the TV news with the dramatic demonstrations and riots in Athens and outside the Greek parliament. The reporters tell us the Greek people are calling their own government "Liars" and "Thieves".

I saw one photograph of a demonstrator with a sign in English that said exactly those words - "Liars & Thieves", and I thought: that guy could be a Macedonian. Because the Macedonians have been calling the Greek Government liars and thieves for over a hundred years. The Greek Government lied about Macedonia when it was under the Turks, saying there were no Macedonians there, that they were Greeks. Then it stole half of Macedonia in 1912-13 when it sent in the Greek army, and it has been lying about Macedonia ever since.

So I look at the photos, and the TV clips, and I think perhaps the whole crowd could be Macedonian, because the Greek people have woken up to their own government and now agree with the Macedonians. Yes, we agree on something. The Greek Government has managed to do the impossible and unite Greeks and Macedonians in the same view. Miracles can happen, so let's have hope that the Greek people might keep learning the truth.

Meanwhile, it is not only the Greek people who have had their eyes opened. The rest of Europe is also amazed at the whopping great lies the Greek Government told them so that Greece could join the Euro. If you measure the lies in money, these are probably some of the biggest lies in history. Billions of Euros worth.

In 2010 a report by the European Commission accused Greece of "widespread misreporting of deficit and debt data" and "severe irregularities... including submission of incorrect data, and non-respect of accounting rules".

London's Financial Times newspaper put it less diplomatically, and accused Greece of "falsifying data" and that it "deliberately misreported" financial data. In another article the European economist Edin Mujagic called Greece a liar three times, and he also used the words "untrustworthy", "cheating", ‘manipulate", blackmail, and "massive squandering".

I'm pretty sure Dr Mujagic doesn't come from Macedonia, but he sounds like a Macedonian too.

If we look at the big picture we see that for over a hundred years the Macedonians have been saying that Greek governments have been lying about Macedonia, politics, history, human rights, and the ethnic structure of Greek society. Now the Greek people, the Europeans and the rest of the world know that Greek governments have been lying about finance and money for over 10 years.

To better connect these two sets of lies is the challenge for Macedonian activists.

That is actually not an easy thing to do. I tried two years ago when the Greek lies to enter the Eurozone first became known. But the media is much more interested in Greek lies about money than it is in Greek lies about human rights or history.

But the connection needs to be made, and it is still early days. We need the Greek people, Europeans and the rest of the world to better understand what has really been happening in Greece over the past 100 years. We need the world to better understand how dishonestly Greek governments have been treating their own people - Greeks as well as the Macedonians and other minorities - and how dishonestly Greek governments have been treating the Republic of Macedonia.

So the arrival of these two books - The Little Book of Big Greek Lies, and Ancient Testimonies about the Ancient Macedonians, if I can call it that, is very timely.

Both books tackle Greek government propaganda that is both persistent and shameless. They do this with a huge amount of very credible evidence that contradicts the Greek government's immovable position on what it euphemistically calls ‘national issues'. The Greek government and its Greek academic and Greek media cheer squad shamelessly ignore this evidence, but others will not.

As a general rule, the world outside Greece will always look at all the points of view available and make up its own mind. But as Macedonians, we have to somehow make these people interested in our points of view, in our issues, so having these books in English is a very good start.

The Little Book of Big Greek Lies is a good introduction for the general reader. It is easy to read and presents 20 of the Greek government's most blatant propaganda lines.

The government calls these ‘national issues' but really they are ‘national myths' that have the status of ‘official national myths'. They are so official that to challenge them is to risk severe criticism from other Greeks. It can risk fear and an attack of "Cambridge Courage", as happened when Cambridge University backed out of publishing the book Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood by Greek American academic Anastasia Karakasidou. And it can risk death threats, as happened to Ms Karakasidou when Chicago University found the courage that Cambridge University did not and published her book.

Mr Stefov gives us some insight into the power of these official ‘myths' in his introduction. The series of articles from which the book grew were meant to be humorous. He says "The real surprise however was the vast amount of attention the articles received, not just from Macedonians, but also from Greeks who saw the articles not as humorous but as a ‘horrible thing to do", not because they were not true but because they were "airing Greek dirty linen" in public. This series of articles has generated more feedback than all my articles put together. I received emails with criticism that ranged from being called ‘a dirty liar" to being threatened with bodily harm."

So let's look at some of these propaganda lines, these slogans, or ‘national issues' as the Greek government prefers to call them.

They cover history - "The Ancient Macedonians were Greek", "Philip II United The Greeks", "4,000 Years of Greek Civilization", and "Macedonia Was Liberated in 1912, 1913".

They cover who the Greeks think they are - "Modern Greeks are Direct Descendants of the Ancient Greeks", "Greece is an Ethnically Homogenous Nation", "Greece is a Democratic State", and "Greeks are a Superior Race".

They cover what Greeks think they contributed to the world - "The Koine Language is Greek", "The Ancient ‘Greek Gods' Were Greek", and "Macedonian Monks Kiril and Metodi Were Greek".

And of course, they know better than we do who we are, so some of the issues are about the Macedonians - "There is No Such Thing as a Macedonian", "Tito Created the Macedonian Nation", "No Macedonians, Turks, Albanians or Vlachs Live in Greece Today", "The Macedonian Language Does Not Exist", "Macedonians Are Slavs", and "No Macedonians Exist in Macedonia".

Greek governments have been carrying on a propaganda war for a very long time and every Greek and every Macedonian has heard these lines many times over.

Mr Stefov's book neatly summarizes them for all to see, discuss and debate, and refute or extend.

Some of the slogans are quite impertinent and offensive, telling Macedonians who they are and continuing to insist on it even when the Macedonians disagree, or are deeply offended.

That so many Greeks are sensitive about these propaganda lines is really not surprising. They too have had these lines repeated to them since their childhood and the lines go to the heart of what they have been told they are as a people, what they have been told about their history, what they have been told about their ethnic origins, and what they have been told about their place in the world.

If Greece were a place of intellectual freedom, where opposing views could be freely put forward and debated, analyzing these slogans would be part of normal public discourse.

But Greece is not a place of intellectual freedom. Take the slogan "No Macedonians, Turks, Albanians or Vlachs Live in Greece Today". This is the official Greek government line. To say otherwise is to risk threats and being called a ‘traitor", as happened with Greek human rights campaigner Panayote Dimitras.

A lovely feature about Big Greek Lies is that it concludes with the essay The Apology of an Anti Hellene by modern Greek writer Nikos Dimou. This is an essay that everyone should read. Mr Dimou has run into big trouble with his fellow Greeks for speaking his mind, first in 1975 when he wrote an essay that got him labeled "Dimou the anti-Hellene", and then big time in the 1990s when he says, "I rebelled against the eruption of Greek nationalism. The daily newspaper Kathimerini promptly expelled me from its ranks." Mr Dimou has lived outside Greece for many years.

All countries have national myths, ‘favoured stories', a way they prefer to see themselves, but in countries with intellectual freedom these ideas are open to discussion and debate. For example, Australians think of themselves as a "fair" people, that we treat people equally, but everyone is free to challenge that view and to give examples of where we are not fair. This is something we all love about Australia.

Likewise Macedonia. Macedonians have views about who we are, and these are sometimes seen as contradictory. But the important point is that Macedonians are free to debate the issues.

That is why I am proud to be a Macedonian in a way that I would not be proud to be a Greek. Let's take the extremely controversial example of whether the Macedonians and the Greeks are descended or ethnically related to their ancient Macedonian and ancient Greek counterparts.

The Greek view is "Modern Greeks are Direct Descendants of the Ancient Greeks". This is not a topic for public debate. To challenge that view is to risk being called unGreek, or worse, if there is such a thing.

In Macedonia, some people believe the Macedonians are direct descendants of the ancient Macedonians, some believe they are descendants from slavic invaders, and some believe they are a mixture of ancient Macedonians, slavic invaders and other peoples. Yes, the topic can generate extreme heat and it can ruin friendships.

But for me, the important part is that Macedonians are free to discuss and debate it and to freely present all available evidence. That is why at an intellectual level I am proud to be Macedonian, even though my family comes from what is now Greece.

Mr Stefov gives the general reader plenty to discuss and debate. For each propaganda line he succinctly summarizes the Greek position and then gives some of the key evidence and arguments as to why he says the claims are untrue.

We get a very nice feel for this style with the opening paragraph to Big Greek Lie No 1, that “Modern Greeks are Direct Descendants of the Ancient Greeks" subtitled "The greatest victims of Greek lies are the Greek themselves”.

“How can a region in the Balkans where modern Greece is located today, which has been open to a multitude of invasions, conquests and settlements, remain homogenous and untouched for two thousand seven hundred years? Ironically, as the Greeks claim, how can modern Macedonia, a region neighbouring modern Greece, be so heterogenous that it has completely lost its original identity?”

That's a good question, and the author then discusses some of the key developments that have formed the modern Greek people, and concludes with an excellent quote from professor Donald Nicol “The ancient Greeks were after all, of very mixed ancestry; and there can be no doubt that the Byzantine Greeks, both before and after the Slav occupation, were even more heterogeneous.”

This is the book's style with all 20 Big Lies. It does not try to do too much or labor the point, but is a very good introduction to each slogan.

Each ‘Big Lie' could be developed into a full book, and that is what Aleksandar Donski has done with his book, which focuses on the slogan "The Ancient Macedonians were Greek".

The world hears this line over and over, and in his introduction Mr Donski explains why. “It is of great importance to Greece to prove that the name Macedonia and the ancient Macedonians were “Greek”, which means that today's Macedonians “have no historical right” to use these “Greek names”.”

This Greek logic can also be applied to the Greeks. If the modern Greeks are not direct descendants of the ancient Greeks, as Mr Stefov and many others argue, then they have no more right to the heritage of the ancient Greeks than anyone else. That is why they keep asserting they are direct descendants.

But the Greek position on the ancient Macedonians also needs to be challenged head on, and Mr Donski's approach is to quote the ancients themselves, particularly the ancient Greeks. The 212 page book is a deep mine of quotes from some of the ancient world's most famous writers and leaders, all of them saying or implying that the Macedonians and the Greeks were ethnically separate people and nations.

Among the more than 60 ancients he quotes are the Macedonian kings Alexander the Great, Philip II and Philip V; leading Greeks Aecshines, Appian, Arrian, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Homer, Isocrates, Pausanias, Plutarch, Polybius, Praxagoras, Theopompus, and Thucydides; leading Romans Cicero, Diodorus Siculus, Flamininus, Justin, Livy, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Seneca, and Tacitus.

Other historical figures quoted are Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Agrippa, Strabo, Clement of Alexandria, Josephus Flavius, and Tatian the Assyrian.

These are some of the most renowned figures in the ancient world, and all of them had something to say about the Macedonians and how they were different from the Greeks. Some examples:

Donski writes: "Justin clearly separated the Macedonians from the Greeks when he writes about the preparations of the Macedonian army before the battle of Issus, too. It is well known that Alexander at the time divided his troops by nationality. He talked about all the different reasons of the importance of this battle to all the troops, of all nationalities, in order to lift their spirits. Here we see that he was a great psychologist as well. We read:

"He excited the Illyrians and Thracians by describing the enemy's wealth and treasures, and the Greeks by putting them in mind of their wars of old, and their deadly hatred towards the Persians. He reminded the Macedonians at one time of their conquests in Europe, and at another of their desire to subdue Asia, boasting that no troops in the world had been found a match for them, and assuring them that this battle would put an end to their labours and crown their glory."

