Front Matter

Noose

A Novel

By Stoian Kochov (Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov) Noose A Novel

Noose – Preface

I dedicate this book to the memory of my family which, after the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) was scattered; with my father Tanas going to Australia, my mother Jovanka going to Poland, my brother Giorgi going to jail in Greece and me, along with the Units of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece), going to the Soviet Union. My endeavour in writing this novel (Noose) was to describe actual events that belonged to our past which nobody could alter: Pure facts and dirty deeds. The stories in this novel are told authentically with a sense of resentment towards the ideological powers which politicized the innocence of our generations of that time. We now have to ask the question and seek answers to: “How and who directed our destiny towards the genocide of the Macedonian people in Greece? For whom did we sacrifice ourselves, lose our centuries-old fatherland in which our souls and the souls of our ancestors were planted and for whom did we become wanderers of the world?” My introduction of living and dead characters and events into our national tragedy is not coincidental. It is deliberate and has been taken from our hardened narrative. Who were these “foreign gods” who gave orders and designed our extinction from our own country of birth? -From October 1944 to October 14, 1946 in the grip of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY)/Communist Party of Macedonia (CPM). -From October 1946 to August 27, 1949 (when the Greek Civil War ended) in the grip of the Communist Party of Greece (CPG). -From 1950 until today - Wanderers around the world.

The author

During the Second World War people from different cultures happened to pass through the village Rudino where even the poorest man in the area had the fortune of having met with them in his own lodgings. Many passed by, some invited others uninvited, some curious and others murderers, some persecuted and others with hidden intentions. During the war the people survived very cold winters and very hot summers, so hot that on occasion hot air rose from the stones looking as if they were baking in an oven. Villagers, with sunburned chests and backs, hurriedly walked barefoot to the fields to collect the crops. Unfortunately with the war’s end things did not change much. The people of Rudino remained restless and worried and it wasn’t any better in any of the other villages in Lerin, Kostur and Voden Regions. Fear was always present, reminding people of the terrible riots and violence that had passed. The war had taken its toll and left the people weakened, hungry, tired, cold and tortured. After the German armies withdrew, Partisans, along the entire length of the Greek front and wherever they were found, began to establish their own authority. The villagers rejoiced in their victory over fascism. Unfortunately there were too many deep wounds left after the war ended. Thousands of mothers wore black head kerchiefs, thousands of young women and sisters were dressed in black and thousands of children were orphaned. Fathers and mothers painfully mourned their departed sons who had died in a senseless war before their time. Now for the first time in a long time, people, without fear of losing their livestock and valuables to the various gangs that roamed the villages and committed atrocities and robberies, began to take their possessions out of their basements and barns. The German and Italian occupiers had confiscated all vehicles and large quantities of food and many people living in large centres remained without food even after the war had ended. People died of starvation by the thousands. Hunger drove many to flood the villages and sell their valuables, sometimes even the clothes off their backs for a handful of corn or beans. The occupiers and their collaborators had barbarically put Goebbels’s words into practice: “Europe will die so that Germany can live!” The Nazi regime in Germany created death camps to eliminate its political opposition and its prisoners. That’s what the communists were saying and writing. They were also saying that the new generation wanted to erase centuries of German tradition and to return to barbaric times. It was at that time too that strangers belonging to a terrorist group known to the Macedonians as the “Paudzhidi” invaded the homes of Macedonians and beat everyone to a bloody pulp. They beat hundreds of people and these people, gripped by mortal fear, fled their homes seeking refuge in the mountains. Much of the possessions that they had left behind were stolen and their properties were then burned to the ground. (The word “Paudzhidi” comes from the acronym “PAO”, a Pan-Hellenic Liberation Organization whose members were comprised of former police chiefs, former Greek Army officers and other miscellaneous anti-peoples nationalist elements that had always desired the destruction of the Macedonian nation. The organization PAO cooperated with a faction of the colonists settled in the Macedonian villages after 1924. The colonists were living among the Macedonians and some were responsible for causing a great deal of damage.) The “Paudzhidi” endeavoured to continue the forced Hellenization of the Macedonian people living in Greek occupied Macedonia and seized the opportunity offered to them by the war period, to force the Macedonians to maintain the continuity of a sense of common belonging to the Greek national collective, to its historical traditions and to the Greek heroic sacrifices. In other words, to become Greeks by force! The EAM (National Liberation Front) coalition consisting of leftists, with the CPG (Communist Party of Greece) at the helm, managed to achieve broad unity among the Greek people.

