EXHIBIT - Part 01

EXHIBIT:

Errors, wrong-doings and other acts perpetrated by Greeks to the detriment of the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia during the three year anti-fascist struggle:

1...), 2)... e) Mass executions were conducted during this period which included the killing of 60 rebels who escaped from the Germans and came to Peiov to surrender. But because they wanted to surrender to Peiov and to a Macedonian partisan unit, and not to the Greeks, the Greeks, from hatred and fanaticism towards the Macedonian people, killed all 60 of them. This was wrong and illegal and the Greeks in their beastly ways broke every ELAS and PEEA law and executed those people without a trial. This beastly act shook our whole nation causing ripples of fear in the souls of our people. The execution of these 60 men was contrary to Article 113 of ELAS military law.

g) Basically at the same time, a little after Regiment 28 and Periklis from the CPG Regional Committee announced that they would compensate the voluntary surrender of Macedonian rebels from the

Macedonian villages in Kostur and would release the rebels, after they were disarmed, several rebels surrendered. But in place of compensating and letting them go, the Greeks jailed them in Lari in the village Izglibe. Some were also killed.

h) At the same time there were confiscations. Oxen, sheep and other animals belonging to the rebels who went to Peiov were confiscated.

i) Some Macedonian partisans, belonging to the “Gotse” Battalion, were forbidden from singing because they sang derogatory songs about Greek King George. They were not only forbidden from singing such songs but Major Amintas threatened them with arrest...

o) Secretary of Kostur Periklis was heard saying: ‘We are not for Tito and if you continue to say “long live Tito” we will cut your head off!’

When the bureau of SNOF was arrested, the CPG District Committee began a fierce campaign against the old Macedonian fighters and leaders and especially against their friends like Lazo Ushensk, Paskal Mitrevski, Lazo Pop Lazarov… They accused them of being agents of Vancho Mihailov and of the Ohrana, just like they accused other Macedonians from Yugoslavia like Deian, member of the Macedonian General Headquarters, the deceased Kolio, Political Commissar of the First Macedonian Brigade, and comrade Abas, member of the General Staff of Macedonia.’

… This was the attitude of the Communist Party of Greece towards our people…” concluded Krapov who suddenly went silent seeming like he had forgotten what he was going to say next. I said nothing; I did not want to interrupt his moment of silence.

The way to battle for the Aegean Brigade was through the ranks of Tito’s Army

A few moments later Krapov looked at me and began to talk again. He said: “One evening inside a bunker in Gramos in 1947, sitting next to the hot fire was Vane Shishkov, Commissar of our company. He told us a story about his experience fighting in Vardar

Macedonia. He talked about his struggles in the Aegean Brigade while his family, his young wife and children were left home alone.

He then suddenly stopped talking. I couldn’t help but notice his dark and intelligent eyes staring at my face. He stared at me with a slight smile on his face… perhaps because I was the youngest fighter in the detachment? I don’t know…

After noticing that he saw me looking back at him, I felt nervous and the need to say something, so I said: ‘Is there anything you wanted to tell me, Comrade Commander?’

He said: ‘No, I have nothing to tell you young man.’ Seeming like he lost his trail of thought.

I felt even more nervous now because he kept looking at me so I blurted out the words: ‘Are you sure… you have nothing to tell me?’

He smiled with a great big smile and said: ‘I have a son… maybe a bit younger than you… and as I look at you I wonder why you are here? Did you volunteer?’

‘No!’ I said. ‘I was mobilized by NOF against my will!’

After hearing that, the Commander lost his smile and shook his head in silence.

‘Is there sometning wrong?’ I asked.

‘No, there is nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘When I saw you earlier I lost my train of thought. I wanted to tell you how we live in a politically immature society, how times were really bad and then, as we joined Tito’s partisans, how everything went differently than we expected.’

I admired our Commander’s guilt free confidence and honesty. He told us about the Brigade being stationed in the barracks in Bitola. And that it was composed of an unusual mixture of scattered units without a timetable and that for almost two months it was crunching seeds (doing nothing).

Then the Commander said: ‘One December day something long-expected began to take place. We heard voices coming from afar, as if carried by the whistling wind from the fields of Lerin Region. Then a group of refugees arrived in the evening; women, children and elders. The day before several Lerin Region villages had been attacked by ELAS and people were killed, young women raped, houses burned and people expelled across the border.

One of our men ran like crazy towards the refugees and then turned back and ran for the barracks holding his machine guns in his hands ready to fire.

