Front Matter - Part 04

A United Nations Special Investigation Commission paid a visit to Greece in the spring of 1947 to investigate the situation on the ground which the Greek government, the main culprit that created it, was blaming on its neighbours Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. So in order to present the Commission with the actual picture of the situation on the ground, especially regarding the terror waged against the Macedonian people, the Mala Prespa resistance organizations, in cooperation with the organizations of other villages and regions, prepared a memorandum and was ready to deliver it to the Commission the moment it arrived in Mala Prespa. There were also individual people who traveled far and risked their lives to meet with the Commission in person and provided it with evidence of the terror perpetrated by the Greek state authorities. Even though it was very difficult to talk to the Commission because Gizas Sarandopoulos’s people were threatening everyone with death, people who were determined found ways to do it.

Unfortunately the Commission did not visit Mala Prespa, so the people who prepared the memorandum, including the many signatures they collected from the population, sent it to DAG headquarters. It is also important at this point to mention that activists Stoian Angelov and Risto Ioshev, after serving their sentences in Cassandra and being released, again became involved in resistance related activities. On April 23, 1947 they were again arrested for gathering materials to be given to the UN Inquiry Commission, and after the Commission left Greece they, along with

40 other Macedonians and Greeks, were tried in a military court in Lerin and 22 of them were sentenced to death. Included among those who were sentenced to death were Risto Ioshev, Stoian Dimovski from P’pli and Ioanidis, a physician from Lerin and EAM Regional Committee secretary. They were executed on July 27, 1947.

Instead of subsiding, as expected, the terror campaign during the UN Commission’s visit to Greece was further escalated in Mala Prespa.

On March 24, 1947, at 2 o’clock in the morning, the Greek Monarcho-Fascist army surrounded R’bi. For about an hour the gendarmes and their spies broke into people’s houses and apprehended 26 men and 6 girls, right out of their beds. A truck was waiting for them at the bridge over the river onto which the people were pushed and prodded and loaded like cattle. From there they were taken to P’pli and locked up in a barn.

While in the barn Sarandopoulos, the rabid chief of the gendarmerie, began to shout at them calling them agents if Ohrana (Bulgarian fascist organization in Macedonia) and swearing and cursing at them using vulgar words and threatening to kill them all and burn down their houses.

The chief was so rabid, his teeth were chattering and his hair was straggly, he looked more like an animal than a man. The next day he, personally, and his goons beat the people so badly that they could not recognize one another.

About 10 days later Sarandopoulos sent the captives to the prisons in Lerin where they were tried by a military court and sentenced to ten years of hard labour.

On April 17, 1947 30 men and 6 women were arrested in German. Sarandopoulos was determined to break the population’s spirit and have them lose faith in the struggle as well as reduce the number of people actively participating and helping the partisan movement. The people arrested in German were accused of being active participants in helping the UN Inquiry Commission gather materials.

By now the partisan movement had grown in numbers and strength and was able to liberate Mala Prespa. The population was also willing and ready to help. Even the main road from Lerin to Mala Prespa, a stretch of about 65 kilometres, was under partisan control. The only way the government army could supply the Mala Prespa gendarmerie was through brute force. In order to deliver a truckload or two with supplies, the trucks had to be accompanied by a large unit of army soldiers.

On May 10, 1947 the partisans attacked the police station in Lok. After a few hours of fierce fighting, the station fell into partisan hands. Only two gendarmes survived by, in the midst of the firefight, managing to hide in a pigsty. When the battle was over they fled the village and hid in the lake reeds. They then swam through the reeds and arrived in Graishta and from there, all wet and muddy, they arrived at the police station in P’pli where Sarandopoulos was staying at the time. The partisans succeeded in taking this police station because they had help from the villages Lok, Bukovik, Orovnik and most of all Besfina, where the partisans were sheltered in preparation for the attack.

The gendarmes who survived the battle delivered the terrible news to the government army. This struck fear in Sarandopoulos’s heart because of few days later he left Mala Prespa and went to Lerin. Sometime later, 8 soldiers from the Greek army stationed in Orovo deserted and surrendered to the partisans. Afraid that more soldiers were going to desert, and for safety reasons, the Greek officers decided to move the gendarmes out of the Mala Prespa villages and concentrated them all in R’bi. All the Asia Minor colonist spies and aids to Gizas Sarandopoulos, and Sarandopoulos himself, also moved to R’bi.