Donski comments: "We can see that all four peoples, the main core of the Macedonian army, are separately mentioned, those being Illyrians, Thracians, Greeks and Macedonians."

Of course there were many more Greeks against Alexander than with him in Asia, including at the Battle of Issus, where Alexander and the Greeks had a major confrontation. Donski quotes Arrian:

"But as soon as Darius was certified of Alexander's approach for battle, he conveyed about 30,000 of his cavalry and with them 20,000 of his light-armed infantry across the river Pinarus, in order that he might be able to draw up the rest of his forces with ease. Of the heavy armed infantry, he placed first the 30,000 Greek mercenaries to oppose the phalanx of the Macedonians."

Donski says "Here we see that the number of Greeks who fought in the Persian army against Alexander was at least 30,000, like Alexander presumed. We can see that these Greek units were sent to fight against the strongest part of the Macedonian army - the Macedonian phalanx.

"Arrian says that this battle had the biggest clash between the Greeks and Macedonians, and the main reason was the great hatred between these two peoples. Arrian writes:

"This was a violent struggle. Darius' Greeks fought to thrust the Macedonian back into the water and save the day for their left wing, already in retreat, while the Macedonians, in their turn, with Alexander's triumph plain before their eyes, were determined to equal his success... The fight was further embittered by the old racial rivalry of Greek and Macedonian."

Donski comments "The ancient Greek historian Arrian, using data and information from the Macedonian historians Ptolemy and Aristobulus, clearly wrote that "old racial rivalry" existed between the Macedonians and the Greeks. This is one of the highest levels of impatience and hatred that can exist between two nations. So who, after this statement, can claim that the Macedonians and the Greeks were the "same nation"? What kind of members of the same nation have "racial rivalry" i.e. "racial hatred" between each other?"

The Roman philosopher and senator Cicero spent a year in Macedonia. Donski writes: "In one of his works called "In Pisonem" (written around 55 BC and dedicated to his friend Piso), Cicero clearly mentions the borders on that day's Greek countries. Here we read: "...all Achaia, and Thessaly, and Athens, in short the whole of Greece, was made over to you."

"We can practically see that for Cicero it was very clear that Greece was made of Achaia, a territory around Athens and Thessaly. Macedonia isn't even mentioned as a "Greek country" at all."

For a Jewish perspective, the book quotes the historian Josephus Flavius, who wrote about the Seleucid Macedonians who ruled the Holy Land.

Writing about the death of the leader, Judas Maccabee, Flavius says he "left behind him a glorious reputation and memorial, by gaining freedom for his nation, and delivering them from slavery under the Macedonians."

On the same subject: "The nation of the Jews recovered their freedom when they had been brought into slavery by the Macedonians."

He also said the Jews were "under the government of the Macedonians", that "Onias saw that Judea was oppressed by the Macedonians and their kings", and that Simon Maccabee "freed the Jews from the dominion of the Macedonians, after one hundred and seventy years of empire".

Donski comments: "All of this is extraordinary important information especially because in a lot of world encyclopedias and other works it is untruthfully written that the Seleucids supposedly spread "Greek culture and language" in their state, that they built "Greek cities" etc... we can see from the testimonies himself Flavius made that the Jews were completely aware that they were under Macedonian (and not Greek) slavery."

Flavius himself clearly distinguishes between Greeks and Macedonians. Donski says: "For example, while writing about the Jewish migration in the Asia Minor cities by the Macedonian ruler Seleucus Nicator, Flavius writes: "The Jews also obtained honours from the kings of Asia when they became their auxiliaries; for Seleucus Nicator made them citizens in those cities which he built in Asia, and in the lower Syria, and in the metropolis itself, Antioch; and gave them privileges equal to those of the Macedonians and the Greeks, who were the inhabitants..."

The book has many more equally interesting quotes, but let me finish with this one from Tatian the Assyrian as this also ties back to the Stefov book and the many things in civilization that Greeks claim are theirs. Tatian wrote Tatian's Address to the Greeks, where, says Donski, he criticizes ancient Greek authors for claiming for Greeks what they do not deserve, and where he lists parts of science and art which the Greeks took from other nations and later proclaimed as their own.

Tatian wrote "The Greeks claim, without reason, the invention of the arts. Be not, O Greeks, so very hostilely disposed towards the Barbarians, nor look with ill will on their opinions. For which of your institutions has not been derived from the Barbarians? The most eminent of the Telmessians invented the art of divining by dreams; the Carians, that of prognosticating by the stars; the Phrygians and the most ancient Isaurians, augery by the flight of birds; the Cyprians, the art of inspecting victims. To the Babylonians you owe astronomy; to the Persians, magic; to the Egyptians, geometry; to the Phoenicians, instruction by alphabetic writing. Cease, then, to miscall these imitations inventions of your own. Orpheus, again, taught you poetry and song; from him, too, you learned the mysteries. The Tuscans taught you the plastic art; from the annals of the Egyptians you learned to write history; you acquired the art of playing the flute from Marsyas and Olympus - these two rustic Phrygians constructed the harmony of the shepherd's pipe. The Tyrrhenians invented the trumpet; the Cyclopes, the smith's art; and a woman who was formerly a queen of the Persians, as Hellanicus tells us, the method of joining together epistolary tablets: her name was Atossa. Wherefore lay aside this conceit, and be not ever boasting of your elegance of diction; for, while you applaud yourselves, your own people will of course side with you. But it becomes a man of sense to wait for the testimony of others, and it becomes men to be of one accord also in the pronunciation of their language. But, as matters stand, to you alone it has happened not to speak alike even in common discourse; for the way of speaking among the Dorians is not the same as that of the inhabitants of Attica, nor do the Aeolians speak like the Ionians. And, since such a discrepancy exists where it ought not to be, I am at a loss whom to call Greek. And, what is strangest of all, you hold in honour expressions not of native growth, and by the admixture of barbaric words have made your language a medley. On this account we have renounced your wisdom, though I was once a great proficient in it."

Donski comments: "Many of these notes made by Tatian the Assyrian are really significant for some of today's Greeks as well. As for the subject we're covering, we can clearly see that while mentioning the Greek dialects, this early Christian writer does not mention the Macedonian language as a "Greek dialect"."

So to sum up, we have two excellent books that can help cut through the reams of Greek government propaganda that Macedonians and the world have suffered for too long.

Technically, the books are not perfect as they both have a number of small typos and would have benefited from a final sub-edit by a native English speaker. But these are not enough to seriously annoy the average reader.

The quality of the content comes through loud and clear. So buy the books and enjoy them. Get some extras for your interested friends, your library and your local politicians.

With the subject of Greek government lies so topical, these books are a good way to show that lies about big money are just the start of what is in the Greek government's cupboard. Help open the closet. Greece needs less history by fanatical assertion, less history by slogan, and more history by public debate. Let's help good Greeks to be free to discuss these issues without fear of self imposed exile, being called a traitor, or death threats. Open debate in Greece is the way forward for Greece and Macedonia.

Both books can be ordered from Dushan Ristevski at the Australian Macedonian Literary Association at [email protected]

[George S.]

"We have unsubstantiated reports that elements in the Bulgarian embassy here are working closely with Greek colleagues on activities that are not in our interests."


US Amb. Reeker, Skoje, RoMk, 29-Jul-2009

---------------------------

http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/07/09SKOPJE369.html

Viewing cable 09SKOPJE369,

MACEDONIA: LESSONS LEARNED FROM NATO ADVISORY TEAM

Reference ID: 09SKOPJE369
Created: 2009-07-29 07:06
Released: 2011-08-30 01:44
Classification: CONFIDENTIAL
Origin: Embassy Skopje

VZCZCXRO8843
PP RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHNP RUEHROV RUEHSL RUEHSR
DE RUEHSQ #0369 2100706
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 290706Z JUL 09
FM AMEMBASSY SKOPJE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8432
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY 0544
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
PRIORITY

CONFIDENTIAL

SKOPJE 000369

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/26/2019
TAGS: PREL PGOV MOPS NATO MK BU NL
SUBJECT: MACEDONIA: LESSONS LEARNED FROM NATO ADVISORY TEAM
SNAFU

Classified By: Ambassador Reeker for reasons 1.5 (b) and (d).

1. (C) Summary: The assignment of Bulgarians to both the commander and deputy positions of the NATO Advisory Team for Macedonia is not in U.S. interests. End summary.

2. (C) We learned off-line in early June that Bulgaria was the only Ally who volunteered to fill the "Chief NAT" position in Skopje, i.e., the deputy position at the NATO Advisory Team for Macedonia. As we understood it, the plan had been for the former Dutch DATT to take the Chief NAT position, but it appears that the Dutch government did not move precipitously to effect this. We then worked with Naples, USNATO, SHAPE, and the Dutch to turn this around, but it now appears that the Dutch DATT will almost certainly not be assigned, and the momentum remains that the next Chief NAT will be a Bulgarian. A Bulgarian, Commodore Valentin Gagashev, already holds the NAT Commander slot.

3. (C) The negative consequences for NATO's engagement in Macedonia could be significant. Bulgaria and Macedonia are wary neighbors at best. Part of the larger Macedonian region
became part of Bulgaria as a consequence of the Balkan Wars, and Bulgarian fascists occupied present-day Macedonia during World War II. To this day, there are elements in Bulgaria who consider the modern state of Macedonia as a historical mistake, and many Bulgarians do not recognize the Macedonian language as separate from their own. While a number of Macedonians work in Bulgaria and hold Bulgarian passports as a matter of convenience, we should not mistake this for deep affection. We have unsubstantiated reports that elements in
the Bulgarian embassy here are working closely with Greek colleagues on activities that are not in our interests.

4. (C) Regardless of the intentions of the new Chief NAT, it makes no sense from a NATO perspective that the commander and chief would come from the same country, especially a
neighbor, and especially a country so new to the Alliance.
Macedonia, and our interests here, would be far better served -- as in the past -- by a NAT leadership steeped in NATO experience from established Allies with no "negative baggage"
here (such as Greece). Macedonia needs advisors in the NAT who have established relationships within NATO and know how to manage the unique bureaucracy at SHAPE. This is why the
Dutch DATT was the ideal choice. When CHOD LTG Stojanovski learned that the new Chief NAT would be from Bulgaria, he was incensed and called SHAPE immediately. His response should have been predictable: many Macedonians do not trust Bulgaria. Thus the assignment of Bulgarians to run the NAT calls into question NATO's commitment to Macedonia, especially since a number of Macedonian military contacts had told us that they viewed the assignment of the Dutch DATT as a signal of NATO's commitment to again send its "A-team" here.

5. (C) The new NAT commander, Commodore Gagashev, is by all accounts a professional and working in good faith. While we understand he privately believes it would be a mistake for
his deputy to also be a Bulgarian, he cannot force the issue within his national command structure. While it is likely too late for the Dutch DATT to be assigned to this position, we would ask that Washington, USNATO, and Embassy Sofia work to issue to ensure a better outcome for U.S. and NATO interests in Macedonia.

REEKER

[George S.]