It took me all night, until dawn the next day to calm him down. He was my comrade, Sergeant Pavle Karamitrev. The refugees told him that his beautiful bride Risa had been raped and then killed and left unburied and then from malice they killed his three year old child. The man was devastated, mentally exhausted, tormented, nauseated and felt alien to himself. He tried very hard to think about other things, something else, something interesting - but he found it impossible. His thoughts quickly circled around back to his tragedy. He wondered now what kind of new, wonderful life he could make. There was nowhere for him to go, he could not escape his dilemma. He became very angry and lost track of everything, the only thing he wanted was revenge, just revenge.’

‘Yes, I remember that!’ I replied. ‘Sergeant Pavle Karamitrev used to yell out: ‘Stupid! We are stupid and cowards! Sold souls! We left our homes and families to come here to do what? Eat seeds?!’

He did not like being there at all. He thought that it was a grave mistake for us to have left our homes. In fact he was so angry he often looked out of his tiny window aiming to kill someone, perhaps one of our top brigade commanders who had taken us there. He used to yell out and curse the brigade commanders.’

‘Yes! He was not happy at all!’ agreed the Commander, saying: ‘Sergeant Pavle Karamitrev used to flap his long arms and say: ‘Who did this to me? Who killed my future?

A few days later, sometime before the new year in December 1944, a large number of them went to the Greek border to enter Greece from Lerin Region, with aims at freeing part of Greek occupied Macedonia.

Unfortunately their plan fell flat. By order from Macedonia’s General Headquarters (most probably issued by Belgrade) they were stopped at the border. Belgrade did not support their action or appreciate what they were doing and since then they also lost support from their brethren in Vardar Macedonia.

After their failure to return to Greece, the Brigade was given a new task and was immediately dispatched to Gostivar - Tetovo Region with only one purpose: to clean up Dzhemo and Mefail’s Balist bands. These bands were formed during the Italian and German occupations but continued to operate after the occupiers withdrew, abusing and harassing the Macedonian people in those areas. The Aegean Brigade was entrusted with this task because the units that controlled that region had been sent to fight at the Srem front. Dzhemo’s bandits circulated extensively in the Suva Gora and Shar Planina Mountains and in Kichevo Region. They also had full support from the local Albanian population.’

After a short pause the commander then said: ‘It was towards the end of the month,… I think it was December 28, 1944 and the weather was very cold. It snowed all the time along the way while we were traveling on foot, walking over the Demir Hisar mountains before we arrived somewhere between Ohrid and Kichevo. The places were strange to us and we, the lower ranking officers, had no maps to see where we were going. We passed through several Albanian villages and seized many guns and quite a bit of ammunition. It seemed to me like we were moving through the desert. The whole area was covered with thick layers of snow which came down in abundance. One evening we arrived in Kichevo. It was very cold and we were freezing down to our bones. It was a bad winter and snow came down like never before. The cold was bitter and nothing was moving. The soil seemed like it was full of some sort of monsters and the people were unhappy, impoverished and without food. We had no food either and wandered around hungry. We were also very poorly dressed, literally in our summer clothes.

That’s all we had. One night my company stayed in Kichevo over night in a café, which smelled of decay, mold and moisture. An old man looking at us said:

‘You must be out of your minds to come here. I am telling you there is not a living soul in the villages, not a single partisan. They were all sent to the Srem front. Who in the devil are you looking for in this wasteland? I am telling you, you are foolish to have come here, it is pointless. Fighters need to defend their own homes not... Further on there are Balists who will cut of your heads… nothing more…’

The next day we went to Gostivar and stayed in a place near the Vardar River. Ten days later the Third Battalion moved into the village Banitsa and my company was placed in the school. Commander of the squad was Kosta Samarovski and his deputy was Todor from the village Buf.

The Brigade remained in Gostivar and Tetovo through the months of January, February and March 1945. Every second or third night we were attacked by the Balists and we fought bloody battles against them.

Acting on information received by Headquarters, regarding Dzhemo and Mefail’s gang movements, we were ordered to move out a bit before midnight so that we could be at a specified place before dawn. We marched through the snow under the cover of darkness 3 to 4 hours walking over Suva Gora, Shara and then we surrounded the village about which we had information of where bandits were hiding. The moment it became visible we attacked. Unfortunately every move we made was closely watched by supporters of the Balist gangs, who were well organized. Their couriers immediately provided information to Dzhemo and he and his Balists left before we had a chance to attack them.