The Greek military in R’bi dug trenches and in some places in the village built bunkers and set itself in wait for an attack from the partisans. When the soldiers found out that the Prespa-Lerin road link was under partisan control, they began to lose faith in their officers. A group of 10 soldiers then fled R’bi and surrendered to the partisans. This undermined the tranquility and confidence of the Greek military. Even the armed Asia Minor colonist gangs began to feel uncertain. Then one day the partisans made threats that they

would attack R’bi. At this point Sarandopoulos lost complete confidence in his abilities and abandoned his command. The soldiers and officers despised him for the malevolence. Feeling insecure and afraid of falling into partisan hands, Sarandopoulos again fled to Lerin.

Day and night the Greek Monarcho-Fascist army lay in the trenches expecting an attack at any moment. The longer the soldiers waited the more their morale dropped. They were now expecting that a massive attack was being prepared and their fear kept increasing with time. Their situation continued to deteriorate so they turned to the Asia Minor colonists to rescue them. Then, without anyone firing a single gun shot, on May 25, 1947 the Monarcho-Fascists came out of the trenches. The military together with the gendarmes, Asia Minor colonists, Asia Minor colonist spies, their families and their household possessions were all loaded on horse-drawn wagons. They left Mala Prespa in a long column and headed for Lerin. After that Mala Prespa was free.

When the column crossed over Bigla Peak heading for Lerin, the partisans attacked the army which immediately withdrew. In Lerin in the meantime preparations were being made to defend the city. According to eyewitness testimonies, from the people who were there with their horse-drawn wagons, forced to transport household items for the Asia Minor colonists, Lerin was expecting a massive attack from the partisans. In the skirmish at Bigla, Ioshe Stamkov from R’bi who was taken forcibly was killed. The next day a funeral was held in R’bi which was attended by the partisans and many Mala Prespa villagers.

Mala Prespa a free territory for the Partisans

After the government troops and gendarmes left Mala Prespa it again became a free territory for the partisans. The Mala Prespa population was able to invite the partisans, and sons of the Macedonian people, to freely visit their villages and homes and, with them, to participate in the struggle. The organizations NOF and AFZH, which were up to now operating secretly, were able to operate openly and recruit new members to replace those who had been sent to prison. People were now free to join AKE, the agrarian

party. And to make that happen Mala Prespa was visited by Papous, a member of the Executive Bureau and Vice President of AKE, who came to Mala Prespa to create the first cooperative through which the partisans would be supplied with food and clothing, and the general civilian population would be supplied with discretionary items like salt and sugar. German Velianichki was appointed President of the cooperative and Kosta Mundushev (author of this book) was appointed his deputy.

Ten days later, after everything was finalized, the food and clothing collection for the partisans was started. Every day carts pulled by horses and donkeys were loaded with food and clothing and delivered to the partisans.

On June 18, 1947 several carts were loaded with wheat and beans and taken to Breznitsa. While returning the ox-drawn carts were spotted by Greek aircraft. After the Partisan base was discovered the aircraft bombed the carts, during which time 65 year-old Traian Giorgievski was killed and several oxen were wounded.

Mobilizing the Macedonian population into DAG and into other revolutionary operations

In the second half of June, 1947, by order of DAG Supreme Command, all people ages 19 to 25 were mobilized into DAG’s ranks. In August 1947, by orders of DAG Supreme Command, all men under the age of 35 and all women between 17 to 25 years of age were to be mobilized. So in the months of July and August, 1945, about 850 men and 400 women were mobilized from Mala Prespa alone. Now if we add the other 100 or so people who had taken up arms before that, we would have over 1,350 armed partisans in DAG from Mala Prespa alone. This means that more than 20% of the total Mala Prespa population was mobilized in DAG alone.

There were also around 400 men and women from Mala Prespa in the Greek prisons, not to mention that many Macedonians also worked behind the scenes in Mala Prespa. All in all a great number of Macedonian people were committed to the resistance movement

in Greek occupied Macedonia, with over 10,000 partisans fighting in DAG alone.

After Mala Prespa was freed from the Monarcho-Fascists, the Greek resistance movement appointed a new chief in the region. All that we knew about him is that he was a Greek from Thessaly. He belonged to the DAG Supreme Command. His attitude towards the Macedonian people was strange at best, which caused suspicion and anxiety among the Macedonians, especially about the Greek resistance leadership’s intentions towards the Macedonians even though the official Greek proclamation towards them was positive. About a month after he took office, the security chief killed Miana Steriov from Rudari and Risto Kaptelov from Strkovo because they were supposedly pro-government regime supporters, but that was never proven.