Kiro Gligorov Passed Away

Translated and edited by Risto Stefov

January 2nd, 2010

http://www.fakulteti.mk/news/12-01-0..._gligorov.aspx

First President of Independent Macedonia, 94 year old Kiro Gligorov died in his sleep yesterday at his home in Skopje.

Kiro Gligorov was elected President of the Republic of Macedonia on January 27, 1991 and served until November 19, 1999.


His funeral will be held tomorrow at 1 pm at the Butel cemetery where his body will be on display in the chapel starting at 12 o’clock.

Kiro Gligorov, born with the name Kiro Panchev on May 3rd, 1917 in Shtip, was a Macedonian politician and lawyer. He was the first President of the Republic of Macedonia and served two terms from 1991 to 1999. For his first term, Gligorov was elected on January 27, 1991 by the Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia. For his second term he was elected on November 19, 1994 through presidential elections and served until November 19, 1999.

During his two terms Gligorov promoted an “equidistant” approach to all of Macedonia’s neighbours Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. Some of the most important events in the history of contemporary Macedonia took place during Gligorov’s terms in office which included:



the September 8th, 1991 referendum declaring Macedonia’s independent of Yugoslavia. The separation took place peacefully.



the adoption of a new constitution which took place on November 17, 1991 and Macedonia becoming the 181st member to join the United Nations on April 8, 1993.

In 2005 Gligorov (together with Boris Trajkovski) became the first recipient of the “Order of the Republic of Macedonia”.







Почина Киро Глигоров

http://www.fakulteti.mk/news/12-01-0..._gligorov.aspx

Во сон во својот дом во Скопје, синоќа на 94-годишна возраст починал Киро Глигоров, првиот претседател на независна Македонија.

киро глигоров

Информацијата ја потврди кабинетот на Глигоров, кој беше избран за претседател на Република Македонија на 27 јануари 1991 година и беше на функцијата до 19 ноември 1999 година.
Погребот ќе се изврши утре во 13 часот на гробиштата Бутел, во кругот на најтесното семејство, а телото ќе биде изложено во капела од 12 часот.

Киро Глигоров (родено име: Киро Панчев) (Штип, 3 мај 1917) е македонски политичар и правник, кој беше првиот Претседател на Република Македонија, функцијата која ја извршуваше во два мандати од 1991 до 1999 година. За претседател на РМ бил избран на 27 јануари 1991 година од страна на Собранието на Република Македонија, а по втор пат на 19 ноември 1994 на претседателски избори. Функцијата претседател на Републиката ја врши до 19 ноември 1999 година.

Во текот на своите два мандати ја промовира политиката на "eквидистанца" кон сите соседи на земјата: Србија, Црна Гора, Бугарија, Грција и Албанија. За време на неговиот мандат се случиле некои од најважните настани од современата историја на Република Македонија: на референдум била прогласена независноста на земјата на 8 септември 1991 година, а Македонија била и единствената од поранешните југословенски републики која се осамостоила по мирен пат. На 17 ноември 1991 бил донесен новиот Устав, а на 8 април 1993 година Република Македонија станала 181 членка на Обединетите нации.

Заедно со Борис Трајковски, Глигоров во 2005 година станал прв носител на „Орден на Република Македонија”.

[George S.]

The Great Lie – Chapter 10



By Petre Nakovski

Translated and edited by Risto Stefov

[email protected]

January 8, 2012



In a half-lit room, sitting by the table placed in front of the window with a view of Mount Bela Voda, Zahariadis was writing something. He took a small break, just enough to take two or three sips of his tea, and at that moment he heard a quiet knock on the door. He put his cup to the side, collected his papers and placed them inside a newspaper. He opened his appointment book and looked to see with whom he had an appointment. There was a second knock on the door. He stood up, walked to the door and pulled the latch. The platoon duty officer from the General Secretary Security services stood at attention and announced:



“Comrade Bardzotas has requested to see you sir! He awaits your response. What should I tell him Comrade Zahariadis?”



“Let him in…” responded Zahariadis with a disappointed tone of voice as he walked back to his table.



“Moments later Bardzotas appeared at the wide open door and after entering he apologetically said: “Forgive me Nikos, for disturbing you so early…” and, while looking out the corner of his eye at the mass of unfinished papers, asked, “Did I interrupt your work?”



“No, not at all. The newspaper,” said Zahariadis in a stretched, yawning voice while pointing at the newspaper tossed in a pile of maps and papers, “I have been browsing the newspaper and drinking tea. Tea, will you have some tea? It is Georgian you know. Even Comrade Stalin drinks tea in the morning. Will you have some?”



Zahariadis, in the morning and evening, always served his guests Georgian tea, be it his visitors, people he had conversations with, or his closest aids. They all drank with him and continued to drink with him for as long as he was drinking. It was considered a special honour and despite burning their lips they slurped the tea to let him know that they were enjoying it; a sign of great pleasure. After that they often, in their circles, would say in passing: “You know, yesterday I had tea with Comrade Zahariadis…” just to let everyone know that they had friends in high places and to watch with whom they were messing!



When there was no Georgian tea, mountain tea harvested from Mount Gramos, Odreto, or from Mount Vrba in D’mbeni was brewed in the large teapot.



People from the Security Services platoon knew his weaknesses and always made sure that they brought him mountain tea in their backpacks.



“Georgian tea?!” inquired Bardzotas with an expressionless but captivating tone of voice.

“It would be a sin if I did not have tea from the homeland of the great Stalin. Of course I will have some… please.” He knew that if he refused he would offend Stalin and Zahariadis. “I will have some, why not, even two cups! It is cold this morning and it will feel good to have some tea…” said Bardzotas with an appealing smile on his face.



While Zahariadis filled the cups with tea and placed them on the tray made of pure silver, Bardzotas justified his unannounced arrival:



“I, Nikos, came early to see you because I received an interesting letter from Paskalis.”



Bardzotas pulled out an envelope from his officer’s leather briefcase, opened it, put it on the table and asked: “Will you read it or should I read it to you?”



Zahariadis handed him a cup of tea, looked at the letter and with an indifferent tone of voice said, “You read it!”



Bardzotas detected some dissatisfaction in Zahariadis’s tone of voice but it seemed more like impatience. He reached for the letter but with the outside of his hand he knocked Zahariadis’s pile of papers causing some dust to fly and then began to read:



“Dear Vassilis,



We are thinking about the congress. We believe there should be a formal part, with a festive event, one colour and celebration which will increase interest and strengthen the fighting spirit. It will greatly help our preparation and appearance if we had slogans photographs, symbolic shows, etc.



For that purpose we consider it necessary to put together several illustrated displays.



First. We will put together an illustrated poster symbolizing unity between a Slavo-Macedonian man and woman and a Greek man and woman, fighters of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece). Standing opposite one another they will be holding a rifle in one hand and offering their other hand in a gesture symbolizing a call to arms in a joint struggle. Standing behind them will be other fighters, men and women.



Written on the poster will be the slogans:


BROTHERHOOD

UNITY
INDEPENDENCE
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC”



Bardzotas stopped reading for a moment and, while extending the letter to Zahariadis, he pointed with his finger:



“Look Nikos, Paskalis wrote a slogan in their language. It has been written in Slav letters, and further down, here you see it? Here is the written translation in the Greek language.”



Zahariadis read the Greek text and while shaking his head said: “The part that has been written in their language looks to me like it was written in broken Russian. Vassilis, continue reading…”



Bardzotas shook the page and continued:



“Second. We will put together another poster that will symbolize the national liberation fighters and the national aspirations of the Macedonian people.”



Zahariadis raised his hand and repeated, “The national liberation fighters and the national aspirations of the Macedonian people… Too many words, too many words, don’t you think Vassilis? Too many…” muttered Zahariadis and motioned for Bardzotas to continue reading.



“The poster will show a representation of a Macedonian man and woman…”



Bardzotas stopped reading for a moment and looked at Zahariadis’s face, gesturing that he wanted his opinion, but before Zahariadis had a chance to react he asked: “Further up Paskalis wrote about a Slavo-Macedonian man and woman and here, as if changing his position, he writes a Macedonian man and woman! Did you notice this, Nikos?”



“Yes, Vassilis, I noticed it, it is sad. The man, but not only him, seems as if he is lost or pretends that he is lost. Here Slavo-Macedonian, there Macedonian. He still has no clear idea, the poor man… of the concept. Continue reading!” responded Zahariadis.



“I will continue. Here is what he says further down: ‘… in folk dress and with chains on their feet, tossed and broken. In the middle and slightly ahead there will be a Partisan carrying a shmaizer (rifle) that will represent the combat vanguard…’”



“What?!” Zahariadis shouted angrily.



“What, what?” replied Bardzotas.



“What is this Partisan with a shmaizer who will represent the combat vanguard? Did it not enter into his head our Fifth Plenum, during which we definitely decided that we are already an army? We always talk about an army, about a peoples’ revolutionary democratic army and here he writes about some Partisan! Good that he did not write Komita (armed revolutionary from the 1903 Ilinden Uprising against the Ottomans)! You should personally explain to him our Fifth Plenum resolutions. Continue reading,” Zahariadis angrily exclaimed and began to pace around the room.



“Okay. I will continue… Here is what he wrote further down: ‘… and behind him Partisians and others will follow as proof of the mass participation of our people in their unified struggle, workers and peasants fighting side by side with the progressive intelligentsia…’”



“Again he got mixed up, the poor man,” said Zahariadis mockingly. “He is really mixed up. A true ‘buchkurush’ salad. In one poster, think about it Vassilis, Slavo-Macedonians, Macedonians, DAG fighters, Partisans, village people, workers, progressive intellectuals, but he forgot what’s most important! The Party, Vassilis, he forgot the Party! He forgot that at the head of that table stands the Party! The Party, he forgot the Party which is the heart and brain! You should remind him of that when you see him! Read!”



“Okay. I will remind him. I will continue to read: ‘At the front and on top, on one side there will be fire, which will represent military action and on the other there will be a sun which will rise, as an expression of the peoples’ national liberation which is forthcoming…’” Bardzotas was interrupted.



“Фантазер изобразителъного исскуства” (dreamer of fine arts) said Zahariadis in Russian as he laughed quietly. “Read!”



“Okay. ‘On the front and side of the poster the following slogans will be written:



STRUGGLE
VICTORY
NATIONAL LIBERATION’”


“Let me see that!” interrupted Zahariadis extending his hand. “This is almost written in Russian! If only the last two words were written ‘националъное освобождение’ (national liberation) then the entire slogan would be written in Russian and some would say that the Russians, not our Party, are in charge of NOF (Peoples’ Liberation Front). There is a great similarity. They are almost the same! What can you do, they are Slavic languages! And they are nicely set – ordered like steps on a staircase, of course, first comes the struggle, followed by victory and after victory comes national liberation. Vassilis, read!” concluded Zahariadis.



“Three. We will create badges, in honour of and in memory of the Congress. On top of the badge it will say ‘NOF’ and on the bottom ‘II Congress’. We will make 500 copies of each illustrated poster and of the badges. We here do not have the means or the capability to do these jobs. Therefore we ask that you accept our proposal and have them made abroad. We can send you a person who has some ideas and understanding of painting and who can help. You should be aware that we have scheduled the Congress to take place on March 25th. It would also be a good idea if at this Congress we give each delegate a gift; a pack of cigarettes for each man and a chocolate bar for each woman…”



Bardzotas stopped reading.



