Introduction - Part 03

The Metaxas regime was particularly brutal against the rural Macedonian population where Hellenization in the past was less restrictive and most Macedonians especially the elderly and uneducated did not speak Greek. Here the Metaxas regime employed a particularly large police force where the policemen’s salaies were supplemented with the funds exacted by the policemen from fines. Each policeman was paid a percentage of the fine imposed on those caught speaking Macedonian. With this kind of incentive, policemen were not only doing their patriotic duty in apprehending the criminals but they were also rewarded for their vigilance. Unfortunately those who paid the heaviest fines were the elderly and poor, people who could least afford them. The best places to stalk their unsuspecting victims were the crowded marketplaces where old women did their shopping totally oblivious of the prowling policemen’s finely tuned ears, ever listening for the offending word of a criminal speaking in their native language, the only language they knew. One gentle old widowed woman who I know personally from my village was fined the equivalent of one month’s salary for asking for the price of produce at the market. She had to sell her entire year’s supply of feta cheese in order to pay the fine. I was too young at that time to ask this poor woman how it felt to be fined for speaking the only language she knew. Being unable to speak Greek how did she manage to buy a ticket on the bus to go to market? How did she ask the grocer for her groceries? Did she point to them? How did she figure out how to pay if she didn’t understand the grocer’s language? We often joke about this because it is so bizarre but people were also fined for giving commands to their animals or calling out to their pets in their native language. Another place to stalk unsuspecting victims was at their home. Greek policemen often stood outside people’s windows just to hear what language they were speaking and fined the entire family if they were caught speaking Macedonian. “The Metaxas regime, haunted by the specter of Slavism and communism, initiated a policy of accelerated assimilation. Applied by incompetent and short-sighted civil servants, it antagonized even Slavophones of the Greek faction. To peasants of Bulgarian [ethnic Macedonian] orientation it served as proof that the Greek state could not offer them a national shelter. In 1941, the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the entrance of Bulgarian troops in eastern Macedonia and Thrace offered the opportunity for accumulated bitterness to reach maturity.” (Kofos. “Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia”. Page 255) After the realization set in that people would be fined and even physically punished and force fed castor oil for repeat offences, fear and suspicion began to set in, forcing people to keep silent. It was best to look down or to look the other way when passing your neighbours on the street because you never knew who might be listening. Keeping silent was preferable to speaking to someone you knew all your life in a foreign despicable tongue you despised. “In the past, Macedonian life and events were preserved in the folksongs, thus enabling an articulation of feelings and grief as well as cultural self-expression. When the Macedonian language was proscribed in Northern Greece, the folksongs ceased.” (Kita Sapurma & Pandora Petrovska. “Children of the Bird Goddess”. Pollitecon Publications. 1997. Page 163) “Metaxas placed great store by the country's youth, and to this end created the National Youth Organization (EON), which was intended to be the standard bearer of his ideals after his death. Membership of EON was made mandatory and rival organizations such as the Boy Scouts were suppressed. EON, too, was seen by Metaxas as providing a substitute for the lack of any kind of mass party base for his power, the most obvious difference between the Metaxas regime and the fascist regimes that he so admired. He shared to the full, however, their hostility towards liberalism, communism and parliamentary government, and indeed their nationalism, although his nationalism was of the non-aggressive variety.