In 1947 NOF opened a school in Mala Prespa and wanted to start teaching in the Macedonian language. For this reason 20 Macedonian teachers were assembled in German and put through a Macedonian instruction course, which lasted from November 1 to November 20. But the new security chief from Thessaly spoke to a number of Macedonian and a larger number of Asia Minor colonists to request from DAG that Greek be taught alongside with Macedonian. He also told Macedonian parents that if they sent their children to Macedonian school they would turn into fools. By the fall of 1947 only Macedonian schools operated in the Mala Prespa villages. The Thessalian security chief was eventually replaced at NOF’s insistence.

In 1947 DAG took extensive actions against the government army and the gendarmerie. By now DAG had over 10,000 fighters and by April 1948, that number grew to 25,000. By early September 1949 about 7,800 fighters were operating in western Greek occupied Macedonia. This goes to show that the largest part of this force was Macedonian from western Greek occupied Macedonia and from Mala Prespa. At this time the partisans had decided to attack and seize several cities including Grevena, Komotini, Konitsa, Mechovo as well as some larger villages. The majority of participants in these partisan actions were Macedonians. Many partisans were killed in these bloody battles. Over 650 partisans were killed in the battle for

Konitsa alone. It was devastating for Mala Prespa when the bad news began to arrive.

In October 1947 elections were held in the Mala Prespa villages to select new village councils. Kosta Mundushev (author of this book) was elected president.

After DAG took action against the government regime, the Monarcho-Fascists went after the families in the villages in western Macedonia, who had family members fighting in DAG, exiled them and seized their properties. In November and December 1947 over 200 of these families, consisting mainly of elderly adults, women and children, were left homeless and had to move to the villages P’pli, R’bi and German.

Creating a partisan caretaker government

On December 23, 1947 the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece was created. Two days later, on December 25, 1947, the villagers from R’bi were moved to German. It was a cold day and a lot of snow had fallen; up to the knees. The villagers didn’t know why they were being moved and didn’t want to move. They wanted to stay home together with their families to look after their livestock; feed and water their oxen, horses, donkeys, sheep and so on. Their resettlement from R’bi to German was ordered by General Markos Vafiadis, supreme commander of DAG’s forces. The next day the DAG officers’ academy, the school for non-commissioned officers and the school for the public militia were settled in R’bi. The district board for Lerin Region and the agricultural cooperative board for Lerin Region were settled in P’pli. The provisional democratic government of Greece was settled in Vineni. Hospitals were established in Nivitsi and Grazhdeno. In the spring of 1948 the CPG Central Committee was settled in Vineni and later DAG General Headquarters was also moved there. In essence, Mala Prespa became the capital of the resistance movement. To support all these activities many hidden underground warehouses were established all over Mala Prespa. They were made with large poplar logs. All the poplar trees in this region that had been growing for decades were cut down just for this purpose.

During 1948 and 1949 Mala Prespa was a training centre to train DAG officers. The entire DAG establishment was also managed from Mala Prespa. All decisions made by the CPG and provisional government were also made here.

With the establishment of schools, hospitals and DAG administration centres, a large number of partisans and various personnel from all over Greek occupied Macedonia and Greece were present in the Mala Prespa villages. They were there to be treated in the hospitals, to learn in the schools and to attend various meetings. It was also a rest area for wounded fighters before returning to combat. The villages in this area were often attacked by the Greek air force that flew its planes individually or in squadrons. They descended low over the villages and dropped bombs on the houses and roads. Sometimes they dropped napalm bombs on the houses, which caused large fires to erupt and smoke and dust to be raised covering the village like fog. These attacks often left devastation behind, dead and wounded people, destroyed houses, blown up bridges and large craters on the roads.

The pigs were not slaughtered in the winter of 1947 and 1948 because there was a lack of salt and the meat could not be preserved. The people began to use their cheese and pickled vegetable brine in place of salt until it ran out. The people then began to eat their food and bread without salt. The agricultural cooperatives, through DAG, made every effort to supply the population with the necessary products including salt, but for a while no salt was available. The first supplies of salt began to arrive in Mala Prespa towards the end of February 1948.