“Is that it?” asked Zahariadis.



“That’s it in regards to the Congress but there is something else,” said Bardzotas opening a second envelope.



“Nikos, I have one more letter from Paskalis…”



“Does he want something again?” inquired Zahariadis.



“He wants something but it’s mostly information…” replied Bardzotas.



“What about?” interrupted Zahariadis.



“About some irregularities, according to him…” replied Bardzotas.



“Read…” interrupted Zahariadis.



“Here is what he has written: ‘Another issue that we need to consider and which I bring to your attention is the desperate economic situation of the population in the areas of Popole and Kostenaria in Kostur Region especially after the recent massive expulsions. Many families took whatever they could carry, grain and livestock and fled for the free territories. Their grain however was confiscated by our army because it was needed for its own consumption. Similarly, their sheep were also confiscated under the condition that the army would return them after the families were settled in the villages in the free territories. Unfortunately many of the flocks have already been slaughtered for our Army’s consumption and what remains has been mixed with our trophy sheep, looked after by our 14th brigade. The families have now been settled in the free territories and are asking for the return of at least some of their sheep, which to date the brigade has not yet returned. Please look into these complaints and see what you can do. I must emphasize that in economic terms their situation is dire and their lives are in peril.



Also, our cadres working in the Kostur Region village fields have informed us that our quartermasters have been taking the entire crop from the villagers and have been leaving nothing for the families to eat. This has happened in the villages Tikveni, Zhilanishta, Izglebi and Zhelin.



On another matter, many Slavo-Macedonian cadres in DAG are underestimated…” paused Bardzotas, turning the page and continuing “… and they are treated as ordinary fighters while Greek cadres from Bulkesh are immediately promoted to assistants to the political commissars in the brigades responsible for the security of the battalion, quartermasters, etc…’



In addition here is a summary of what Paskalis wrote…”



“Don’t summarize, read!” ordered Zahariadis.



“Okay then. Here is what Paskalis wrote: ‘the attitude of some Greek cadres such as Patsouras and Araianos for example, is appalling, especially when they yell orders like ‘kill everyone who does not listen’, in public. This was happening at the beginning when territories were being establishing and people were shuffled from one place to another and did not know what was expected of them. This heartless attitude was also exhibited by the carriers of the wounded and by the workers, thus creating unfavourable working conditions for people, resulting in the desertion of many women... Some quartermasters and Partisans from the 107th Brigade also engaged in tyrannical and anti-social behaviour in the villages Armensko and Buf. One old Partisan terrorized the population in Armensko and did whatever he wanted. He literally took the bread out of peoples’ mouths. He was reported to the authorities but instead of arresting and trying him by military court, they allowed him to continue to go to the village and still terrorize the people.



On another matter, apples and tobacco were stolen from the village Buf. Quartermasters from the 11th division went to some houses in Armensko and took hay and grain without permission. They took 320 oki (an oka is a Turkish measure greater than a kilogram) of grain from Stavrovitsa Kurteva. From Ilia Tsutsov, a Partisan, they took 5 loads of hay and 40 oki of grain. From Iliov, a Partisan, they took the entire crop of tobacco that he had stored in his house. From Iovan Iovanov, a Partisan, they took 8 loads of hay. From Ristovitsa Iliovska they took 20 loads of hay and they took all of Kosta Markulov’s hay.



On another matter a quartermaster from the 107th Brigade, by the name of Spiros Pirei, was overheard advising young ladies in Buf to ‘take up guns and then desert to the Burantari (the enemy)’. A brigade chief was heard cursing the carriers of the wounded, wishing for them all to ‘die’ and afterwards he kept them out in the rain isolated in the forest for twenty-four hours. Some who had no overcoats he sent to Kolomnati to sleep in the church.



This kind of cruelty motivated Atina Gelemisinova to desert from the worker’s brigade. She, along with her mother, is now in jail at the Peoples’ Militia prison in the village Zhelevo. This woman had two brothers, DAG fighters, one was killed and the other was crippled in the battles in Gramos. The Peoples’ Militia has behaved very badly and has shown extreme cruelty towards the people…’”



Bardzotas stopped reading, placed the letter back into his briefcase and, after thinking for a moment, pulled out a yellow envelope, looked at Zahariadis and said, “This, Nikos, is addressed to you…”



“Who is it from?” inquired Zahariadis.



“It’s from Paskalis…” answered Bardzotas.



“Open it and read it to me!” requested Zahariadis.



“Give me a moment,” replied Bardzotas while attempting to break the wax seal with his trembling fingers and open the envelope. The letter he pulled out was written in pencil on both sides of the paper. Bardzotas examined the writing carefully on both sides and said, “It’s good his handwriting is clear…”



“He is educated… A lawyer… Now read!” ordered Zahariadis.



“Okay,” replied Bardzotas and began reading.



“Comrade Nikos,



The information about the cruelty that occurred in the villages Gorno and Dolno Drenoveni, Kolomnati, Pozdivishta and Gabresh, about which I informed you a few days ago, was given to me by a person named Dimitrios Soukaris from the village Tsrnovishta. He is responsible for the refugee children in Oshchima. The woman’s name that was assaulted is Lambrovitsa Petropoulou and she is from Gorno Drenoveni. The Partisans who assaulted her are from the 14th Brigade. Dimitrios does not know their names, they were at the village during the night. At the same time they slaughtered a pig and took it, cracked a cask of wine, took about 50 oki and left the rest to drain into the ground. At the same time they assaulted two more women from the same village and forced the three to dance the ‘Eleno Mome’ dance. Lambrovitsa Petropoulou has three sons, Partisans, who served in DAG. One was killed and the other two were wounded. She also has a daughter serving as a Partisan and a second daughter assisting the refugee children in the Eastern European countries.



Dimitrios Soukaris also mentioned that the fighter Dime Popadin from the village Gorno Drenoveni who was serving in the 14th Brigade of DAG went to the village for something and found his wife and mother distressed from the assault and abuse they received from the DAG fighters from the 14th brigade. The next day Dime and his wife surrendered to the enemy in the Bukovik Locality. Dime was a Partisan since May 1947 and was wounded in the Gramos battles.



Dimitrios Soukaris also told me that several DAG fighters from the 14th Brigade broke into Petros Panopoulos’s house in the village Tsrnovishta and wanted to take things without permission. Petros Panopoulos is the father of three Partisans who have been wounded in battle. Petro’s wife tried to stop them but they overpowered her, beat her and one of them stepped on her stomach. Panopoulos told Soukaris that after that incident every night he stood in front of the house with an axe in his hands and he was prepared to kill everyone who came to the house. And if this situation continued, he said, he would burn his house down and flee to Kostur where he would report the incident to the newspapers…



Soukaris told me that at night when Partisans come knocking on their doors, people hide in the attic because they are afraid...”



“That’s all there is in the letter, Comrade Nikos…” concluded Bardzotas.



“Did Paskalis propose anything?” inquired Zahariadis.



“Yes he did… He proposed that appropriate measure be taken to punish the perpetrators...” replied Bardzotas.



“And you, Bardzotas, as a political commissar of the General Staff, do you have any knowledge of what the people are saying?” inquired Zahariadis.



“The people? The people, Nikos, are cursing. They are cursing,” replied Bardzotas.



“That’s bad, very bad… When the people curse it means that they are dissatisfied and are losing confidence… Yes… We need to restore their confidence, right?” added Zahariadis.



“Yes, it is understandable,” confirmed Bardzotas. He then went on to read what Paskalis wrote:



“Here is a statement from three women from the village Visheni, Kostur Region. They have complained about their children who we recently brought back from the Eastern European countries and mobilized in our army. They argue that their children are only 15 years old and are now serving in the 8th Unit of the 3rd Battalion. This is a serious issue being discussed in wider circles of people and there are criticisms, protests and controversies associated with it. Other mothers that have children in the Eastern European countries are angry, coming here crying and complaining and having fears that we will mobilize them as well and as such are seeking to have them returned to them. This kind of bad publicity is sure to be used by our enemies and rogue elements to create a negative atmosphere for us. There are rumours circulated that the majority of the mobilized children have been killed and wounded and some have been captured by the enemy. It is important that we, from our side, put together a commission to investigate this. It would be good if you too would look into this matter, of course, in the framework of determining our military needs.”



Zahariadis stopped pacing. Standing with his back to Bardzotas, thoughtfully and with a stern voice, said: “A strictly kept secret has been leaked. This is not a matter for NOF, but a matter for the General Staff, especially of the Second Bureau! Immediately, today, now, start the investigation. The culprits that did this must be found and severely punished!” ordered Zahariadis.



“This is not all, Nikos. Paskalis also wrote...” replied Bardzotas.



“You came to me with good news, Vassilis!” interrupted Zahariadis.



“Here is what else Paskalis wrote,” continued Bardzotas. “Another issue to consider is the question of the Slavo-Macedonians, in the Eastern European countries, not being schooled in the Macedonian language. This is a weakness of the Organization that to this day this issue has not been resolved. We will need your help. We want you to give us the teachers serving in DAG, who, as a result of bad wounds, can no longer fight. We can use them as teachers to teach our people.”



Zahariadis suddenly stood up in front of Bardzotas, stared him in the eyes and with a quiet, calculating, hissing and threatening voice, asked:



“Tell me, did we have or did we not have Macedonian schools working in the free and semi-free territories from December 1947 to February 1948? Yes or no?!” demanded Zahariadis.



Bardzotas adjusted himself, fixed his glasses and said:



“I, Nikos, as you know am responsible for military issues and not for education…”



“But you are a member of the Central Committee Polit-Bureau,” yelled Zahariadis in an angry voice, “and your duty is also to be interested in these things! Aren’t you a political commissar of the General Staff? If not you then who will comprehend the political damage done, eh?! And why do you think Paskalis sent you the letter, and not someone else? If the children were learning their native tongue under war conditions here then why have provisions not been made for them to learn their native language under the more ideal conditions, eh! Can you explain that to them?” demanded Zahariadis and after taking a few nervous steps around the room, stopped behind Bardzotas’s back and yelled out:



“I will tell you why, because someone out there is bent on sabotaging our entire political work with the Slavo-Macedonians. What we say? Whatever we promise? Whatever we ask of them? We need to begin an investigation immediately, find the culprits and send them to the front! Call Paskalis and tell him that we in the Polit-Bureau have carefully read and analyzed his letter, drawn some conclusions and will be taking severe measures to uncover the culprits. And also this; he is to call a meeting with his people from NOF and from AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front) and let them know that in regards to learning their native language we have contacted the highest political authorities in our Party and they are doing everything they can to push aside these problems. Tell him we have taken all necessary measures to improve all conditions.



They will be happy to hear of this and they will be proud. Paskalis too among them will improve his situation of disunity. Also, give Paskalis my regards and assure him that I personally have pledged to make things right. Don’t stand here, go now and ask for him to come to you. Find him before those in Skopje find out about this. Go! If those in Skopje find out about this there will be problems for us. Go, you are free to go!” concluded Zahariadis.

[George S.]