Nor, moreover, was his ideology, such as it was, based on theories of racial superiority.” (Richard Clogg. “A Short History of Modern Greece”. Pages 133 and 134) The National Youth Organization (EON) may have been the “standard bearer for Metaxas’s ideals” but it was a nightmare for the Macedonian population. Included in this organization were Macedonian youths who were poisoned by Greek propaganda and turned against their own people. Even their own parents and grandparents were seen as weak and vile and loathed for who they were. Such poisoned youths would not hesitate to turn in their own siblings or parents to the police for even the most minor offenses. While western authors ridicule Hitler for his promotion of “racial superiority” they remain silent for Metaxas’s. Much of the arrogance in modern Greeks today is owed to the Metaxas indoctrination. Much as he hated Macedonians, Metaxas also had distaste for communists who he persecuted at no end. Since officially Macedonians did not exist, his regime was quick to accuse Macedonians of being communists and sent them to prison in the most desolate Greek island concentration camps. A whole network of Greek fascists existed spying on the people and making lists of those that could not be trusted. When Metaxas exacted his dictatorship all these “marked” people were rounded up and sent to prison. And as we will later show, these same lists were used again and again to torment the population more so the Macedonian population than any other in Greek occupied Macedonia. If World War II had not broken out and had Metaxas lived another five years, there would be no minorities living in Greece today, Greece would have been a truly homogenous state with “pure Greeks” all being direct descendants from the ancient Greeks. Although officially Greece claims to be 98% pure, those claims today are only wishful thinking. Being persecuted to no end, during the Metaxa era people took measures to protect themselves and took their activities underground. There still existed communists and communist organizations but by now they were all clandestine. New and more secure communications were developed which in the long term served the communists well especially during the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation. We cannot say that there was no relationship between the Macedonians and the democrats as many Macedonians were loyal to the Communist Party of Greece but only because it was the sole party that ever gave Macedonians the time of day. Macedonians were made scapegoats for communist activities even though Macedonians had nothing to do with those activities. Following is a segment from John S. Koliopouls’s book “Plundered Loyalties” that deals with the subject of Macedonians and communists during the 1930’s but represents the Greek point of view in this matter. “In December 1929 the district governor of Florina reported that on visiting the Slav Macedonian villages of Ano Hydrousa, Sphika and Karyai he encountered not only resentment against state and communal taxation but also 'anti-state sentiments'. He discerned the same sentiments in the refusal of the inhabitants of five 'indigent' villages of Lake Prespa to cooperate in leasing the taxes on the lake fishery. Mikrolimni, Agios Achilleios, Bronteron, Kallithea and Pyksos apparently harboured 'anti-state' sentiments. Such an attitude and the inroads the communists were able to make in Slav Macedonian villages in the 1930s led to stringent legislative and administrative measures, especially by the right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas (1936-41). In addition to banning the speaking of Slav Macedonian in public, the dictatorship imprisoned or deported an unknown number of communist cadres of the region, many of them Slav Macedonians or simply sensitive to their grievances. Gendarmerie and administrative and appointed communal officials, in their effort to curry favour with the strong men of the day, were prepared to go out of their way to combat communist and 'anti-state' sentiments.

Pastoralists of the region were obliged to provide evidence of their true Greek sentiments to be able to rent summer grazing land. Gendarmerie officers and appointed village headmen had to be satisfied that applicants for such transactions were 'God-fearing family men' and 'nationalists'. Neither Slav Macedonians nor refugees were considered to be above suspicion.

A Maniot gendarmerie officer named Periandros Poulakos was representative of state officials of the period in the region. As commanding officer of the Amygdala gendarmerie station, he made a name for himself in the district of Eordaea as a ruthless guardian of law and order as conceived by the Metaxas dictatorship. In December 1938, assisted by the village chief of the National Youth Organization (Ethniki Organosis Neon) (EON) and under orders from the district governor of Kozani, he arrested an inhabitant who was seen in the village cafe when he was expected to attend church like others. In March 1939 the same officer arrested, again with the assistance of the Youth chief and the president of the village of Koila, an inhabitant of that village who opened his coffee shop, which he also used as a barber's shop, on Independence Day (25 March) to shave two village men. Several inhabitants made statements under oath that from that and similar behaviour in the past they were convinced that the barber was a communist sympathizer. Several months later Poulakos arrested a Slav Macedonian in the village of Ermakia and other members of his family and kept them in custody, longer than was permitted in an effort to extract the depositions he was demanding. The Slav Macedonian with another man of the same village beat the village field guard, a refugee who had caught them stealing grapes from a vineyard. Had it not been for the war and the ensuing foreign occupation of the region in the first half of the 1940s, the ruthless drive to transform the region in the ways described might possibly have succeeded. However those events put an end to this process of assimilating different linguistic and cultural groups into a homogeneous national community and initiated, instead, developments that further intensified existing cleavages.” (John S. Koliopouls. “Plundered Loyalties”. Pages 44-46) After war broke out in the Balkans, the first to fall to fascist aggression was Albania. By an ultimatum delivered to Albania on March 23, 1939, Italian troops landed in Albania and occupied its territory on April 7, encountering little resistance. Soon after consolidating control in Albania, on October 28th, 1940, Italy declared war on Greece. Greece however turned out to be tough to defeat and Metaxa's foresight in arming his state paid off. Official history praises Greece and Greek soldiers for their bravery and fighting spirit but neglects to mention the contributions and sacrifices Macedonians made to keep Greece safe. Macedonians were the first to be dispatched to the front lines in Albania, taking the full brunt of the offensive as well as the winter cold. More Macedonian men suffered from gangrene than from Italian bullets and bombs. Unprepared for the frigid temperatures, many men lost their fingers, toes, limbs and even their lives to frostbite. Food too was in short supply as the brave Macedonian soldiers had to fight off starvation as well as the Italians. They did this to protect a country that refused and still refuses to recognize them. “The first intimations of what was to come had been sensed before the Axis occupation, as early as the winter of 1940-1, even as Greece was fighting Italy people wondered about the attitude of the Slav Macedonians: would they fight with the rest of the Greeks? The great majority of them did fight the Italians even more tenaciously than most southern Greeks, if only because the fighting was taking place not far from their homes. The local army units were the first to repulse the Italian invaders in October and the first to march into Albania in November…. …A related warning was the deportation of a number of Slav Macedonians during the war for security reasons. They were mostly communists, or people whom the authorities did not trust to move freely in the zone of military operations.” (John S. Koliopouls. “Plundered Loyalties”. Page 50) All their sacrifices were in vain because six months later on April 6th, 1941 the German army marched into Greece.