Monarcho-Fascist aircraft bomb Macedonian school in German

About 500 children from German and R’bi were attending Macedonian classes in the large school in German. This was the first time in Mala Prespa’s history that such a large number of Macedonian students were taught in their mother tongue. Because of this the Greek Monarcho-Fascists continued to bomb the school in German while classes were held and when the school was full of children. The provisional democratic government of Greece, in response to the bombings, made great efforts to save the children. It

proposed that all children under the age of 16 be taken out of the war zones and sent to Yugoslavia and to the other people’s republics. With this plan the children would be rescued from the daily bombings and aircraft attacks and their mothers would be freed to support the war effort. Many were sent to the front as regular DAG fighters.

On February 28, 1948, at 7 o’clock in the morning, the children were in their classrooms sitting at their desks as they were every day, waiting for classes to begin. Except this morning the teachers said that there would be no classes and sent the students home. The teachers decided to have a teacher’s meeting that day.

At 7:30 the same morning people heard aircraft noises coming from the direction of the village Buf. Suddenly 3 bombers appeared over German and dropped dozens of bombs and napalm on top of the school in German. Most of the bombs missed the school and landed in the yard and surrounding houses. One bomb hit the corner of the school and caused most of the school to collapse. There were many children playing in the school yard before the bombers arrived. When they heard the aircraft approaching German most fled. When the teachers heard the aircraft they all ran outside. Whatever children remained in the yard they took to the bomb shelters. They grabbed the children and ran. Several houses were hit by napalm and burned down and so did some of the surrounding houses. Two women were killed. The strong explosion and blasts smashed the glass in most of the school windows as well as the windows of most houses in the vicinity.

According to observations, about 20 minutes after the first aerial attack took place a second squadron of 7 aircraft, the spitfire kind, attacked German from the hill behind the village. This time the aircraft appeared without being heard. The planners of these bombings had calculated the approximate time when the people would be coming out of the shelters and onto the streets before they attacked again. They knew that the parents of the school children would be frantic looking for their children and so they used the opportunity to inflict maximum damage. What they didn’t count on was that the school would be empty that day. As luck would have it, most of the children were at home with their parents. There were,

however, some children who had not returned home. There were also those who did not know that the children were dismissed that morning and assumed they were all killed when they saw the school had collapsed. Those mothers whose children did not return home, along with some of their neighbours, frantically ran to the school looking for them. The streets around the school were filled with people, at which point the aircraft swooped down on them firing rockets and machine gun bursts and dropping bombs and spreading death over the entire village. The second round of attacks lasted half an hour. Under the smoke and dust cover lay the dead and wounded and the burning houses and barns. All sorts of noises filtered through the thick smoke; the roar of wounded cattle, dogs howling and the moans of the wounded people. All those who could walk quickly ran out of the village looking for safer ground. The village was devastated. People were crying and calling for help from inside the cloud of smoke, hoping for someone to come and save them. During the second attack one girl, two women and one man were killed and over 20 were wounded.

“The salt had arrived in Mala Prespa and February 28, 1948 was the day that we, the people from R’bi, were dividing our salt with the people of German. We were all waiting outside the store, about 70 of us when the attack took place.

The next day we were at the cemetery attending the funeral and burying those who were killed. The remains of the dead were buried next to one another as the R’bi and German villagers mourned and paid their respects to their dead relatives, friends and fellow villagers…” says Kosta Mundushev.

This was a deliberate and massive attack in an attempt to destroy the Macedonian population and cannot be considered less than a crime against humanity and genocide, which was no different than the genocide perpetrated against Jews in the various concentration camps by Hitler in World War II.

A lot of people had had just about enough of the Greeks and the next evening, on March 1, 1948, many from both German and R’bi decided to flee to Yugoslavia. A few days later the newspaper “Demokratis” an organ of DAG, announced that over 600 people,

mostly mothers with young children and old men and women from the villages German and R’bi, fled to Yugoslavia after a massive air strike on a school in German in which about 500 students were taught in their mother tongue. The number of people who left, however, was much higher. The masterminds of the attack knew that many would flee after a large bombardment. And they were not wrong.