I remember one time conducting an operation in an Albanian village where we arrived very early, before dawn, and surrounded it. When dawn broke several of our units entered the village. Suddenly the moon was obstructed by clouds and it became very dark. At that moment Dzhemo’s gang began to fire on us from a house with automatic weapons, killing two of our fighters. The vast majority of

our fighters were from Lerin, Kostur and Voden Regions. After that the Albanians began to flee but were held back by our gunfire. They tried to run one way but they couldn’t so they turned and ran the opposite way and finally escaped through a gully. We were shooting exclusively with single shot weapons. Our machine guns were jammed because of the cold. We were hungry and very tired and sleepy.

There was a peculiar smell in the air and we were wondering what it could be. Then Vangel Klapushevski piped up and said that it was the smell of burning human blood. The smell was very strong and the wind, which constantly changed direction, carried it everywhere. Finally we located its source. It came from one of the many barns the Balists used. There we found human bodies burning, victims of the Balists.

The smell inside the barn was very strong and nauseating. We stood there looking at the burning bodies and wondered what kind of people would perpetrate such an inhuman act.

Then when I found out that the burning bodies belonged to our fighters I lost consciousness. I tried to steady myself and stay on my feet but the thought of my comrades burning overwhelmed me and I fell down.

Even though I miss my dead comrades from Kostur Region, since then I could not bring myself to think of them without seeing them burning. I don’t even know where they are buried.

We were ordered to move out. The order was given by Gotse, our commander. He ordered us to stay close to one another in a column and to not fall back or stray.

After waging battles against the Balists in Gostivar - Tetovo Region, the First Macedonian Aegean Shock Brigade was relocated to Bitola and Gevgelia. The Greek government protested strongly about the move, claiming that it was an act of territorial claims against Greece. As a result, by special order number 236 sent directly by Josip Broz Tito on April 2, 1945, the First Macedonian Aegean Shock Brigade was forcibly disbanded.

All fighters were then redeployed to various units in Tito’s Army inside the People’s Republic of Macedonia, but only for a few months. Every day after that a bunch of us would be loaded on trucks covered with tarpaulin and transported to the Greek border where we were recruited into the ranks of DAG, but now under the command of Greek officers.

And those who organized the Macedonian Battalions’ escape into Yugoslavia i.e. went from ELAS into Tito’s army, were protected by Kolishevski’s government and appointed to high positions in the Republic of Macedonia. Some stayed in those positions to the end of their lives, serving their masters well.

Under pressure from the situation in Greece and for the purpose of liquidating the Kostur and others bands, SNOF (6) (Slavo -Macedonian National Liberation Front) and SNOV (Slavo -Macedonian National Liberation Army) were created,’ concluded the Commander.

Let us now pause for a moment and present the reader with some facts. On April 23, 1949 the 1940 general course of events was explained as follows:

The Macedonians were placed under the watchful eye of the British mission, the Greek Communist Party, ELAS and EAM:

SNOF (Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Front) and its armed Partisan wing SNOV (Slavo-Macedonian National Army) were created in the fall of 1943. These organizations were created because of the horrible situation in which the Macedonian people, under Greek control, found themselves. There was also fear that once the Greeks came back to Greek occupied Macedonia they would liquidate the Kostur bands and all other fighters.

The SNOF founding Conference for Kostur was held on December 24, 1943 and for Lerin on December 27, 1943.

At the founding conferences SNOF had to comply with Tempo’s instructions, which basically called for building a platform for a

joint struggle between the Macedonian and Greek people. The platform’s basic principles were:

1. Form a unified struggle between the Macedonian and Greek people in Aegean Macedonia as a condition for a victorious struggle against the fascist occupation;

2. Mobilize Macedonians en masse in ELAS units and prepare for an armed struggle to rout out the occupiers;

3. Fight a political and armed struggle against Kamchev’s bands and against Mihailov and the Gestapo who, with their autonomist propaganda, want to turn the Macedonian people against the Greeks and vice versa;

4. The Macedonian people will struggle together with the Greek people, within EAM against the occupiers. The Greek people will help the Macedonian people realize their national aspirations and right to self-determination on the basis of the Atlantic Charter Principles and on other major ally resolutions.

With that said the SNOF District Committee, for the first time in front of the Communist Party of Greece, officially set the Macedonian National Question in motion.