The Italian, German and Bulgarian occupation

The German invasion was a welcome relief for the soldiers from the Italian front, but at the same time it posed an uneasy uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. No one was certain how the new invaders were going to react. The Macedonian people, having ample experience with being occupied, were expecting the worst. As time would show however the new invaders were a mixed blessing for the Macedonian people. After war broke out in Europe, Bulgaria allied itself with the axis powers and on March 1, 1941 joined the German led pact. By the end of April, 1941 Greek occupied Macedonia was divided into three occupied zones: Eastern Macedonia east from the river Struma along with Thrace was held by Fascist Bulgaria, the southern part of Kostur Region, Kozheni Region and part of Lerin Region was held by the Italians and central Macedonia to Solun was occupied by the Germans. All territories from central and southern Greek occupied Macedonia, where a large segment of approximately 200,000 Macedonian people lived, was left under the jurisdiction of the Greek collaborationist government of general Cholakoglu the man who surrendered Greece to the axis powers. It took about two months before law and order was re-established in Greek occupied Macedonia and this was done by restoring the old Greek fascist regime, the same regime that supported the Metaxas government. In other words the occupiers needed people to do their bidding so the people who served the Metaxas dictatorship were now the servants of the new masters. Many Macedonians from the Republic of Macedonia who had suffered under the Yugoslav regime welcomed the Bulgarian invaders as saviors and liberators. Their euphoria however was short-lived as the Bulgarians quickly began to oppress and forcibly Bulgarize the Macedonian population. If there had been any pro-Bulgarian sentiment before, it quickly disappeared after the occupation. Germany's violent entry into Yugoslavia, coupled with Bulgarian oppressive attitudes towards the Macedonian people, gave birth to an underground Macedonian resistance movement. In Greek occupied Macedonia the new occupiers formed gendarmes from the local collaborators called “ekatondarhi” whose initial purpose was to recruit local individuals from the villages who would be willing to spy on their neighbours and inform on those working against the occupier. The gendarmes also acted as the new security forces by establishing gendarme stations in the villages to keep an eye on the people and to requisition food, labour and other supplies for the occupiers and for the Greek quisling government. Individuals who worked for the occupiers were well paid but at the same time they were abusive and unruly and would not hesitate to use repressive measures against their own people. This attitude created resentment which led to the formation of resistance movements. To counter the gendarme’s oppressive tactics the old Komiti (Ilinden revolutionary guard) was rearmed by the Italians who took advantage of the situation. The "old timers" were angered by Greece's oppressive laws and were spurred back into action by Bulgarian propaganda which condemned the oppressive Greek tactics. The Bulgarians were well aware of the unfavourable conditions the Metaxas and later the Greek quisling Government had created in Greek occupied Macedonia and used the opportunity to agitate the Greeks. Komiti actions were limited at best and were restricted to the Italian zones, as the Germans would not tolerate armed actions in their zones. Another group to quickly react to the repressive measures of the occupiers and their collaborators was the democratic element which was active in the various towns and villages. Many democrats, communist sympathizers and others accused of being communists that were jailed by the Metaxas government escaped or were freed by the Germans after Greece’s capitulation. These people immediately went to work rebuilding their organizations in secret and agreed to form a unified front to struggle against the new occupiers.