In the month of April 1948, by order of the provisional democratic government of Greece, all children up to age 16 were to be moved to Yugoslavia and hence to the People’s Republic of Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

The cooperatives were now activated and all the sheep were passed on to them. The young people who were disabled or unable to fight in DAG were put in charge of shepherding the flocks of sheep. The sheep were milked twice a day and the milk was delivered to the sheepfold in Strkovo, which processed it and made cheese for the partisans. All the fields were also turned into cooperatives and worked jointly. Fishing cooperatives were also created and staffed by the older fisherman from the fishing villages. The entire free population had joined the cooperatives but still there were shortages of manpower.

Government troops attack DAG in Gramos

In June 1948 the Monarcho-Fascist government army launched a large-scale offensive against DAG in Gramos. The partisans fought bravely in their defense of this mountain but the enemy possessed more troops and the latest weapons, while the partisans who defended this mountain were in need of both ammunition and food. While the partisans had children fighting on their side, the Greek army had well-trained and well-armed soldiers on its side. And while these children fought to the death, their parents from the nearby villages in Kostur, Lerin and Mala Prespa Regions assisted them with horseloads of food supplies and ammunition. All through the dark of night they traveled treacherous paths over 150 kilometres long to supply them. The majority of the DAG forces were concentrated on Gramos which had hundreds of DAG fighters, of whom the majority were from the Mala Prespa villages. A group of

villagers, both men and women, from R’bi took their horses loaded with food to Gramos but on their return they were cut off by government troops so they were forced to flee to Albania. For as long as the Gramos and Bela Voda front line lasted Mala Prespa was safe. Unfortunately it was poorly guarded and in some areas was not guarded at all.

At the end of June 1948 a group of thirty Monarcho-Fascist soldiers from Lerin, near the village Buf, traveled over Bela Voda and entered the liberated territory of Mala Prespa unnoticed and reached the first houses in the village German. News of the Government troop penetration traveled like wildfire, prompting the civilian population from German, R’bi, Medovo and Strkovo to flee to the Yugoslav border at Markova Noga, where it remained until midnight. A Partisan detachment stationed in Ramna quickly took the road from Buf to German and came down on German where it was ready to clash with the Monarcho-Fascist soldiers. Knowing the danger they were in, the Monarcho-Fascists fell back and took defensive measures. They left the village and went back but not along the Ramna road. They went down the Garvan road near the village Rakovo and avoided a clash with the partisans. The population that had fled to the Yugoslav border and wanted to cross into Yugoslavia was convinced by representatives of the provisional democratic government of Greece to return home, and they did.

Informburo resolution against Yugoslavia and the construction of a defense line in Bela Voda

On June 28, 1948 the Informburo Resolution against Yugoslavia was published. The Resolution was not well accepted by the people of Mala Prespa, especially by those who assisted and were committed to assisting DAG. The Macedonian people were well aware that Yugoslavia was their friend because Yugoslavia, in spite of the Informburo Resolution, was still providing services to the Macedonian people like accepting to treat their wounded from the daily bombings, receiving refugees and providing salvation for fleeing young children and people fleeing the war. The greatest indignation came from the CPG slanders against Comrade Tito, of whom they were proud. The CPG’s deteriorating relations with Yugoslavia were used by the CPG to close the Yugoslav-Greek

border. Several days after the Informburo Resolution was published, DAG’s Central Committee issued an order to close the border with Yugoslavia. Guards with trained dogs were placed along the border and anyone caught fleeing was to be shot. Then an order came down forcing the entire population under 65 years of age to be mobilized into the war effort to construct a defense line along the Lerin to Bela Voda defense line. The mobilized old men and women from the liberated territory of Mala Prespa and from the Kostur Region villages were divided into work gangs and sent to work. Men over the age of 55 were sent in the mountains to cut trees and construct 20 to 24 centimetre wide and 4 metre long beams. Women up to 45 years old were to carry these beams on their shoulders to wherever they were required. These poor women sometimes were forced to travel up steep hills for close to a kilometre carrying the logs on their shoulders. From there these logs were taken by even older men who employed oxen to drag the tree trunks to wherever the bunkers were being built. Women over the age of 60 were employed to harvest corn and rye on the mountain plateaus.

Thousands and thousands of trees were cut to build the many hundreds of bunkers that dotted the terrain along the Bela Voda Mountain range creating a strong 20 kilometre long defensive line. Food stores were also created and stocked with food and ammunition along the defense line. Delays were not tolerated, the defense line had to be built fast in order to prevent an imminent attack against Mala Prespa.

