MARKOS I SAVED GREECE FROM BECOMING A SLAVIC COUNTRY

MARKOS: I SAVED GREECE FROM BECOMING A SLAVIC COUNTRY

“The Greek Communists intentionally lied to the Macedonians to involve them in the Greek Civil War,” said Sokrat Panovski

According to Sokrat Panovski, a Macedonian child refugee evacuated to Romania, who has written several books on the refugee drama, the Macedonian population living in Greece was forced out of their homes with help from the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) leadership. It was the CPG that indoctrinated the Macedonian people to pick up guns and massively participate in the Greek Civil War, which led to their demise. Panovski came to this conclusion after reading several books written on this topic by Greek authors. According to Panovski these authors were participants in the war and have admitted that. Joanis S. Koliopoulou was one of them. He was a CPG leader. In his book entitled “The Macedonian Question in the Period of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) Western Macedonia”, among other things he wrote that the CPG did everything possible to involve the Macedonians in the Greek Civil War by promising them their rights, even the right to self-determination, with the intension of involving them to massively participate in the war and make it easier for Greece to expel them from their homes…

According to Koliopoulou, the CPG made certain that all leading positions and positions of authority, especially those in the military, were given to Greeks and not to Macedonians, despite the large number of Macedonians who participated in the war. Koliopoulou also admitted that the refugee children who were sent away were evacuated to serve the reserve needs of the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG). He gave examples of this. One example was when children older than 14 were recruited from the children’s homes and turned into DAG fighters. On July 15, 1948 123 children were recruited from the children’s home in Tulgesh, Romania. They only fought for a short time before most were killed. Despite their young age, being 14 and 15 years old, those children had no training. After that another 1,500 children were mobilized. This is the most obvious example which confirms that the CPG aimed to use these children as reserves for DAG…

To support his claim that the Macedonian population living in Greece was forced out of their homes with help from the CPG leadership, Panovski points to the comments Markos made after he returned to Greece in 1984. During a meeting between General Kokalatos who commanded the Greek government Army, and General Markos who commanded DAG, organized by a Greek journalist, Kokalatos asked Markos, “So, you’re the one who wanted to turn Greece into a Slavic country?” to which Markos replied, “No, I’m the one that saved Greece from becoming a Slavic country!” For Panovski this statement confirms that the CPG was indeed involved in the expulsion of the Macedonian people from their homeland. The CPG was responsible for forcing tens of thousands of Macedonians to flee their ancestral homes and go away to far away places, even to Tashkent, from where they would never return…

Filipos Dragoumis, another Greek author, who also participated in the Greek Civil War admitted that over the years Macedonians were persecuted by the Greeks. Originally from Kostur Region, the Dragoumis family moved to Athens where Filipos went to school and later become a counselor in the Greek government. A long time ago, even before the First World War started, Dragoumis suggested to the Greek government not to use the name “Macedonians” to refer to the Macedonian people living in Greece because one day these Macedonians would want Macedonia back. He suggested that they be called “Old Bulgarians”; that way it would be easier to deport them to Bulgaria, which happened from 1921 to 1924 when seventy thousand Macedonians were expelled from Greece and sent to Bulgaria. In 1947 Dragoumis prepared a plan for the Greek government army General-headquarters to force 105,000 Macedonians and 2,200 Vlachs out of Greece. He then publicly stated that, “It would be easy to accomplish that - where the dogs go so will their mothers...” This means that where the children go their

parents will follow. According to Panovski, that is exactly what happened to the Macedonian refugee children.

Panovski does not agree with people who assume that the children who were “evacuated” by the CPG were evacuated for humanitarian reasons. This is what Panovski said, “What kind of humanitarian reasons? Even the mothers at the time of their separation from their children could see that it was not humanitarian. How is it humanitarian to separate mothers from their children? I was there and all I could see was mothers crying to no end and tearing their hair out. Is that humanitarian? Mothers shed so many tears they had no more to shed. How is it humanitarian to not know, for years, where your children are; and if they are alive or dead… and who was where…?”

Panovski continued, “The Greeks constantly complained to the United Nations asking to have the children returned. But did they really want them back? No! One of those child refugees whom Greece wanted returned arrived by ship to the Solun harbour. But the moment the Greek authorities found out his name was Giorgi Vrazinovski, they told him a person by that name was not allowed to enter Greece. But that wasn’t all. Even those Macedonians who had Greek names faced the same kind of obstacles. When 1,160 adults and children from Romania made attempts to repatriate, the Greek government figured it would have problems with such a big group. The people who wanted to return already knew they were Macedonian, a non-Greek ethnicity with their own unique culture, and that Greece was not only occupying their lands but was constantly abusing them. The Greeks were afraid that if these people were allowed to return they would eventually revolt. That is why Greece made sure they would never come back…”

According to Panovski, in order to force the Macedonians from their homes the Greek army used similar tactics as it used during the Balkan Wars when Macedonian villages were bombed day and night for weeks as was the case in Kukush, when the city was bombed day and night for thirty days. Their goal was clear; it was done to expel the Macedonian population. The same was done during the Greek Civil War. This is what Panovski said, “The airplanes and cannons bombed the Macedonian villages continuously to force us to leave.

That was not a voluntary evacuation; it was a forced evacuation using weapons. The initiative came from the CPG. At a Communist Party youth organization meeting which included youth groups from the Balkan countries, held in Belgrade in 1948, representatives from the Greek youth asked the communist countries if they would accept 10,000 Greek children. When they overwhelmingly said yes, the plan was immediately put into action. But that wasn’t the first time the children were evacuated. The actual evacuation started in 1947 before the Greek youth group made the suggestion. On June 25, 1947, after the Greek Army started its offensive, children from the villages near the border were evacuated to Albania. That shows that the evacuation plan began way before they were approved…” According to Panovski this information came from Greek sources.

The Greek Government had its own operatives inside DAG. One of those operatives who participated in the Democratic Army of Greece as a security officer became a chief of police in Greece after the war was over. This is what Panovski said, “When some Macedonians went to the police to inquire about their Greek citizenship, they recognized him but he didn’t hide what he was. He told them it was his job. And he was not the only one…”

According to Panovski, people still suffer from the Greek Civil War consequences. One of those consequences was the banishment of the Macedonian people from their ancestral lands. This is what Panovski said, “In addition to Greece not recognizing our rights and not restoring our Greek citizenships and properties, it would not allow us to return to our birthplaces, not even for a visit. The Greek Civil War for us Macedonians has not ended…” And as a contrasting example, Panovski pointed to Spain where, in 1968, Franko built a monument for all who had died in the Spanish Civil War, both on the republican and the royalist side...

In conclusion this is what Panovski said, “By recognizing the Macedonian identity with its rights and privileges, the Macedonian people can help Greece become a true democracy. Greece cannot legitimately pretend to be a democratic country if it discriminates against thousands of people who were its former citizens. Recognizing the Macedonians and repatriating them will help Greece. This is not just a Macedonian problem; it is also a Greek

problem, both for the Greek Government and the regular people. I have spoken with many of those ‘Greeks by genus’ who fought alongside us Macedonians in the Greek Civil War and they too sympathize with us. One such Greek was the son of a Greek fighter whose father was saved by Macedonians. This is what he said, ‘How can I say that Macedonians don’t exist when Macedonian women saved my father in Vicho when he was seriously injured. Macedonian women evacuated him from the battlefield’…”