At the time, still in its infancy, the CPG leadership had limited initiatives and most which were directed against the Macedonian bands armed by the occupiers. This is why when it defined its own, EAM and PEEA’s principles and when it signed agreements with the Greek government in exile and with the British mission, the CPG did not recognize the rights of the Macedonians. So what changed? Nothing changed. Initially the CPG was against the formation of Macedonian Partisan units with Macedonians seeking their national rights. But then when it realized that these same Macedonians were capable of forming their own independent forces, they changed their mind. So the CPG’s aim was not to help the Macedonians gain their rights but to stop them from organizing independently.

It is a historic fact that the CPG and EAM leadership, up until April 1944, used SNOF for its own political and military aims, primarily in dealing with the armed bands. Then in the beginning of May 1944 the CPG disbanded SNOF and SNOV because they had become an obstacle in the CPG’s negotiations with the Greek government in exile and with the other coalition government parties scheduled to meet in mid-May 1944.

Negotiations to divide the Balkans into spheres of influence began on May 5, 1944. Britain gained supremacy over Greece and the Soviet Union over Romania. On May 20, 1944 the CPG, EAM and ELAS, under British pressure in Lebanon, signed an agreement with the Royal Government after which the coalition government was dissolved.

During a conference held on July 25, 1944, the communists in Macedonia unanimously agreed to pull out from the Lebanon Agreement as well as for the People’s Liberation Movement to apply revolutionary tactics and to rely on its own forces and on the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army. The CPG leadership was divided on the issue, one group wanted to accept the Agreement and another wanted to reject it.

The group that advocated for the acceptance of the Agreement prevailed. The Soviet military mission headed by Colonel Grigor Popov, which had arrived in the free territory on July 28, 1944, contributed to the acceptance of the Agreement. Popov was well aware of how Stalin had operated in changing the Russian system into a one-party dictatorship and removing any competition by liquidation, not just in Russia but everywhere in the world. Stalin wanted Moscow to lead all Parties and branches of the Comintern in the world and anyone opposed to that was liquidated. Stalin wanted Moscow to be the absolute centralization of management of all communist parties.

Here is what Soviet citizen Grigor Popov, a high representative in the Soviet government with full powers, had to say later: “Here is the directive… this is what Comrade Stalin ordered!”

The Agreement was accepted by the CPG Central Committee on August 17, 1944 and a decision was made to take part in the coalition government headed by George Papandreou.

Here is what Stringos, member of the CPG Central Committee Politburo, had to say during the acceptance meeting: “The Central Committee, not once but many times, had warned Gotse and Peiov that their attitude and behaviour would bring them no good! We, again and again, told the Slavo-Macedonian communists to subordinate themselves to the Party and their lives would be spared. But did they want to? Well if they didn’t want to, then in that case let them leave, let them get lost, let them go to hell!” This was followed by applause.

Now let us resume the story and see what else the Commander had to say. After a short pause the commander began talking again. He said: ‘Until April 1944, the CPG and EAM leaderships used SNOF for their own military and political objectives, especially in their campaigns against the Band Movements in Greek occupied Macedonia. Then, when their objectives were fulfilled, the Greeks, in early May 1944, disbanded both SNOF and SNOV. They did this mainly because the Macedonian organizations were obstacles and the main hurdle in the CPG’s negotiations with the Greek government in exile and with the other civil parties in forming a coalition government which was scheduled to meet in mid-May 1944.

After the Macedonian bands were liquidated many of the fighters joined SNOV and were subsequently forced into joining ELAS where they experienced much discrimination from the Greeks, including threats to their lives. They were accused of being traitors and working for the Bulgarian occupier. ‘We will destroy you, you Bulgarian bandits, you Ilinden dogs, because you want to give Kostur and the Kostur Region villages to Bulgaria.’

The former Macedonian band fighters were not so easily intimidated and answered the Greeks with their own insults, telling them: ‘You are Andartes - Greek dogs. Our people do not want you here. You have destroyed everything of ours, our church, our language… you have changed our names, place names and have banned our songs

and dances… You have Hellenized everything. God will curse you and punish you... We are who we are and will remain that way guarding our heritage forever…’

The Macedonian communists belonging to the CPG, with their demagogy, had answers of their own for the bold Macedonian fighters. One of the answers they gave was: ‘We are Communists and these Greeks are not like the old Greek Andartes who used to hang and slaughter our people. Join us, we are all Macedonians belonging to an all Macedonian army. We are fighting alongside the Greeks for the sake of the Macedonian and Greek people.’