After the Gramos operation was over, Bela Voda was reinforced with partisans who also participated in the construction of this line. By now the only people who remained in the villages were the very old, the sick and the disabled men and women with no one to help them. There was also the occasional young mother with a small suckling child who still remained in the villages. But even these women were not immune from the draft. They too were deployed working in shifts, kneading and baking bread and doing other essential things for the working population and for the partisans. The young fighters who were badly wounded and disabled and incapable of fighting in DAG’s ranks were sent to work in the villages looking after the village cattle and sheep.

The people who worked on the construction of the defense line, worked under very difficult conditions. They worked day and night in the rain, snow, in cold weather and in the dark of night. They carried huge logs uphill, downhill, through the bushes, slipping and falling, working non-stop day and night. Greek air planes flew low over them and they had to dodge machine gun bursts and missiles. At night the artillery attacked them with shells and the poor civilians doing the work were in great danger. They were in greater danger than the partisans who were hiding in trenches and bunkers. Because they were always outdoors they suffered the most. Every day they were bombed and killed or wounded. On top of that they were inundated with bad news of people being killed and they often wondered who was going to be next, a son, a husband, a brother, a brother-in-law, or a friend. The mothers often put stones together in mock graves, lit candles and wept for hours while tearing their hair out.

On August 15, 1948 Lazo Angelovski, from the village Grazhdeno, was killed in Lerin. He was a member of the National Board for Lerin Region responsible for the Macedonian school programs. Lazo was the organizer and lecturer of the course for the Macedonian teachers held in German in the fall of 1947. Lazo was captured by the Monarcho-Fasists in September 1947, at Shupurka Pass located between Bela Voda and Buf. He was sentenced to death for orchestrating the Macedonian schools in the Mala Prespa villages and for assisting the educational system in the Lerin Region villages. On August 15, 1948 the Monarcho-Fascists in Lerin tied Lazo behind a horse with a rope and dragged him through the streets of Lerin. By doing this they wanted to show their hatred for the Macedonian educator.

On October 28, 1948 13 young people from German were shot to death in Lerin. When the tragic news arrived in German, the Prespa liberation movement held a church service for them. All the people who were still left in German, the people from the Mala Prespa as well as Lerin Region villages attended the service.

Women mobilized into DAG’s ranks

On November 23, 1948, by order of DAG command, all able-bodied women were to be mobilized into DAG. This order was published in the newspaper “Demokratis”, an organ of DAG, which in part read: “All able-bodied women ages 18 to 35 are to be mobilized into the ranks of DAG…” The order came into force immediately after it was published in the newspaper. The mobilization took place in the village P’pli.

The women from all the Mala Prespa villages were picked up and escorted to P’pli where they were met by a committee of three senior DAG members and representatives from the provisional democratic government of Greece. The three member committee consisted of Vasilis Bardzhiotas, Petros Kokalis and Stavro Kochev. The committee divided the women into three groups. They put the healthy and strong women in the first group to be sent to a camp in Rudari to train with weapons. They put the weak and sick women in the second group. These women were to be sent to the hospital in Grazheno and after they recovered they too were to be sent to the training camp and to be issued weapons. The disabled women and those who had very young children were placed in group three. These women were not sent to train as regular DAG fighters but were obliged to perform other duties in support of DAG and the resistance movement.

The women who on the first day were selected to go to a training camp protested and refused to go. All night they remained outside the place where they were mobilized. It was a cold night and the next morning they were covered in frost. The next day at dawn a group of two dozen armed partisans arrived in P’pli and escorted the women to Rudari. They trained for a few days in the Rudari meadows and were taught how to handle weapons. After a month of training they were assigned to DAG units. These mobilized women were the last members of their families to have remained at home. When the partisans took them to P’pli to be mobilized, most put locks on the doors of their houses. The homes where a dozen family members used to live were now completely empty and devoid of people. Some of the women left behind old and sick relatives; a mother-in-law, a father-in-law, a father, a mother, grandparents… A

lot of them had husbands, brothers and sisters who were already dead; lost to the war… This is why these women protested and did not want to pick up arms. Unfortunately they had no choice. They were ordered to start to build a defensive line, assemble first aid units and stretchers and carry out various resistance-related tasks in the villages.