The Great Lie – Chapter 11 – Part 1



By Petre Nakovski

Translated and edited by Risto Stefov

[email protected]

January 15, 2012



During the Main NOF (People’s Liberation Front) Council meeting a checklist of people expected to speak and the sequence in which they were scheduled to make their speeches was made. Then after some discussion it was decided to welcome a representative of the women’s division responsible for digging trenches and carrying logs and stones for building bunkers in the Vicho Region. But despite the warm welcome there were some opposing voices.



“And what will an uneducated woman have to say?” the AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front) secretary for Kostur Region was first to object. “How will she react in front of so many people? I understand these women’s capability to heroically carry large and thick logs uphill to build bunkers, but to speak in front of so many people and especially in front of Zahariadis, that I don’t understand. Why have her speak, I ask you?”



“Well, you know,” replied Paskal with a conciliatory tone of voice, “this may be true but these women working in the terrain represent a very important part of the general effort to stop the enemy and I think it is good for at least some of them to welcome the Congress.”



“I am in agreement with comrade Paskal’s idea. He is right and no one else. We have already decided how we have decided, why have we returned to this subject again?” said Vera with a tone of protest. “I think, through the entire discussion,” she loves to use some foreign words because it makes it seem like she has a richer vocabulary than the others, “according to our friend, is if there is a need or not to allow a woman to speak, so to say, a woman who is working in the first lines on the front. Is it or is it not like that?”



“Please friends, let us not continue with this. We have decided what we have decided, but the problem remains. It is true that they are ordinary women, uneducated peasants. But, I think among them we will find a smart, shrewd and let me say more intelligent woman,” said Paskal with a conciliatory tone of voice, “and let us prepare her, teach her what to say and how to say it, okay? I suggest that Vera, who is a good speaker, accept responsibility for finding such a woman. We all agree, right?”



Women, mobilized to transport wounded during the Lerin battle, were detained and temporarily settled in an underground hangar dug in the shaded beechwood forest, located between Zhelevo and Psoderi. Men were also detained but settled in separate hangers located near the Prespa and Koreshnitsa Region villages. Jointly this group of people was called the “working Brigade” which worked in two shifts, day and night.



The workers got up early in the morning, ate breakfast consisting mainly of sheep’s cheese and stale bread and at sunrise began to work. Axes cutting, saws scraping and the occasional shout “look out tree falling!” could be heard all day long until the mountain’s shadow on the other side fell on the forest.



Many beechwood trees fell under the axe and saw. Cleared of their branches, the hard and heavy logs were measured and cut at four, five and six meters long. The heaviest logs were pulled uphill by oxen and the rest were carried on the shoulders of women. Step by step all day long until dusk, oxen and women moved slowly uphill, bodies trembling from the weight of heavy logs.



After dropping off a log at its destination they took a short rest, enough time to wipe the sweat off their faces and gather some strength, then following the same path they descended again to pick up more logs.



The night shift, consisting mostly of women, was tasked with carrying the same logs on their shoulders and transporting them over open space, over the bare hills where other women and men, escorted by DAG (Democratic Army of Greece) fighters, carried and placed the logs over dugout holes. The logs were piled over the holes in rows. First a row of logs, then a row of rocks and soil then a second perpendicular row of logs on top followed by more rocks and soil. The process was repeated five, six, seven, or eight times.



Vera came here to find a suitable woman to welcome the Congress of NOF. First she met with the sector commander and political secretary to whom she announced the purpose of her visit, or as she put it, to fulfill her “task in the political struggle” and requested to be allowed to meet with the women. Her request was granted and they took her to meet with the head of the working brigade.



A tall, slender stocky man, whose moustache Vera openly admired, led her to see the women of the night shift.



“During the day,” explained the moustached man, “we can’t work in the open space. The women are resting.”



“And why are you not working?” inquired Vera.



“Because this here is a battle zone, constantly monitored by the enemy. We need the cover of night to dig trenches and transfer logs to build the bunkers…”



“And where are the bunkers? I don’t see any bunkers,” interrupted Vera.



“Of course you can’t see them because they are covered with branches. They are ‘camouflaged’ as they say in military words,” explained the moustached man.



“Can I see one?” inquired Vera.



“Since you are from High Command, I don’t think the sector commander would have a problem… It’s a military secret, you know… Follow me. There, under the branches, that is a bunker. From the distance it looks like a small wooded hill,” explained the moustached man.



Vera entered from the west side. The sun was shining inside through the two machine gun hole openings. She went closer to one of the openings, looked outside through it and asked: “What is this hill we are standing on called?”



“Iorgova Glava,” replied the moustached man.



“Is it high?” inquired Vera.



“Yes it is,” replied the moustached man.



“How high is it?” asked Vera.



“It is 1858 meters above sea level,” explained the moustached man.



“It is very high up here… Especially to carry logs?” said Vera in a sober tone of voice.



“Yes, this far and even further…” added the moustached man.



“And what is the name of those mountains to the left, to the right and in front of us?” inquired Vera.



“To our left, the great one is Bela Voda… To our right is Chuka, following is Moro and Lisets and past that is Mali-Madi…” explained the moustached man.



“You can see Mali-Madi from here? I know that mountain very well…” interrupted Vera. “And in front of us?”



“In front of us is Lundzer. Like a palm, Lerin can be seen from there, the entire Lerin Region flatland, Kaimakchalan, and even Vicho… To the right of Lundzer is Golinata, then Kulkuturia, further to the right the elongated one is Plenata… and behind the Plenata is Baro, Roto, Glavata, Kresto, Plati…” continued the moustached man.



“We have very beautiful mountains… Are they all ours? I think that they are all under our control,” inquired Vera.



“Yes, all of them,” added the moustached man.



Vera moved away from the machine gun hole. Looked up at the cover and asked: “How many rows of logs are there above our heads?”



“Five rows of logs and an equal number of stones...” explained the moustached man.



“That’s a lot. If we build this kind of bunker all over these mountains, then truly, as our comrade Zahariadis said, our enemy will never pass Vicho. And who brought these long and thick logs all the way here?” asked Vera.



“The women… and… and the oxen…” explained the moustached man.



“How could the women have done this!?” asked Vera with an astonished tone of voice.



“Yes the women carried the logs on their shoulders…” responded the moustached man.



“The women you say? So we have very strong women, right?” asked Vera.



They came out of the bunker. Vera turned facing east and before her she saw wide open space. Delighted, she shook her head and with a sigh of admiration, said: “No one is going to eject us from here! Now let us go to the women.”



“Ladies, I come from the Central Council of NOF and bring you warm greetings and gratitude for what you are doing here. Comrade Zahariadis, our favourite and clever leader, also sends you his regards and gratitude. I came here today to tell you that the Second NOF Congress will be held soon and important decisions regarding the continual struggle and full participation of our people will be made in which you will also participate. It is therefore necessary that you speak in the Congress and inform everyone of what you have done and how much you have contributed to the struggle and to personally thank comrade Zahariadis for leading us and our fight to victory.



I don’t know if you understand me, but from now on I will speak with simpler words. During the Congress you will tell everyone everything you have done until now and what needs to be done from now on for us to win. Is that okay or is it not okay? I understand that it’s okay. I understand very well that you want to tell everyone in the Congress, especially comrade Zahariadis, what you have done and what you are doing and how much you believe in victory. But all of you can’t do that. Only one of you, who today you will select, on your behalf, there at the Congress, will tell everyone how you work here on the second front. You will select her and she, there in person in front of Zahariadis and in front of all the others, will tell everyone how you work here, how you believe in victory and I know that you believe in victory because you trust the Party and Zahariadis…” continued Vera.



Vera, involved in her own speech until now, failed to notice that many of the women were sleeping or dozing off, leaning on their elbows. Exhausted from fatigue and sleeplessness, the warmth of the day had put them all to sleep.



Vera took the hand of the woman closest to her and yelled at her: “Why are you sleeping? I am talking to you here about the Congress, about our victory, about Zahariadis and you and the others are sleeping! You should all be ashamed of yourselves…”



“Young lady,” the woman quietly said, “leave us for a while and let us take a nap, to regain our strength… You can speak as long as you like much to your delight. Everything you say let it be the way you say it but please let us sleep for a while. I hear you. We know how to sleep with our eyes open… we walk with logs on our shoulders and sleep and only then, when someone trips or falls, then we wake up and stand on our feet and we go uphill, uphill, uphill… and you, young lady, can talk…” yawned the woman and fell asleep.



Vera could not hold back. She stood up, slapped her dirty boot with her whip and yelled out: “All of you, all of you listen and pay attention when I speak. If you act this way then you have no faith in victory! What do you say? Who are you going to appoint to represent you?”



“Take Evgenia. She has worked at this job the longest and is the most talkative of all of us here… Take her!” a voice was heard saying.



“Okay ladies, it seems we have solved that problem. Now who is Evgenia? Are you her? Good. Today you are going with me where you are needed,” commanded Vera.



Vera rode a horse while Evgenia and her courier followed behind on foot. They arrived in Zhelevo before nightfall. The NOF village committee responsible for lodging people accommodated the three in Stavrovitsa’s house. There, while alternating between spooning lentils without oil into her mouth with a wooden spoon and breaking chunks of dry rye bread without salt, Vera, with a slight smile and an insulting tone of voice, asked: “Stavrovitse, are you feeding us your leftover lentils from two days ago?”



“Vera, this is what God gave us today,” responded Stavrovitsa and, while placing the earthenware jug with a slightly broken mouth on the table, said: “We have no bread because we donated all of our wheat to the struggle. We have no roasted meat to serve you because, with your help, our sheep and goats were taken in aid of the struggle. Our plates, spoons and forks, again with your help, have all gone to the struggle. And now Vera, three days ago the struggle took our oxen along with the yoke… With what are we now expected to plough our fields?”



“Come now, don’t complain. Our friends from the democratic countries have already started loading trainloads of tractors and other machinery that they will send us. The question now is who is going to operate them…” said Vera with self-assured confidence.



Stavrovitsa crossed herself three times and, with the palms of her hands, covered her face, mouth and eyes to hide her astonishment and got up and went to the next room. Then through the open door said: “I will prepare your beds here…”



Vera stopped spooning the lentils into her mouth and, while collecting crumbs off the table, stared at Evgenia’s face wondering if this simple village peasant had the ability to give a speech? She remembered the other women praising her, telling her that she was the most talkative, most assertive, most self-assured and bravest of them all… There were moments however that Vera blamed herself for this, for having accepted the task of finding a woman to participate in the Congress. “It is easy for those who can read written words and written slogans,” she thought, “but I must teach her word for word not only to make the speech, but also how to make it… It is best I write it down.” Happy with this thought she asked Evgenia: “Can you read?”



“No, I can’t. Why do you ask?” inquired Evgenia.



Vera did not respond.

[George S.]

The Great Lie – Chapter 11 – Part 2



By Petre Nakovski

Translated and edited by Risto Stefov

[email protected]

January 22, 2012



They walked all day and finally reached Nivitsi. At the checkpoint before the entrance into the village Evgenia was detained. Vera’s explanation and assurances, even her threats to complain to Main Headquarters and even go to Zahariadis himself, were not cause enough to satisfy the security people. Not even her certificate which identified her position in large Greek letters was of any help. The patrol commander returned Vera’s certificate and said: “Her,” pointing at Evgenia with his handgun “take her to command and you, comrade, be on your way…”



Vera grabbed her horse and went to the house where command was stationed.