The bourgeois parties and politicians at the time were cooperating with the Germans and later with the English and worked against the EAM. (On April 6, 1941 Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece and became Greece’s new master, expanding and imposing its new fascist views upon the Greek people. On September 27, 1941 the Organization EAM was established and called for the entire Greek population to join the resistance against fascism.) With the Lebanon agreement of May 1944, the CPG, EAM and ELAS (National Liberation Army of Greece) voluntarily and officially gave up any pretense of taking political power. The agreement recognized the government in exile, headed by Georgios Papandreou, as the “legitimate government of Greece” and as the government of “national unity”. (The ELAS or “ELASITI” were members of the military also called “andartes”. Andartes was a term used by the Greeks to refer to the armed Greek bands operating illegally in Macedonia before, during and after the 1903 Ilinden Uprising. The “andartes” were organized and armed in Greece and then sent to Macedonia to spread Greek influence through acts of terror. Thus in Macedonia the term “andartes” was associated with the infamous crimes committed against the Macedonian people. The Organization ELAS was jointly formed by the EAM, the CPG and the CPG Central Committee. The first ELAS military units or “Elasiti” appeared on February 15th, 1942. The first detachment of ELAS was formed in Kostur Region on December 7th, 1942 and included 10 Macedonians, 7 Greeks and 2 Vlachs. The total number of ELAS fighters throughout Greece numbered about 70,000. On July 16th, 1943 the leadership of ELAS and Colonel Eddie Myers, head of the British military mission, signed an agreement bringing ELAS under the British Command of the Middle East. On February 12th, 1945 the “Varkiza” agreement was signed with which the left (EAM and CPG) practically handed power to the right.) With the Kazerta agreement in September 1944, British General Skobi was accepted and proclaimed supreme commander of the armed forces and ELAS Units in Greece. All arms were surrendered and free Partisan movement was no longer possible unless authorized by Sir Ronald Skobi.

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During the spring and summer of 1945 and 1946, the Plastiras government was quick to exchange Constitutional Act 1, “The imposition of punitive measures for those who collaborated with the enemy”, a law which was passed by the government of Georgios Papandreou, with Act 6 “The imposition of sanctions for those who collaborated with the enemy.” It was on the basis of this Constitutional Act, that in 1945 the Special Court for the collaborators was established in Solun with minor courts established in Seres, Drama, Lerin and Kostur. The new Greek government, it seems, had forgotten the words and commitments expressed by the former Greek Prime Minister Venizelos when he said, “The Slavo-Macedonians don’t feel like they are Greeks or Bulgarians.” Then when he allowed the Abecedar, a Macedonian primer for children, to be published he again reiterated: “If the Slavo-Macedonians require schools in their own language, then I will be the first in Greece to guarantee that their requirements are achieved.” But now, it seems, the Greeks in Greek occupied Macedonia had forgotten all that and created these courts with the sole purpose of further tormenting the Macedonians who they called Slavo-phones, especially those whose national consciousness was non-Greek. The Macedonians were put in a difficult position because they freely spoke their Macedonian language during the German occupation. The accused were prosecuted in these so-called “people’s courts” and, if found guilty, were sent back to prison. Some of the accused were sentenced to death and immediately executed, triggering strong protests from the commander of British forces in Athens, General Ronald Skobi and from Evripidis Bakerdzhis, commander of General Headquarters of the Group divisions in Northern Greece. Many of the accused had already escaped but were tried in absentia anyway. Many of those tried were the so-called autonomists, members of NOF (National Liberation Front), who desired an autonomous Macedonia and had fled Greece in 1944, after which they joined Tito’s army as the “Aegean Brigade.” Most of the cases were judgments against Macedonian villagers from the various villages from which many activists had joined the NOF and AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front) Organizations in 1945 and formed the foundations that led to our national tragedy. The list of charges was generally very long and covered many Acts of the Greek Constitution.