DAG units attack Lerin

On February 12, 1949 DAG launched an attack on the city Lerin intending to capture it. The women who were mobilized in P’pli in November 1948 were part of the units that were involved in this attack. It had been snowing at the time and the snow was knee high. The temperature had plummeted to below zero. During the attack some of the units approached the city limits but that’s as far as they got. The Greek Monarcho-Fascists held their positions and did not budge. The partisans were unable to take the city. Being hardly prepared and trained to fight against a seasoned army in the cold of winter, most of the young partisan women were slaughtered in the battlefield. Many were killed and wounded as they tried to escape. One part of them fell into the hands of the enemy. Because the partisans were unable to take the city they decided to withdraw before dawn. They had to pull back and over the hills of Mount Bela Voda to escape.

Because of the deep snow the withdrawal was much more difficult than anticipated. Long columns had to travel over narrow trails over the mountains in waist deep snow. Many of the women were unable to continue the arduous trek and were left stuck in the snow, dotting the white terrain. That day the Greek air force flew many sorties and turned the snow into fire and left nothing standing alive. The withdrawing DAG units were repeatedly attacked as the fighters fought the snow trying to escape.

The partisans, among whom many were women, were forced to stay and hide in the snow and in the bushes where they were stuck. The night was dark but as they helped each other they made it over the mountain. They were cold and miserable. Many of the women fell ill; some who were severely wounded succumbed to their injuries and to the bitter cold.

The Macedonian partisan women and DAG fighters threw themselves into the fire during the attack on Lerin without worrying about their own young lives. We cannot say enough about their heroism. Women and girls took up weapons and without having mastered how to use them fought bravely in the cold and snow. They did that because it was impossible to live under the hatred of the Greek Monarcho-Fascists who had brought so much evil into their world.

“I would like to say something about one of the participants in the attack on Lerin. It involves a young 18 year-old woman from the village German whose name was Germania Paikova. Germania’s example is typical of all her peers who were involved in the Lerin attack.

Even though Germania was badly wounded she continued to move forward, as well as encouraged her co-fighters to fight on, shouting forward, forward! Due to her heavy wounds she knew she would not be able to withdraw. The government troops tried to capture her several times but were unable to get close. She continued to fire at them. Then when she completely weakened and could no longer shoot at them, the government troops rushed her and captured her. While she was still alive the government soldiers dragged her through the streets of Lerin so that the people could see the prize they had captured. She was bleeding badly and they painted the streets with her blood. They then savagely murdered her,” says Mundushev.

DAG military court imposes death sentences against those attempting to flee to Yugoslavia

On March 5, 1949 Zahariadis’s rabid clique stood before the partisan military court in German, stationed in one of the classrooms in the school in German, and conducted an open trial in front of about fifty elderly people who were forcibly brought to witness the proceedings. Among the people tried were 50 year-old Bogoia Pandov from R’bi and 50 year-old Bozhinitsa and Donevitsa Giakov from German. Bogoia was accused of assisting people who wanted to flee to Yugoslavia by helping them find a safe crossing over the

Greek-Yugoslav border. Donevitsa and Bozhinitsa were accused of wanting to flee to Yugoslavia. Another person on trial was the Greek Blianga. He was from one of the villages located at the foot of Gramos. He and his family were expelled from his village by the Monarcho-Fascists in 1947 and at the time were living German. Blianga was accused of attempting to smuggle his own family, as well as other people, over the border into Yugoslavia. The DAG military court judges found all these people guilty of having committed these crimes and sentenced them all to death. A few days later Blianga was released… because he was a Greek. The Macedonians on the other hand were executed as planned. About fifty innocent Macedonians were killed this way by Zahariadis’s agents under mostly under trumped up charges.

By March 1949, the only people left in the Mala Prespa villages were the old and sick who could not walk. The rest were all gone. Every able body that was able to move was drafted in aid of the war effort supplying the fronts and building the defensive line in Bela Voda. Spring was approaching and there was no one at home to plow and sow the fields. The village cattle and sheep were left to fend for themselves and were now the new masters of the fields and meadows. There was also no one to harvest the meadows. The sheep belonged to no one and were food for partisans. There was also no one to harvest the wheat that had been planted in the fall the year before. During the day the village streets were empty and only the dogs roamed them. Airplanes flew above every day dropping bombs, rockets and napalm, burning houses and raising smoke and dust. There were also several groups of young women with infants. They were busy kneading and baking bread. They did all that during the night. In early August the construction of the front line was halted because the front was breached and all the people who worked there were transferred to the units that defended this line. The men older than 60 and the women over 50 were sent home to their villages.