“Move out of my way!” she yelled at the guard and, after tying her horse to the fence, kicked the door in with the heel of her boot and went inside. “Where is your commander!” she demanded.



“I am him…” replied a young man.



“Are you now!?” asked Vera with an astonished tone of voice. She did not expect that such a young person could be a commander. “And do you know who I am?” she asked as she shoved her certificate in front of his face and, as if expecting no reply, she raised her voice and said: “You sit here and daydream, while your constables out there are detaining my people!”



By the time the commander recovered from Vera’s surprise ambush, two militiamen brought in Evgenia.



“Here,” said Vera “is the woman who needs to work with me. Evgenia, come here and don’t be afraid. And you, I want you to immediately give her a pass and make two copies! Write down that she is a delegate of the NOF Congress.”



The commander opened the folder that lay on the table and, dragging his finger along the list, said: “A delegate by that name is not on the list…”



“Damn you, if she is not on the list then put her there, she is my responsibility and I made the list; give it to me so that I may sign it for you! And don’t forget my name, understand? Let’s go Evgenia. And don’t be afraid, I will tell your superior that you are with me, who by the way is a good friend of mine. Goodbye and farewell…”



During dinner Vera, without a break, continued to look for words needed to be woven into the content of Evgenia’s speech. Like beads collected and strung on a string, she selected the right words and strung them together into meaningful sentences filled with expression and influence for those who needed to hear them.



“Evgenia,” Vera called out as she pulled out a fishbone lodged between her teeth, “you have to give each word power, colour, meaning, warmth, clarity and all the words must radiate confidence and trust in our leader, our Party and NOF, certainty in victory and hope for its speedy end… Finish your dinner and go to bed. I will go to the office to meet with my friends from the council.”



The next day Vera and Evgenia first went to examine the village church, Sveta Bogoroditsa, where the Congress was scheduled to be held in two days. The village’s narrow cobblestone lanes were jammed with all kinds of people including many wearing military uniforms.



Woolen covers, blankets, overcoats, old army blankets with Greek and Italian markings, were all hanging to air out in the breeze all over the village outside of windows, on fences and on balconies. Fires were burning in the yards boiling clothing in large cauldrons in need of a wash.



There was a guard at the church entrance inspecting all who entered. Evgenia went inside and was shocked to see what was done to the church. She turned to Vera and with a choked voice, asked: “What have you done to this sacred place? Why have you placed white sheets over the walls and covered all the icons of the saints? Look what you have done to the altar!... In front of what should I be crossing myself now?”



Vera smiled and asked Evgenia: “Do you see what’s over there?”



“Where?” asked Evgenia.



“Where the altar was, over there, can you see it?” repeated Vera.



“Yes, but there is no saint… And who are those people in the large photographs?” asked Evgenia with surprise in her voice.



“The man with the moustache is Stalin, the greatest leader, and that beside him is Zahariadis,” Vera announced proudly.



There was an expression of dismay in Evgenia’s eyes but she said nothing… not a word.



They left the church. Evgenia looked at the clear, cloudless March sky and without looking away, quietly said: “Here, outside, one can breathe much easier, right?”



“Oh you poor Evgenia, I can teach you faster to read and write than I can to give a speech…” commented Vera. This was the second day that Vera was teaching Evgenia to speak. “Your voice should be determined, confrontational, courageous, provoking and harsh and when you speak about Anglo-American imperialism, speak mockingly. And your look, your look Evgenia, when you speak about the enemy, should be heartless, silently loud and sparks should fly out of your eyes. Your head should be proudly held high and your stare should be eaglelike and full of disdain, it should convey death, retaliation, fire, heat… And when you look at the first row where comrade Zahariadis sits, you will look with confidence but lovingly, mildly, warmly and sweetly like milk and honey flowing out of your mouth… Do not forget. We have now discussed your voice and your look. And now we will discuss your movements.



Your hand and head movements, Evgenia, are very important especially your hand movements, they can show dignity, determination, impulsiveness, rage. For example, when you speak about the struggle, you must raise your left hand up high, always remember, the left hand not the right, make a tight fist and turn to the east, I said east, because Vicho is in that direction. You will then shake your fist hard making threatening gestures…”



“Wait, wait,” interrupted Evgenia quietly. “The altar is on the east side of the church, the Virgin Mary is there… Should I be threatening her? That is a sin; it is a great sin to be threatening the Virgin Mary…”



“Okay, don’t do it in the east…” murmured Vera.



“The west then?” asked Evgenia.



“God protect us! Albania is in that direction. We will offend Enver Hodzha,” replied Vera.



“Then how about the north?” asked Evgenia.



“We can’t do it that way either… Do you want to threaten our Macedonian brothers?” responded Vera.



“What about south?” asked Evgenia.



“Let me think about that. What do we have south of us? South of here we have the seat of our Headquarters and our Central Committee. You know, it would be best if you don’t raise your fist too high. Just a little above your head. That would be best… Ah, good thing I remembered! Do not forget to occasionally stop and call out some slogans for our comrade Zahariadis, slogans such as ‘for our struggle’, ‘for DAG’, ‘for our fighters’. First and foremost you should call out a slogan about our comrade Zahariadis, you should greet him first with a warm and sweet voice… tell him that he is the greatest and most beloved son of the Slavo-Macedonian people…” explained Vera.



“And why, Vera, should I not say ‘Macedonian people’, are we not Macedonians?” interrupted Evgenia.



“You will say what I tell you!” replied Vera angrily. “We are what we are but Party politics and Zahariadis want us to be Slavo-Macedonians. Whatever Zahariadis says, goes. He knows what’s best for us…”



“Maybe it’s like that,” responded Evgenia after being silent for a long time, “but we at home, in the villages and up there in the mountains always call ourselves Macedonians… And now you tell me that we are some sort of…”



“And never, you cursed woman, ever mention Tito or Lazo. If you do our heads will roll in the mud. You will remember that!” interrupted Vera angrily.



“I will remember about mine, but about yours I am not sure…” said Evgenia and laughed out loud.



“Please do remember…” replied Vera.



The next day from morning to evening the two, one beside the other, walked the narrow village cobblestone lanes, passed by the compost heaps, descended down, passed by the dung laden waterhole, muddied by the oxen and then took to the lakeside coast. There away from the listening ears and prying eyes, the kind that follow people and lurk at every corner and tell and re-tell everyone what they heard and saw. Away from the women who carry tables and chairs, heat ovens, bake bread, cook meals, shake bed covers, pillow cases and area rugs. Away from those who secretly watch and whisper wondering what possible secrets Vera could be telling that strange woman? Everyone in Nivitsi of course knew Vera. And even though they all carried on with their jobs, their thoughts were with Vera and the strange woman, who now sat at the coast, took her socks off and submerged her feet into the cold, lake water.



“Vera,” said Evgenia, turning her head away from her, “your feet and socks smell bad as if something died in them… Toss them in the water before we get attacked by vultures; please for Virgin Mary’s sake…”



“Come now, don’t worry so much. It is fashionable for fighters to be like that… Do you know how long it has been since I have had a shower? The only showers I have had lately are rain showers…” replied Vera.



“And the lake, is the lake too small for you?” Evgenia asked sarcastically.



“The lake is not small, but I rarely have time. Here, for example, instead of getting a good wash with hot water, I am spending my time teaching you and still I have not finished teaching you… And do you know how much time it takes for you to learn our ways? Such is our struggle…” replied Vera while shaking her head.



“Do you want to stay dirty?” asked Evgenia.



“This, Evgenia, which you said goes contrary to my liking… Watch what you say, because for such things one can go to Drenovo, under a wall…” threatened Vera.



Evgenia, as if she heard nothing, kept rubbing her feet with sand and splashing water on them: “We, Vera, in the brooks and in the woods from where we take logs, when we have a bit of time, we splash water on our faces, foreheads, necks, underarms and between the legs. We are clean enough not to attract flies. And around you and the others up there, at!...” Evgenia pointed at her big thumbnail, “flies this big circle around them… Go ahead, ask Risto…”



“Which Risto?” asked Vera.



“You know, Risto, our commander. He always tells us, ‘Wash so you don’t smell. It is embarrassing for a woman to stink…’” replied Evgenia.



“And he, what did you call him, Risto, is he the moustached man, is he a bit of a woman chaser? Does he grab women there in the grove, maybe in the gullies or the brooks? To ask you to be clean and not to stink like something dead, eh?” asked Vera.



“Vera, you have a foul mouth. He, he is like Christ to us. You have heard of Christ haven’t you?” replied Evgenia.



“Forget about Christ. If he behaved himself he would not have had to hang from a pole. He was not a revolutionary like us, but wanted to do things with kindness and with good words. And that is why the Jews, with the help of the Italians had him crucified. And don’t talk about flies any more… We fight against them as well. We fight against everything that stands in our way of victory. I have been teaching you for many days and you still seem to be uneducated. Look at you, you now mixed Christ into all this!” Vera snapped angrily and tossed a rock into the water. “Did you see that?” Vera pointed at the place where the rock landed in the water. “That is what we are going to do to all our enemies… Did you see that? Plunk and it disappears…”



Evgenia adjusted herself, collected her wet socks and when she tried to stand up, Vera asked her: “And you, where do you think you are going?”



“I am going to the women. My place is there. To help them do laundry, bake bread, cook, and shake lice out of clothing… Take someone else and teach her how to spread feathers… Vera, in this that you call struggle, I did not walk in blind. I gave it everything I had and if I had more I would give it. All I have left is my own life and you are prepared to take that too… And if you ask me to give my life, that too I will give you…” replied Evgenia.



“Come now, sit down and wash yourself. Who is more outspoken than you? No one! Only you deserve to speak tomorrow at the Congress in front of Zahariadis. You speak the way I taught you and everyone will praise you. Come, humour me. The struggle needs that. Do you understand me?” said Vera.



“I understand very well, but what and how much others understand, that I don’t know…” replied Evgenia.



The opening speeches were scheduled to take place during the afternoon of the second day of the Congress. Vera stood behind the stage, waited for the hand-clapping to subside and then announced: “And now here to welcome the Congress is Comrade Evgenia, responsible for transporting wounded, digging trenches… Please Evgenia come up and tell us your role in support of the struggle and your personal fight against the enemy… Please come up on the stage…”



Evgenia, looking shy, with her head slightly bowed, straightened up and slowly climbed on the stage. Vera gave her a hand, leaned over to her ear and whispered: “Be careful you don’t fall…”



“Don’t be afraid… I am steady on my feet… don’t be afraid… Go back to your place…” Evgenia whispered back.



“And like I told you,” emphasized Vera, “gently, only gently, very gently… start that way, the way I taught you…”



Looking at Vera, Evgenia closed both her eyes letting her know that she understood and then climbed the stairs that led to the stage. She paused for a moment, looked at the hall and noticed the many people present. She stepped on the stage and someone showed her where to stand. She looked around. She felt faint and weak in her knees, her throat tightened. She looked into the hall again. She noticed Vera sitting in the first row, motioning with her head, giving her encouragement. She slowly walked to the podium and leaned on it. She looked again. Sitting in the first row were Zahariadis, Mitrovski, Ioannidis, Bardzotas, Gusias, Koichev and Vera. Except for Zahariadis, all the others sitting in the first row had crossed their legs and wore long, well polished leather boots.