I guess history has taught us nothing so we continue to make the same old mistakes; trusting those who invaded, occupied and partitioned our country and committed all kinds of genocides against our people. And what did our kindness do for us? We have been exiled from our homes forever. That’s our reward for being naïve…

The old folks used to say: ‘Those who don’t respect their own will be used by strangers!’

After many of the Macedonian Kostur Band fighters were lured into the ranks of SNOF, on October 10th, 1944 Tempo and his emissaries arrived in Koreshtata’...”

“The Commander paused for a moment,” said Krapov, “looked me in the eyes and asked: ‘In whose way do you think these Macedonian Band fighters stood and why do you suppose SNOF was formed and by whom?’ But before I had a chance to even open my mouth he said:

‘On August 2 and 3, 1944 the CPG and EAM Central Committee, along with ELAS and CPG General Headquarters, decided to disband the Macedonian battalions and send most of the fighters to be deployed in the south, in the depths of Greece among the ELAS units. That way any existing Macedonian political or military formations, configurations and organizations would be dismantled and in time completely eliminated. The prospect of this upset many Macedonians and created panic, especially by the various rumours that the Greeks wanted to liquidate them.

In the meantime the CPG and ELAS disbanded SNOF and forbid it to operate. They also forbade volunteers from the Kostur Bands from joining its military wing. In other words the Macedonians were not allowed to form a Macedonian Revolutionary military force. At the same time new problems began to surface between the Macedonians in ELAS, CPG and the Band fighters.

Soon afterwards on April 23rd, 1945, while the Second World War was still going on and while the Right in Greece, with help from the United Kingdom, re-established rule in Greece and began a crackdown on the resistance movement, especially in Greek occupied Macedonia, the Macedonian organizations NOF, NOMS and AFZH were formed in Skopje. These organizations were created outside of Greece and independent of the CPG,’ concluded the Commander.”

“And why were these organizations created when the war was almost over?” asked Krapov, “if not to continue the conflict in Greece? I am telling you this is when things began to go downhill for us Macedonians. This is what research has shown. I am telling you!

What does the scripture say? It says: ‘The light at the top of the mountain cannot be hidden.’

I am telling you that the power of foreign policy is the best kept secret in the history of the Greek Civil War. It was about the same time and even later that frequent reports began to surface which, according to British and American beliefs, claimed that Stalin, in the framework of his expansionist policy, was going to open the doors to the Aegean Sea and extend to the Middle East and other places. According to British and American beliefs, Stalin could have achieved this in two ways: by Soviet-izing Greece or by the unification of Macedonia and the creation of a Macedonian state as an independent entity or within the Yugoslavian federation. Unfortunately the British and the Americans were totally against such ideas.

This was impossible because, ever since 1943, Britain had made sure that Greece was placed under its influence. On July 5th, 1943 Britain asked that the EAM and ELAS movements be placed under its control and as such the CPG and EAM took command of them at Middle East Headquarters. This takeover was due to the unsuccessful attempt to negotiate, with the Greek government in exile, its role in the coalition government which was to be formed in August 1943. One of the conditions for the CPG to become part of this coalition was to disarm and destroy the Macedonian fighters.

In 1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt met on a boat in the Atlantic, where they formulated the famous “Atlantic Charter”, signed on August 14, whose principles were adopted in the United Nations Declaration in 1945. The Charter, among other things, stated that territorial change must be made in accordance with the agreement and the free will expressed by the people. The people have the right to choose for themselves the form of government they want. All rights must be returned to the people and nations must refrain from using force... So, let me ask you this. How did this apply to the Macedonian people?

Furthermore it was disclosed that: ‘After the CPG and EAM leadership used SNOF for their own political and military purposes, primarily in curbing the Macedonian Band movements, especially in Kostur Region, towards the end of April they felt SNOF was no longer needed. In early May the CPG Central Committee decided to dissolve SNOF and have its members join the ranks of EAM.’

We Macedonians never had any discussions with the senior authorities of the CPG Central Committee but always quarreled with local Greek CPG and EAM leaders in Kostur, Lerin and Voden Regions. We Macedonians never organized or voiced any concerns or raised issues that were of vital importance to our survival and to the preservation of our centuries old homeland and civilization. We Macedonians never organized a single protest against the Greek government in front of the International Community regarding the ethnic changes in our lands and the 640,000 colonists and settlers from Asia Minor deposited in our country by Greek governments. We never complained about Greece not caring for us after the

division of Macedonia. We never even made a concerted effort to seek rights as an indigenous population in Macedonia.