The democrats were the first to approach the Macedonian people for help in their struggle while reminding them that between 1924 and 1935 the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) was the only party which supported their rights as Macedonians. As we will later see this was only a ploy to (1) attract Macedonians into their struggle and (2) to counter the Bulgarian propaganda which offered similar benefits. Although the CPG had suffered more than the non-democratic politicians during the Metaxas dictatorship it was able to take advantage of its internal discipline and exploit its greater experience of clandestine activity to good effect during the occupation. The non-communist politicians, by contrast, were for the most part on the periphery of dramatic events during the war years. The restoration of the old Greek Metaxas regime in central and south Greek occupied Macedonia (eastern Macedonia was occupied by Bulgaria) was accepted with much displeasure by the Macedonian people, especially by those villages which suffered the most under the Metaxas dictatorship, when around 5,000 Macedonians were charged with heavy fines and were jailed for speaking Macedonian, their mother tongue. Those people in the face of the new gendarmes, who came to the villages to establish the old gendarme stations, saw the return of the old dictatorial and discriminatory regime and the return of new terror and oppression. In the fall of 1941 in the village Sarakinovo, Meglen Region, the villagers held the armed gendarmes at bay for three days and would not allow them to re-claim the old gendarme building. The impasse was only broken after the Sobotsko gendarme arrived with help. In the village Banitsa, Lerin Region, the villagers opened fire on the gendarme in an attempt to prevent it from occupying the gendarme station. The gendarme gained entry only after the Germans intervened, which unfortunately had negative consequences for the people of the surrounding region. The Germans jailed 60 people from Banitsa, Tsereovo and Gornichevo and killed one person from each village. The following people were taken to Lerin and executed: Dine Ljakov from Banitsa, Stavre (Kitse) Stangolev from Gornichevo and Mijale Tashonov from Tsereovo. Even though the Banitsa resistance was purely a defensive act strictly aimed at preventing former Metaxas elements from taking hold, it was not tolerated by the Germans. In other words, the occupier would only tolerate those who served his interests. Resistance actions to gendarmes similar to those in Banitsa and Sarakinovo were also organized in the villages Nered, German, and Zelenich, in Lerin Region, Tresino in Meglen Region and Kolomnati in Kostur Region. This is only a small example of what really took place in the struggle against the installation of the former Metaxas dictatorial regime. The Greek response to all this was typical and characteristic of Greek reactions. Instead of seeing these as defensive actions against an internal aggressor they saw them as a “Bulgarophil movement” which associated the Macedonian people with the enemy. If these actions were indeed the actions of a “Bulgarophil movement” how then do they explain what took place in the Greek village of Mesovuno in 1941? The village Mesovuno in Kajlar Region, previously called Krmsko was repopulated with Christian Turk settlers from the Pont and the Caucasus in 1924 and renamed from Krmsko to Mesovuno in 1926 by the Greek state. This village was populated by pure and trusted Greeks, yet as we will see this village too rebelled against the Greeks in 1941. The village Krmsko is located on the west side of Mount Karakamen and fell smack in the middle of the Greek army’s second defensive line in the Albanian front which stretched from Mount Karakamen to Mount Kajmakchalan during the Greek-Italian war of 1940-41. After Greece’s capitulation to the Axis powers, the Greek army retreated and abandoned storehouses of arms, ammunition and supplies. With no one to guard the warehouse near Krmsko, the villagers took the opportunity to arm themselves in preparation for an unknown future.