Sitting in the second row were the Brigade and Battalion Commanders. Evgenia recognized Pando, Lambro, Naso and Ahilea and as she looked further she saw prematurely aged men and women wearing black. Their eyes looked gloomy and dark. And when she noticed that they were all looking at her, she felt a lump in her throat. She had never seen so many eyes looking at her before. But the most penetrating and pressing eyes were those of Vera. Her gaze pierced her, probed her and for a moment Evgenia in her thoughts attempted to uncover what more this woman could possibly want from her. She could not figure out what fears and doubts lurked behind her smile and face. At that moment she felt immeasurable pity for her.



She coughed quietly and with a pleading tone of voice Evgenia began to speak in her Kostur Region dialect:



“Ladies and gentlemen, comrades, dear commanders and fighters of DAG, Party nobles. Greetings, my name is Evgenia, greetings to all of you here, to the fighters in the mountains, to those in the hospitals recovering from serious wounds and from every kind of ailment and to the women dedicated to the service… I bring you greetings, I am Evgenia the woman who they say has cared for many, many wounded, carried many heavy logs and stones and dug many trenches… They told me…, this is what they told me, in the name of all those like myself, to give a speech at this Congress. I told them, ‘I am a simple village woman, how can I give a speech in front of so many important people, in front of the heroes of DAG…? I know how to till soil, collect crops, bake bread and look after the house… Here… I gave birth to children… they have grown healthy… They have grown big, my dears and may they be safe and healthy and may God protect them…’”



Evgenia paused for a moment, looked up at the church ceiling and felt Almighty Christ looking down on her with his wide open eyes. She felt like crossing herself, like praying, but remembered what Vera told her the day before: “Don’t do it, you will insult all the communists…” So, in place of prayer, Evgenia swallowed the lump stuck in her throat and continued with her speech:



“They grew big and healthy, they grew up, up there and joined the struggle, and the younger ones, the younger ones… I am saying are now in the [Eastern European] countries, they… how do you say…? Oh, they are in the republics of the people’s democracies… The truth is… I have been carrying wounded, logs, stones, digging bunkers for two years now, but I am not alone. There are many with me, but like me they are very tired with sore shoulders, blisters on our hands and feet, lacking sleep and hungry. The women, the wounded and all those left behind in Bela Voda, Mali-Madi, Lundser, Bukovik and the other war zones, and many from outside of Lerin and from inside Lerin are very tired, hungry and suffering… Thank God and the Virgin Mary for keeping me alive and well and here I am before you, speaking to you. And what should I speak to you about? It would be best for me to once again wish you good health and not speak any more. There are others here who can speak. They know how to speak better than they know how to carry logs and wounded, dig bunkers under fire while bombs are dropped on them. They know how to speak better than they know how to endure the thunder of cannon and mortar fire and to avoid being cut down by machine gun fire…”



Vera jumped up and signaled Evgenia to get to the important point. Evgenia noticed and resumed her speech:



“It is best that you ask me some questions or would it be better if I asked you some? But first let me tell you something. For two days now, Vera, our comrade sitting there in the first row, two days, she has been teaching simple me how to give a speech. She told me first and last to greet our great, smartest and most…” here Evgenia forgot what the third most was… She paused for a moment, thought hard but could not recall what it was… What was it? Vera gave her a signal and quietly said, “son, son…”



“Ah, I remember now… and the greatest son, yes, son, the greatest son who leads us from battle to battle… so we may fight…” Vera from below was counting on her fingers, “and led us from victory to victory and for that may he be clever and well to lead us from battle to battle, to battle, to…” Evgenia was interrupted by a lone loud voice calling out from somewhere in the centre of the church: “Long live Comrade Zahariadis!”



“Zahariadis, Zahariadis, Zahariadis!” roared the entire assembly in the church. Everyone stood up and clapped loudly and shouted out the name of the greatest son.

[George S.]

The Great Lie – Chapter 11 – Part 3



By Petre Nakovski

Translated and edited by Risto Stefov

[email protected]

January 29, 2012



This was the first time Evgenia had heard such loud shouting. When she recovered and the hand clapping and shouting subsided, she continued:



“Long live he and the others. I can see him well from here. He is sitting quietly in the first row… and he is looking directly into my eyes. I too from here am looking directly into his eyes… and… I want to continue to look directly into comrade Zahariadis’s eyes. I want to ask him about many things that come to mind when I carry wounded young men and women on stretchers, in blankets or in overcoats, when they die in my hands, when they beg me to help them, when they are thirsty and hungry, when they can’t move because their legs are frozen or badly wounded. At those times I tell myself ‘when will the day come when I get the chance to meet and see, how do you say, our dear and beloved Zahariadis, so that I can ask this celebrated, clever and brave great son of ours, not only for myself, but for the many mothers out there, outside of our borders, in the mountains and on the battlefields who, before everything else brave the war to bring water, bread, ammunition and bombs high up the mountains and then to bring the wounded and dying back.’ I often thought of asking our great son Zahariadis, on behalf of all the mothers out there, who cried while burying the dead, especially the barely grown young men and women consumed by this war, the mothers who while burying someone else’s child receive bad news from whispers that ‘her child was just lost’. I would like to ask our esteemed guest: ‘Zahariadis, why must we carry such great fear, day and night, for our children, for our homes, for our crops, for our livestock, for our closest and most beloved?’ In front of us and behind us, dear Zahariadis, we see only mourning, only fear, only trembling and tightening of our hearts, only evil all around us.



Did I say something bad, something incorrect?



And you Vera, down there, stop showing me your teeth and stop shaking your hands at me. I forgot what you taught me… I swear… Now allow me to say what I have in my heart… allow my pain to come out, to lighten my burden because this is what the women had told me… they told me, Evgenia, do not make a fool of yourself when you speak in front of all those people in the Congress, but speak the truth, tell the truth and ask for the truth… Everything from us and for us… And, here, I, here at the Congress, as the women instructed me, mothers and widows, I want to tell you everything that has collected here in my soul and in my heart, but not in my mind, because I don’t have a mind for thinking, like the great ones here do… My words come from my heart and soul and from my pain, bitterness and anguish…



Did I say something bad, something incorrect?...



If I said something that is not correct then please tell me, I will stop talking… Did I say something wrong?...”



Evgenia paused. There was total silence in the church. Everyone stood in astonishment and fear, it seemed like they were gripped by fear...



“What do I want dear Zahariadis?” Evgenia cut through the silence like a knife with her loud voice roaring through the church. “I want our girls and boys to grow up, to be brides and grooms, to take over our jobs when we grow old. We are teaching them to relieve us when we grow old and you are taking them away, turning them into soldiers, teaching them how to kill… may lightning strike you and put you to death!... So said God did he not? Isn’t that right? Our young women lay in hospitals mutilated… some are without legs or arms… how will they dance the bridal dance? And we, all their lives, have prepared them to be brides… To be brides dear Zahariadis, to be brides… And now our boys and girls have prematurely aged in the mountains, and you dear Zahariadis, the commanders that are here, are proud because they turned our children into soldiers, or fighters, as you call them, and we here are dying of fear… of receiving bad news every day…



You say you have proudly turned them into fighters, who know how to kill… Is that what God says? Is that what he says? That our girls be maimed for life, dear Zahariadis? How will they now serve water to their aging fathers and fathers-in-law, how will they go to the spring to fetch water? How will they carry the earthenware water jug without legs and arms? How will they bake and weave…?



They, young people in their prime, now rely on crutches to walk, go to Elbasan or to any of the other hospitals and see them for yourself…”



Vera was going crazy down in the first row, twisting her face, widening her eyes, gesturing with her hands, cracking her knuckles… “Enough,” she whispered, “enough, bitch, stop talking, shut up, shut up, may God turn you into a mute… Oh God, what have you done to me? Why did I have to pick you? Shut up bitch!…”



Evgenia paused for a moment and removed her black kerchief revealing her long graying braided hair. She wiped the sweat off her face and forehead, swallowed hard and with the same tone of voice continued:



“Dear Zahariadis, is that why you collected our young children and sent them to the [Eastern European] countries so that you could bring them back? Turn them into fighters too? They have hardly grown [ages 2 to 14] and you took them… may evil take you!”



Vera jumped up and screamed, “Enough! Enough! Get off the stage!...”



“No, no Vera, these are not the words of our enemies… A few days ago Donovitsa saw her own son returned, he was barely fifteen years old… You collected our children, sent them away and now you brought them back, here in Prespa, to turn them into soldiers… And what did you tell us? What did you promise us, dear Zahariadis?



Why dear Zahariadis?



Did you not tell us to give everything for the struggle? We trusted you and we gave everything we had. You said all to arms and we all went to arms. We did exactly as you asked. Now our villages are desolate and our homes are empty, only spiders live there weaving their webs…



Why dear Zahariadis?



When you asked us to give everything we had to the struggle, we gave everything we had. When you said the enemy must not pass through Vicho we did everything to stop him. We dug all the hills and mountains, from here to there and deep in the holes we buried ourselves. We dug hangers and bunkers with these hands. You told us to do that and we did as you asked. Bunker by bunker, ditch by ditch, we dug without making a sound. Who now has the power to evict our people from there? Not our enemy, not even a bird can fly unnoticed. You told us to do that and that is exactly what we did.



Unfortunately you have pushed us into darkness. Look, dear Zahariadis, do you see any happy women? Do you see them going about their lives happy, smiling and wearing white?... We are all dressed in black.



When night falls we rush to see our little ones hidden in the leaves in the forest and in the brooks. Afterwards, step by step, we carry logs and stones on our shoulders, climbing up to Lundzer, Bela Voda, Chuka, Lisets and other hills… The mothers lost their milk, it dried up, diminished, from pain and exhaustion, but they have not lost their step and their will to fight on in the struggle…



But, Comrade Zahariadis we live in constant fear. Great fear that, if not today, then tomorrow, a new tragedy will befall us. We are in constant fear that we will receive bad news about our children, husbands, brothers, friends and every day more darkness falls on us.



Did I say something bad? Tell me did I say something incorrect?



They told me to give a speech. But I don’t know how to give a speech. I speak directly from my soul, dear Zahariadis… And now you tell us that victory is near? Near for whom? Who is going to remove the darkness from us? You say victory is near, but when it comes will there be anyone left to give birth, to make a home, to light a fire? Our fires have been put out, my dear Zahariadis… We are not what we used to be and what we want is no longer there for us, it is all gone…”



Evgenia clasped her hands and placed them on the podium, then placed her temple on them and began to cry loudly. There was silence in the church. It seemed that even the angels and saints, silent for centuries, were astonished and humbled before her…



“What more can I say, dear Zahariadis?... We did everything you asked and now we want to know, why did such evil befall us? Darkness, dear Zahariadis has fallen upon us as we anxiously wait for the victory that you, every day, promise us, but that bleak and so close victory you speak of we pay for with more and more of our children, with our homes and villages being burned to the ground and pushes us further into the dark abyss…



You say victory is near?… But for whom is it near? For us? Even the walls of our homes are now gone, they have been leveled to the ground by our enemies… You say victory is near, but will there be anyone to greet it, to be happy, to rebuild, to plough, to sow, to give birth, to sing…? I ask you, eh???! I ask you… I can’t help but cry… cry not only for myself but for all the mothers, for all the widows, for all the wounded and maimed… I want to cry because of this, this,” Evgenia touched her chest, “where it hurts… where it squeezes, where it chokes… What else can I say? Let me speak to the commanders and say to them to look after our children up there in the front and let them know that we, their mothers, care for them a lot, love them and beg them to ‘be very careful… please be very careful… may God and the Virgin Mary protect you…’ That is all from me; that is all I want to say…” concluded Evgenia.