Let me tell you something which I heard from a serious historiographer (See: “N. M.” 20.08.1994): ‘At about mid-1944, the situation in Aegean Macedonia, regarding the Macedonian communists, became unbearable. The Greek communists, directed by the English Intelligence Service, undertook a number of measures to quell the Macedonian People’s Liberation Movement by preventing Macedonian fighters from joining the Macedonian battalions under the pretext that the battalions were an “uncertain” army.

The Greeks broke up the Macedonian National Liberation Front in Greece when a large group of Macedonians left the ranks of ELAS and passed into the ranks of Tito’s Army. ELAS Headquarters declared these people deserters. They are now being managed by the CPY / CPM.’ And that’s what the historiographer said,” concluded Krapov and went silent.

The Greek Civil War (1946 - 1949)

It was my turn to say something: “Should there have been a Greek Civil War? What did the Macedonians gain by it, especially the fighters who survived? Was this war planned to displace the Macedonian people from Greece?” I asked. Then I said:

“In order to answer these questions we need to not only examine the facts but we need to have a hard look at the final outcome of this tragic war.

There was no need for a Greek Civil War. The Second World War had ended and everything had been decided by the Great Powers. The world had already been divided into spheres of influence, while Greece fell under British influence Yugoslavia fell under Soviet. And thus the Greek Civil War could not have been about “Soviet-izing” Greece.

In the final analysis the Macedonian people gained nothing from the war, in fact they lost plenty; many lost their lives and the majority

who participated in the war were exiled and lost their ancestral homes forever. In other words, Greece was “emptied” of the staunch Macedonians.

How could this have happened?

The aim of the Greek communists in entering this war was not for them to die for their country but to have the Macedonians die for Greece. The Greek communists and official Athens, which the communists called fascist, had the same objective: “A Macedonia without Macedonians!” It was exactly because of this war that the Macedonians lost their ethnic and historical status in Greek occupied Macedonia.

The Greeks wanting a Macedonia without Macedonians was no secret, even Markos Vafiadis made that very clear several times.

General Markos Vafiadis was born in 1906 in the village Tosie, Asia Minor. He had just finished grade four when his family was exiled from Turkey and sent to Macedonia. Markos was a communist, a tobacco worker and a member of the CPG since 1928. He was a member of the CPG Central Committee since 1942. Second CPG Secretary of Domestic Affairs in Greek occupied Macedonia. Divisional Commissar of ELAS in Greek occupied Macedonia. Later he was military commander and head of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece during the Greek Civil War. In the CPG Political Bureau Resolution of September 15, 1948, it was said that “Markos Vafiadis, as Commissar of a Group of ELAS divisions in Macedonia, followed a chauvinistic policy towards the Slavo-Macedonian fighters.” (“Neos Kosmos” August 1950. “Ten years of struggle”, p. 470.)

Was Markos Vafiadis a general or a criminal?

After his return to Greece from the USSR (see “Ta Nea” and “Epikera” printed in Athens) there was talk that Markos met with General Tsakalotos in Athens. Tsakalotos was working for the Greek government at the time and later fought against the Partisans during the Greek Civil War. (See “Nova Makedonija”, February 24, 1992.)

General Tsakalotos, as a man and as a warrior, was more human than Markos because he had compassion for the victims of the civil war whereas Markos did not. When Tsakalatos said “I mourn for the victims of the war,” Markos replied, “we fight in this war to kill Macedonians so that we do not lose Macedonia to them!”

This can only mean that General Markos lied to us on an unprecedented scale and at the same time told us that “communists don’t lie”! And what did we do for Markos besides give him our lives? We wrote poetry and songs to glorify him and his deeds! We glorified the very same beast that planned our demise, which brought us to the brink of extinction! There is no doubt about it, Markos Vafiadis was a criminal!

Two Asia Minor colonists, Nikos Zahariadis and Markos Vafiadis, rose to the top in the ranks of the CPG and, with help from the CPY/CPM, NOF and AFZH, lured us Macedonians en masse into the Greek Civil War with lies and false promises and made us sacrifice ourselves so that Greece could displace us and make more room for the Asia Minor colonists who were deposited in Macedonia after the Balkan Wars. This basically sums it up; what happened to us and what the purpose of the Greek Civil War was.

Times have sure changed! We have endured the Greek Civil War, a phenomenon of our consciousness, and the five perilous years of NOF and AFZH being led by Asia Minor colonists in both pillars, political and military.”