Among those involved in organizing the warehouse raid included were the teacher Alekso Hadgi Tashkov from Katranitsa, Georgios Petridis and Neofitos Antopulos. Upon acquiring arms the villagers of Krmsko began to organize military formations and carried out war exercises As the gendarmes formed teams of people from all walks of life, in the fall of 1941 they dispatched them to the villages to requisition food supplies such as wheat, corn and other goods which were to be surrendered to the occupiers and to the Greek quisling government. One such team supported by a gendarme was sent to Krmsko where upon its entry into the village, was stormed and disarmed by the villagers. No one was harmed but the villagers made it clear that if the team ever returned its members would all be killed. Unable to squash the Krmsko uprising by force, the Regional Governor of Kozheni decided to replace Janis Mourena the Krmsko Municipality President with Pavlos Konstantinidis, one of his own people. That however did not go so well because the first act of the new president was to call on regional gendarmes and the Germans to help him occupy Krmsko. In view of this the villagers found the new president guilty of being an agent of the occupier and had him assassinated. Upon finding this out, in the morning of October 11, 1941, a gendarme from Katranitsa was dispatched to Krmsko to capture those responsible for the assassination. Expecting retaliation, the villagers of Krmsko were prepared for an ambush and as soon as the gendarme arrived it was surrounded and disarmed. Still unable to put down the revolt, the Greek quislings called on the Germans for assistance and on October 16, German soldiers arrived and a fire fight ensued. Still unable to suppress the revolt after a short skirmish, the Germans left for Kozheni only to return several days later with a larger force. In the morning of October 23rd, the people of Krmsko woke up to find their village surrounded. For their courageous stand many paid with their lives. The entire male population from 15 to 60 years of age (146 people) was taken and executed in the village meadows. Something similar happened to the Macedonian village of Ekshisu but for other reasons. In October 1941 Yannis Papaperos, a Greek officer and staunch Grkoman (a Macedonian who believes he is Greek and supports the Greek cause), made an agreement with other Greek officers of the surrounding Lerin Region gendarmes to attack his own village Ekshisu. The purpose of the attack, which was to be carried out in the dark of night, was to capture and kill the Macedonian leaders and make it look like the communists did it. Ekshisu was indeed attacked in the night but the villagers who were armed retaliated and fought back repealing the attackers but not without a price. Among the village men who fought, killed were Kole Madzhov, Kiril Tsitskov, Romanov and Kitse Karov. Even though clearly this clash was provoked by the Greek officers, the Germans held the village accountable and had the entire civilian population locked up in the village church for three days and three nights without food or water. Subsequently, 30 people were sent to jail to the Jedikule prison in Solun. One of the residents, Boris Kargov, was sentenced to death and executed. At the time of the attack about 300 of those who took up arms against the Greek officers fled to Mount Radush and remained there until the danger was over. Twelve of them became Partisans and remained in the mountains permanently. They were Gjorgi and Iljo Turundzhiev, Kiro Piljaev, Trivko Popov, Mih Kargov, Ilija Popov, Minche Alipashov, Trajko Lisichev, Krume Ashelov, Jordan Shepardanov and two others. All twelve men were from Ekshisu and all later became organizers of a wider resistance movement and participated in a small armed detachment of resistance fighters. At the end of June 1941, the sixth plenum of the central committee of the CPG met to formulate a plan to defend against the occupiers and to overthrow the foreign fascist yoke.