Silence hovered over her as Evgenia felt sad and choked in emotion. Then at that moment someone in the crowd called out a slogan in respect of the leader and the entire church thundered and came alive again.



Evgenia covered her face with her hands and placed her elbows on the podium looking as if she was praying. She was sobbing and sobbing and while sobbing her shoulders trembled and the podium creaked under her great pain… Then carefully she left the stage and walked down the steps, which visibly bent under the weight of her tired feet.



Zahariadis stood up. He turned towards the crowd, raised his arms and motioned to them to stop. Then he stepped up on the stage. His footsteps were silent as he walked up the stairs made of rough oak planks. His steps were silent not because they did not make a sound but because everyone’s ears were deafened by the loud shouts and exaltation. They all stood up, clapped their hands and some called out more slogans. Only Evgenia, as if guilty of something, quietly, barely noticeable sat on the bench far from Vera and shrugged and scrunched up her shoulders. Tears, like pearls, hung from her long black lashes. She placed her black kerchief over her head and covered her face with her rough palms.



The leader stood behind the podium. He looked near and far, high above everyone and far behind the crowd. An almost visible smile appeared on his face looking like it was straining out his partly closed eyes. Vera immediately climbed on stage, turned towards the crowd and with all her might yelled out: “Long live our great leader, our wise, brave, worthy and much beloved son of the Greek and Slavo-Macedonian people!”



No one heard the last part of what Vera shouted. It got lost in the thundering noises yelling ‘e-e-e-e-e-e’ and behind the new slogans being loudly proclaimed in honour of Zahariadis who now, without a doubt, was the most important and greatest person in the place and everything said up to now, today and tomorrow, was, is, and will be about him.



Zahariadis looked at the main slogan and at the hand drawn symbols on the large cover covering the church altar. In the foreground, looking enthusiastic with great faith in the leader are a man and woman Partisan. They are ready to fight. Behind them are the mountains and hills over which the sun of victory rises. In front of the man and woman Partisans are explosions of bombs and grenades and they fearlessly and victoriously march forward. But the praise does not end there. The Sveta Bogoroditsa Church in Nivitsi had never before heard or seen such expressive and happy people. Zahariadis again raised his hand. There was a barely visible smile emanating from his eyes and, without waiting for the crowd to calm down, he began to speak:



“Comrades! Here, today, a natural, noble, simple and benevolent Macedonian, blood and flesh, from the flesh and blood of her much victimized and much suffered Slavo-Macedonian people, who shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, step to step, are fighting together with their brotherly Greek people for social rights and for freedom from the Anglo-American imperialism and their local servants…



Down with Anglo-American imperialism!” said Zahariadis, the slogan master “…those who fight against imperialism, from here from this holy stage of struggle, have told us the truth, the bitter truth which, not that our Party does not know. It knows. But it is also important that the people know it too. And that woman, our friend, sent by the people, has told us the truth, I mean the great and bitter truth, which we all, and especially our Party, know and feel the pain, that is why it hurts us all. But comrades, this is the kind of struggle we are leading. I am wholeheartedly on your side and you, comrade Evgenia, you are right and I bow before you, I lower my head before your pain and I kiss your rough and chapped hands. But the struggle is harsh and our suffering has been cruel but our swift revenge for the injustices and suffering we have endured will also be harsh and cruel. Today we lead a struggle on two fronts – against Anglo-American imperialism and its Greek servants and against… I will speak about that later… I, therefore, from this podium, promise all Slavo-Macedonian mothers, who lost their beloved children, I solemnly swear that we will win the struggle because with this kind of fighter born out of the Slavo-Macedonian people, it is impossible not to win, and we will win for sure, I promise you that!



I promise, but my promises will mean nothing if you over there don’t fight and don’t sacrifice yourselves and be an example of fighting spirit, courage, self-sacrifice and devotion. This is exactly why, a month and a half ago, our Party in its Fifth Plenum adopted a resolution whereby, you, the Slavo-Macedonians, as a result of DAG’s victory, and the People’s Revolution, will earn the right to self-determination and to have your own country which will unite all Macedonians. With a people like yourselves, a people who bore such brave and fearless fighters, it is impossible to not win. Here comrade Vlandas, yesterday, welcomed the Congress, and said that the Slavo-Macedonians are the best fighters in the Democratic Army of Greece. And he is right. I too say it, openly and honestly ‘the Slavo-Macedonians are the best fighters of DAG’. Is this not a great recognition for you? And that is why we will win. We will win. Onward to victory. All to arms, all for victory!” concluded Zahariadis.



“Zahariadis! Zahariadis! Zahariadis!” roared the crowd.



It seemed as if the church roof was going to fly off from the loud cheers. Slogans and more slogans! The church roof was shaking. Vlandas leaned his fat cheeks to those of Ioannidis and whispered in his ear: “Kitakse poso poli i Slavo-Makethones agapane ton arhigo mas. Apo singinisi mu erhete na klapso.” (Look how much the Slavo-Macedonians love our leader. I am going to cry from excitement).



Ioannidis nodded with his head, and quickly took out his handkerchief and wiped his ear. Zahariadis, with eyes half closed and with a slight smile on his face, put his hand out to calm the cheerful Congress attendants. But they kept shouting, clapping their hands and, once in a while, calling out new slogans. There were outbursts of joy and excitement, seeming that in their elation they forgot what they had gone through, what they had undertaken and everything that remained for them to do. Now, only satisfaction radiated from their eyes. He managed to enflame the masses, to make a single voice out of them, powerful like lightning, strong as a hard iron fist, which he alone, at his will, directed its blow.



The Congress ended in late afternoon.



That day and the previous two days there was no sound of airplanes above Bela Voda, Bigla, Lundzer, Iorgova Glava, Golinata, Chuka and Lisets…



The night during which Evgenia and the other women were returning to Zhelevo, three men surrounded them on the road and asked, “Which one of you is Evgenia?”



“I am…” replied Evgenia.



“Come with us!” one of the men ordered.



“Where?” asked Evgenia.



“To a new assignment…” replied one of them.



One day after the NOF Congress, on March 27th, 700 delegates were elected in Nivitsi, out of whom 163 were Macedonian communists, who, under orders and under Zahariadis’s watchful eye, formed the Communist Organization of Aegean Macedonia (KOEM).



In the big room in the Trendafilovski house, the newly elected NOF Central Council and members of the newly formed KOEM prepared refreshments in honour of the leader, for the successful completion of the Congress and for the formation of the new vanguard.



On the table, covered with a red tablecloth (someone jokingly said it was the same tablecloth used to cover the table in the Congress) were two large baskets full of pieces of bread resembling nafora (Communion bread). Beside them were plates, full to the top, of fried Lake Ohrid trout and Lake Ohrid carp. In the middle of the table were two large baked fish (carp). At the end of the table glasses, collected from the village (Nivitsi), enough to serve the thirty or so guests present in the big room, were being filled with red wine. Serving near the table were two women dressed in military uniforms. Four kerosene lamps hung in the corners of the room emitting a pale light, providing light for the party. People were scattered around the room in small groups anxiously waiting for dinner to be served, secretly glancing at the food on the table while smelling the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread and fried fish.



They were waiting, waiting for the leader to arrive. Then suddenly the room went quiet, silent. Zahariadis entered. They all turned towards him and made way for him to get to the table. Vera stood up on her toes and yelled at the top of her voice: “Long live comrade Zahariadis!”



The entire room roared, voices could be heard beyond the upper village neighbourhood, voices accompanied by the song that was like a party anthem:



“Zahariadis arhigos… (Zahariadis the leader…)”



It seemed that some people hardly had the patience to finish one verse before jumping into the next:



“To budrumi then ton liga (Prison cannot break him)

Ke i skepsi trehi gorga (And quickly his thoughts fly)

Stis sindrofus pu polemun (To the friends who are struggling)

Apta katerga gia na vrun… (From slavery to break away…)”



And before the final word in the verse was finished, another word was thrown in and sung with more devotion, a higher tone, more confrontational and louder:



“Orko perni o vulevtis (The worker curses)

Sto onoma tu o mahitis (In his name swears the fighter)

Ke htipai tin mavri sklavia (And beats down black slavery)

Gia na vri o laos lefteria. (So the people can have freedom.)”



Zahariadis stopped clapping, picked up a glass of wine and said: “Comrades, allow me, with this glass, to convey to you my first toast…”



Zahariadis toasted when he wanted to be like Stalin. His toast had to have an introduction which contained a ‘basic thought’ – the resolution in the execution of the task done in the name of the person being toasted. The order was as follows: first praise the people, the masses, with common words, then bestow big praises on the middle political and military cadres, who most likely were illiterate or semi-illiterate, the bootlickers and yes-men, whose only job, only by directive, was to mingle with guests and raise the fighting spirit and praise and popularize the leader. These middle cadres were first to swear in his name, first to glorify him, first to celebrate him and first to praise him – “cheers to them!” It was compulsory for someone else, someone persuaded beforehand, to repeat and add to the middle cadre praises, someone who inspires and, understandably, that would be Zahariadis – “cheers!” And of course it was compulsory for Zahariadis to ‘downplay’ these high praises of himself in the following fashion: “I, comrades, appreciate so and so, we are old friends, but I don’t agree with him.”



With this he showed that he was superior and able to limit his own significance, merit and importance. Finally, again someone persuaded beforehand, would add: “We are so lucky to have such a wise leader and such excellent middle cadres.”



Then they all, with a single voice, would toast, “Cheers to our leader and the middle cadres!”



He then pretended that he did not deserve all those praises because there was only one of him. The words spoken were always enriched with promises, which for him had no meaning. The most important thing for him was to establish a connection with the masses; for the individuals he had a different dictionary. The masses, which he sometimes called “the flock”, he was able to grab by the legs and sow into them the spirit of faith and hope and make them believe that he was indeed their saviour… and the masses placed their unquestionable trust in him. He knew how to stand before the masses and speak to them, he knew how to raise them up high and bring them down low. He knew how to converse with villagers even though he knew nothing about farming, about ploughing, hoeing, or shoveling. He spoke with the workers as if he was a worker himself even though he had never been in a factory. He knew how to talk and dance with the fighters even though he had never held a gun in his hands…



With the help of the narrow-minded, boot-licking middle cadres, he was a villager, a worker and a soldier. And that is exactly how the individuals and masses wanted him to be – one from respect and others from fear. By words and by looks he knew how to reward, criticize, boast and penalize and by his suspicion he knew how to destroy…



Such rarity was this Zahariadis, for whom songs were sung and miracles and legends told. And most villagers in the Kostur, Lerin and Voden Regions believed in those miracles and legends, which by the merit of his middle, low and lower cadres, their beliefs were turned into a ‘burnt offering’ and a ‘heroic suicide’…