Krapov look at me and said: “If we follow the facts and undeniable evidence of what truly happened to the Macedonian people, we will discover that genocide was purposely committed against us.

In that period of time even the “fraternal communist parties” led by the USSR did not want to know the truth; that the Macedonian people were being prepared for genocide.

What I don’t understand is why did we trust the ideological activists of NOF and AFZH, who arrived in the Macedonian villages in April 1945 with directives from Tito, Tempo, Kolishevki and Uzunovski -

Abas preaching to us that we need to ‘spiritually unify’, and that the time was right even though the war (WW II) had just ended and that Yugoslavia stood behind our future struggle?

The NOF and AFZH activists used to say: ‘What the CPG and the CPY are offering must be viewed as a spiritual unification, not as someone’s political background project. This is a great and beautiful moment for all Macedonians in the world and we need to trust the Greek communists!’ This is what our Macedonian ideological activists preached to us.

Then, throughout the course of the war, being blinded by their ideological propaganda, we, like cowards, succumbed to the will of Zahariadis and Markos and became servile and ignorant, forgetting what the Greeks were all about. We were lied to and lured with promises of a better future and somehow we forgot the present. One thing is certain about all this, we wrote a dark chapter for our history. And as such for many years, even decades, at home and in exile, we lived in fear of those who inflicted this evil upon us. And to think that we Macedonians generously and sincerely accepted their slogan and bled for them for years!

We made a grave error when we decided to join the struggle within the ranks of the CPG in order to free Greek occupied Macedonia and unite it with the rest of Macedonia. We were lied to by both Parties: the CPG and CPY (CPM)... It was a terrible thing... and to think that we all knew that the highest guarantee that the CPG could make was give us ‘equality with the Greeks within the framework of Greece’ and nothing more! Anything more than that was empty and meaningless… promises concocted to get us involved in the Greek Civil War, which in the end turned out to be a great big Greek lie.

How can we have been so stupid as to think that we would receive ‘brotherly’ support from the very same people who invaded, occupied and portioned our Macedonia in 1913 and took it for themselves? Worse than that, why did we believe that the very people who had divided our Macedonia were now going to help us reunite it? Even worse than that, how could we have expected to unite our Macedonia after World War II ended? When the war was

over, when everything had been decided and when the rest of the world was looking forward to living in peace?

How can we have been so naïve as to think that a government (Bulgarian, Yugoslav, or Greek) would be so stupid as to arm NOF or any other Macedonian liberation movement and freely give it part of its territory for which it had fought in 1913?

I know that any reasonable person would have said ‘no’ to fraternizing with our occupiers, especially with the so-called ‘fraternal, communist parties’ (CPY and CPG) because it was not in their interest to support us in the creation of a united and independent Macedonia separated from Greece and Yugoslavia. By fraternizing with them, they in fact prevented us from organizing and achieving our aims.

They wanted us to be part of them, especially during the Greek Civil War so that they could control our actions, just like they did with NOF. If we acted independently we were immediately labeled traitors. In the end the CPG labeled the NOF leaders traitors anyway and as such doomed them. The Greeks would have done anything, lie, tell us what we wanted to hear, etc., in order to keep us within reach.

For example, Stavros Karkaletsos, President of the Hellenic Centre for European and International Analysis, once said: ‘I, as a Greek, and many others here believe that the Communist Party of Greece at the time played an anti-Greek role. There was a statement made by Aris Velouhiotis, wartime leader of the Party during the Second World War, that Greece’s borders ended at Mount Olympus.’

Now, why would he say that when clearly it was against his own interests? It was pure propaganda, but for what reason?

Clearly he said it to placate the Macedonians or more precisely to attract the so-called Slavo-Macedonians on the communist side of the Greek Civil War and have them fight against the Greek army. And that’s exactly what happened. All kinds of things were promised but none materialized. It was as if the Greek communists had gotten amnesia because later none remembered or recalled what

they had promised. It was a trick to attract the Macedonians to their side and have them fight against the Athens government. (See: “A century of persecution.”)

Such tricks were used against us by many Greeks including Zahariadis and Markos and also by members of the CPY/CPM, from 1943 to 1949, and especially by Tempo, Kolishevski, Uzunov and other Macedonians. We were also given a label, no doubt by the CPG, CPY/CPM, and we became known as the “Egeitsi” (Aegeans), a hurtful and offensive label for us because we were all patriotic Macedonians. It was scary indeed…” concluded Krapov, who went silent.