To this end the people were invited to join in the formation of the Greek National Liberation Front (GNLF), which was founded in September 1941. Although the democrats and the CPG were dominant in the GNLF from the beginning there were other small left wing coalition partners such as the agrarian parties and others. In its propaganda the GNLF took care not to scare off potential recruits, in what was fundamentally a conservative and traditional society, with wild talk of land collectivization or nationalization. It stressed instead its patriotic role as a focus for resistance to the Axis. It also demanded that, on liberation, a constituent assembly should be summoned so that the sovereign Greek people might decide on their future form of government. In a secretly circulated pamphlet entitled “what is the GNLF and what are its aims?” the first aim was “to protect the people against hunger, illness and want”. Other aims included the raising of morale, opposition to all forms of collaboration and the National Liberation Struggle”. The GNLF endeavoured to have a representative in every village wherever possible. The Partisan movement in Yugoslavia was more organized and more progressive than that in Greece. Led by Tito, the Communist partisans in Yugoslavia organized a war of national liberation in which the Macedonians fought on an equal footing. Macedonians formed their own section of resistance even before they were recognized and accepted by Tito. The first anti-fascist war of national liberation began in the Republic of Macedonia on October 11, 1941. The Macedonian people by their actions, loyalty and patriotism earned their place in the world. By hardship, determination and the spilling of blood the Macedonian people demonstrated their desire for freedom and the willingness to rule themselves. The Great Powers in 1829 (by the London Protocol) satisfied the Greeks by making Greece a country. Similarly in 1878 (by the congress of Berlin) Russia liberated the Bulgarians making Bulgaria a country. Unlike the Greeks and Bulgarians, however, the brave Macedonian people had to fight by themselves, for themselves, to earn their place in the world among the free nations. In April 1942 the Macedonian people in the Republic of Macedonia rose up and demonstrated their displeasure against the Bulgarian yoke and Macedonian Partisans took up arms against the Bulgarian army but were massacred in a bloody battle. Unarmed Macedonians then took to the streets to protest the massacre and they too were cut to pieces. To escape persecution, sections of the Macedonian Partisan force from the Republic of Macedonia fled into Greek occupied Macedonia. Some entered the Italian zones near the village Besfina and the rest penetrated the German zones in the region around the village Sveta Petka and quickly went underground. The Besfina force, before it had a chance to make contact with the local population, was spotted by the Komiti who quickly sprang into action. Seeing uniformed men on the Besfina hillside startled the old Komiti. Thinking that it was a Greek gendarme invasion, the Komiti appealed to the local Italian garrison and were given arms and permission to attack. When the Komiti started the offensive the Partisans backed off and sent representatives to negotiate. They went from village to village and spoke with the local chiefs. The strangers wore handsome uniforms and conducted themselves seriously, with charm and charisma. They spoke long and well about freedom, liberty and the treachery of the Bulgarian Fascists. When the Komiti found out that the uniformed men were Macedonians they accepted them with open arms, gave them (surrendered) their weapons and many voluntarily joined their cause. The Partisans of Sveta Petka, because of a German presence, had to work under cover but they too succeeded in recruiting volunteers from the local population. After the Partisan penetration, the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia learned about the Bulgarian atrocities committed in the Republic of Macedonia and ceased to believe the Bulgarian propaganda.

The old Ilinden guard was demobilized and replaced by a Partisan movement. Partisan organizers took extraordinary measures to explain to the Macedonian people that they were fighting for the freedom and liberation of the Macedonian people from the tyranny of the oppressive states. The Macedonian involvement in this war, and later in the Greek civil war, was not about "Communist ideologies" or about alliances or obligations to the Great Powers. It was simply the next stage in the long struggle for "liberation from oppression" and to fulfill a longing for freedom, re-unification and self-rule. The Macedonian contribution in fighting against Fascism is not only under emphasized but also misinterpreted by historians. I will once again say that the Macedonian people, during the Second Great War (WWII), rose on the democratic side and fought against fascism for the liberation of the states in which they lived. The Macedonian people, like other people in the Balkans, fought to liberate their homeland and thus earn their place in the world. This cannot be ignored and must be recognized and recorded in the annals of history. Word of a Macedonian Partisan movement in Greek occupied Macedonia spread like wildfire. People came out on the streets to freely speak their native Macedonian language, to sing songs and write Macedonian plays and poetry. The Partisans even set up Macedonian schools and taught children patriotic songs, poems and Macedonian history, using local Macedonian dialects. The younger generations, for the first time, saw written words in their beloved, sacred Macedonian language. The newfound freedom brought happiness to the lives of the oppressed Macedonian people who welcomed the Partisans into their villages as "our own boys and girls". The newfound confidence and strength projected by the Macedonians terrified the Greeks, especially the gendarmes and the collaborators. For a while they were no longer a threat. The Germans and Italians did not care one way or another about Macedonian affairs as long as there was no trouble for them. Macedonian interest in Partisan activities continued to climb, bringing new recruits and volunteers to the cause. Youth organizations were created with young men and women recruited to be the eyes and ears of the community and to help defend the villages. Many young volunteers of military age were recruited and trained to perform policing and civic duties in the newly formed organizations. The organization Macedonian National Liberation Front in Greece (MNLF(G)) which was separate from that in the Republic of Macedonia (MNLF(Y) was formed and began recruiting fighters from the Kostur, Lerin and Voden regions.

The National Liberation Front