Forming KOEM and CPG actions against Yugoslavia

On March 25 and 26, 1949 the NOF 2nd Congress was held in the village P’pli in Mala Prespa. The next day, March 27, 1949, 163 delegates attended the 2nd Congress. These delegates were

Macedonian communists who decided to set up a communist organization for the people of Greek occupied Macedonia known as “The Communist Organization of the Macedonians from the Aegean part of Macedonia” or KOEM. Immediately after its formation KOEM cells began to pop up in the Mala Prespa villages.

During the spring and summer of 1949 the CPG, or more precisely Zahariadis himself personally took over managing the defamatory propaganda campaign against Yugoslavia and its leadership. For this purpose, on June 20, 1949, Zahariadis convened a KOEM extraordinary emergency meeting held in his cave above the village Vineni where he was hiding. The meeting lasted all night. Many of the Macedonian leaders and executives who earlier exercised some free will were removed and replaced by those who agreed with Zahariadis. They were also removed from their positions in NOF and KOEM and sent to DAG to fight at the Gramos front as regular fighters.

At the same time, through his supporters, Zahariadis intensified his agitation and propaganda against Yugoslavia and against the leadership of the People’s Republic of Macedonia, all throughout the Mala Prespa villages.

The Macedonian population, however, was not indifferent to the slanders against Yugoslavia and against its leadership, which in the past and in the many years of struggling for the Macedonian national liberation had helped the population in Mala Prespa. The Macedonian people were not only sympathetic but also had absolute confidence in Yugoslavia. The Macedonians had sympathy for the Yugoslav leadership, especially for Tito, who helped create the Macedonian state and who guaranteed the survival of the entire Macedonian nation. And now, in the heat of the Greek Civil War, the people of Mala Prespa counted on Yugoslavia to help them save their children and their people, to provide relief for them from the daily bombings, as well as to provide them with material aid during the long struggle. The people refused to accept Zahariadis’s propaganda.

As a result of Zahariadis’s strong stand against Yugoslavia, the Macedonian people begun to lose confidence in his leadership of the

movement and in him personally. The Macedonians were not happy having to carry the heaviest burden in this struggle and without being adequately represented in leadership positions, especially in the CPG Central Committee, in the Provisional Democratic Government and in DAG. On top of that, all the men from the Mala Prespa, Kostur and Lerin Region villages were fighting in DAG and now all the women too were mobilized as regular soldiers. If that was not enough, Zahariadis even mobilized the very children, ages 14 to 16, who were sent to the people’s republics to be saved, and made them into DAG regular fighters. All the older men and women, sick and disabled who were able to hold a shovel were also mobilized and sent to build defensive lines and other ancillary works: transferring the wounded, supplying weapons and ammunition to the units at the front, and so on. All these people were put in the front line where many died for Zahariadis. This was deliberate with aims at destroying the Macedonian people, and after all this what kind of confidence should they have in Zahariadis? Zahariadis was personally responsible for putting the locks on the Macedonian homes and making the Macedonian villages desolate.

Some Macedonians started to openly oppose Zahariadis’s defamatory actions against Yugoslavia only because they saw it us unfair and not factual. These people unfortunately were mercilessly persecuted by Zahariadis and his like-minded cronies. In July 1949 Pelopidas, a Greek working in the agronomist nursery in P’pli, and members of his staff responsible for growing fruit and vegetables intended for members of Greek senior management in R’bi, along with some other like-minded people, tried to kill 4 Macedonians who did not agree with Zahariadis’s stand on Yugoslavia. But thanks to the intervention of some clever villagers they were saved.

DAG attacked at Vicho and the Macedonian population fleeing to Albania

On August 9, 1949, the well armed Monarcho-Fascist army launched a massive attack against the partisans in Vicho and managed to invade the free territory. Kosta Mandushev was with the partisans who were defending the line on Bigla Mountain around the large band on the road to Lerin. Mandushev was responsible for a unit of field medics numbering about thirty people, both men and

women from villages R’bi and Medovo. The next three days, from August 10 to 13,1949, there was unusual silence in the twenty kilometer front. On occasion a shot was fired or a grenade exploded or a machine gun burst was heard. No airplanes flew these three days.