I watched the old man in wonderment as he pondered his next move, curious as to what he was going to say next. Then, without warning, he stood up, fixed his white hair with his palm and said: “We had a strange logic here in Kostur: If you were against them not even the river Belitsa could wash away your guilt because you were against the Bands who died protecting Kostur and your native land. Conversely, if you wholeheartedly were for the Communists then you not only advanced their ideas but you were also labeled Internationalist and an internationalist intellectual.

With such an internationalist orientation, a hundred years later, a person from Kostur will feel like a new man, not caring where he belongs while living outside of Kostur. Now scattered around the world, we feel spiritually depleted and go on with our cosmopolitan lives, living only with our memories... But for how many generations?! Will the next generation know or even care to know where it came from? Scary isn’t it?

It is incomprehensible even today that we (Macedonian fighters in the ranks of ELAS) actually participated in the destruction of the entire well-organized Kostur Region community when we attacked the 64 Macedonian villages with more than 9,800 armed Macedonian freedom fighters, who bravely stood on guard against Hellenism and protected our people from losing their identity and dignity. Instead of valourizing these fighters as the true guards of our identity and dignity, which in effect were a Macedonian national resistance, we placed a black mark on them and in our history

labeled them with all sorts of ideological labels. But what is truly amazing, the very same people who we labeled ‘traitors and collaborators’ were not only good enough to fight in the new campaign, but left us with a new generation of fighters (all those who remained alive or their sons). Unfortunately, after they were disarmed they too were stuffed in the same trap as the rest of us; they too became the good sons of the Communist Party of Greece...

This phenomenon of freedom fighters, fighting exclusively for the Macedonian cause, appearing in Kostur and in other places in Macedonia at this time and under these circumstances, shows that there is still much respect for our people’s identity and dignity. We respect ourselves and who we are! Unfortunately we have not learned to avoid the traps set for us by outsiders. We have not learned to refrain from being drawn into the political games being played all around us. Believe me when I tell you this… We committed a great sin when we destroyed the Kostur freedom fighters.

Also let me tell you this. If nations in the world existed with roots extending to the very distant past, we would be amongst the first, if not the first to fit that profile. We are Macedonians and we one of the oldest nations in the world. And we still exist… It is a miracle. It is a sin to want to persecute and destroy a miracle… especially the Kostur freedom fighters…

It turned out that every ideology invariably leads to violence and radical thinking. And now this ideological intimacy with double standards turned the Macedonians away from their original objectives and gave them different visions and different yearnings. Of course that was expected with change; a new Party, a new world order… It was a big deal. But the greatest error we made was to surrender our people to strangers, to our historic enemies, under the belief that they would lead us to national freedom.

Throughout the entire period while the war was raging on, we Macedonians were under the spell of the CPY/CPM and the CPG. It was like we all had the same disease. Especially the Macedonians who were members in these parties and who not only wholeheartedly believed what the Parties preached to them but they

excessively propagated their own illusions and were blind to the truth. They were the ones who created the atmosphere of lies which have now lasted more than half a century. They are the ones who covered up our failures and the destruction of the true Macedonian freedom fighters in Kostur. They are the ones who destroyed the Macedonian family and turned us all into world wanderers. They are the ones responsible for us losing our ancestral homes. The unprecedented genocide that befell us is on their hands…” concluded Krapov, sitting down, looking emotionally drained.

Alien ideological strategies and the disorganization of the Macedonian position

Krapov looked at me and said: “Tell me something about the Civil War. Was it true that more than 60% of the participants were Macedonians? What was the purpose of that war? Was its goal really to unite Macedonia?”

I don’t know why Krapov asked me again because I had answered these questions a little earlier in our conversation. At least I thought I had.

“No!” I said. “It was bait planted by the CPG, CPY/CPM” giving him a short answer.

Krapov looked confused as if wanting to say: “That’s all you have to say?”

Feeling awkward I began talking. I felt like I had to tell him everything I knew.

I said: “As history has shown, the Greek Civil War was filled with much cruelty against the Macedonian people living in Greek occupied Macedonia as this cruelty and deadly games were led and played by the then leaders of the Left, especially those of the CPG, the CPY headed by Tito. It was done for the benefit of their countries.

This many years later and after spending half a century feeling like prisoners, for us the Greek Civil War can be generally assessed as

objective, but only if we analyze NOF and AFZH’s goals and results from a neutral standpoint, which will then show that it was a closed circle tragedy. And I will tell you why!