THE AUTHOR - Part 02

managed to fall asleep. A person in certain situations thinks of everything to find a way to appease their troubled soul. I did not know what time it was or if it was day or night. I heard a knock on the door and a piece of bread, jam and a little bit of water in a helmet was handed to me under the door. I figured it was morning. I immediately ate the bread and jam. I was very hungry. As I sat there quietly I heard simultaneous clinking of helmets under each door. Shortly after eating my “breakfast”, I started to knock on the door and called out to the guard to let me go to the bathroom. He came and took me. I rinsed my eyes with a bit of water. I again deliberately coughed while going there and back. I heard replies to my cough but I could not make out whose voices they were; Malio’s, Mincho’s, or who else’s because most of them were “coughing” at the same time. I began to speak Macedonian asking who is in which cell. A voice answered me in Albanian: “I do not understand what you are saying”. I spoke in Greek. One person answered and asked me who I was and where I was from. I said: “I am Macedonian, a communist Partisan.” He began to swear at me. After that I said nothing more. From that I gathered that none of my comrades were near my cell. I also gathered that the Greek man was a prisoner from the Monarcho-Fascist side. From the coughing I gathered that my comrades were located in the cells of the same corridor. Even though I could not determine who was in which cell, the knowledge that we were close together gave me courage. In dire times even that means a lot for a person, even more when that person is innocent. Three days after our arrival I was taken out of my current cell and transferred to a larger building. They opened a large door on the ground floor which led to a wide corridor on the right side. They unlocked a heavy door and my escort gave me the signal to enter. The door led to a small hallway with two cell doors. They unlocked the first cell door and put me inside. This cell was larger than my previous one, almost square and in one corner there was a straw mat laid on the concrete floor. I laid my small green army blanket and rug on top of the mat and went to bed, but unfortunately I could not sleep. I got up and started to pace through the cell. Here at least I could get up and walk around in circles. In the previous cell I could either sit or stand in one place. As I was wandering around the cell, I noticed that I shared a common ceiling and ceiling light with the neighboring cell. I said something out loud in Macedonian. No one responded. I said something in Greek but still no one responded except that I heard a cough. So, there was someone in the cell next to mine. I started singing Partisan songs but again nothing. Who could my non-responding

neighbour possibly be, I wondered? The thought kept me awake for most of the night. The unlocking of the hall door woke me up. Then I heard the door next to my cell being unlocked. Someone in slippers slowly walked out. After the prisoner had returned the guard unlocked my cell door. I went to the common washroom that all prisoners go to. On the walls I noticed various names written, which gave me an idea. Perhaps I could write something myself; a message for my friends and perhaps tomorrow one of my friends could leave a message for me, I thought. But what could I write with? During my trip to the washroom I failed to notice if there was someone inside the cell two doors from mine; there was no movement or response to my coughing. I could hear quiet coughing from my neighbouring cell but when I coughed back I got no response. After I returned to my cell, a policeman came and brought me a piece of bread with jam and a helmet with water. He threw the food at me like I was a dog but I quickly jumped up and prevented him from slamming the door shut and said: “I am a Partisan and a communist; I am not a dog you can just throw bread at! I want to talk to the person in charge!” When he saw that I was determined to leave the cell he put his forefinger of his right hand on his mouth signaling me to keep quiet. He then said: “I am Ibrahim.” He was a cute young boy. I smiled at him. He raised his shoulders and started talking to me in Albanian. As far as I understood, he said he would inform the administration. From then on Ibrahim was always kind to me. He was my age, about twenty two, twenty three years old. Strangely, over time we became friends. He also brought me more food. Ibrahim, I was sure wanted me to know who the person in my neighbouring cell was, so that I could be more at ease. One morning when he was taking the prisoner next to my cell to the bathroom he allowed me to peek through the peep hole which he had intentionally not closed properly. I saw that she was an old woman dressed in a long and wide black dress with slippers on her feet. After he brought the old woman back he opened my cell door, a routine he performed every day. I constantly thought about how I could make contact with my friends and find out who was here with me. In the collar of my overcoat I had attached several pins. I took one out and the next time I went to the washroom I scratched “Vera” on the wall. Two days later the word “Sister” was written down under my name. Underneath that I wrote “Brother” from which I learned that Tashko Hadzhiianov was close, probably in one of the local cells. It was a great joy for me that one of my friends was there and a concern that none of the others made contact with me, perhaps they were not there.

Towards the second half of the second month, guards came to my cell around midnight, woke me up and took me to an office. There was a major there sitting on a chair. He started talking to me in Greek. He asked me what my name and my father’s name were, when and where I was born etc. After I answered him, I asked: “Why am I in this prison?” He said he did not know. He was ordered to take this information. His attitude towards me was courteous.

Reactions in Skopje about our arrest

During the night of the same day we told Gogo Petrushevski what awaited us in Bureli and advised him to flee to avoid the same, he crossed the Albanian-Macedonian border and informed the authorities in Skopje about us; that we had been detained. That relevant source of information was cause for monitoring what would happen to us in Bureli. On October 17, 1949 the newspaper “Nova Makedonija” quoted Gogo Petrushevski (Member of the Committee to Protect the peace in Greece) as saying that on October 4 and 5, 1949, on orders of the CPG leadership, “many Macedonians were arrested and held in the Greek refugee camps in Bureli and Elbasan in Albania.” He also told the newspaper our names and that “Zahariadis himself had announced the arrests during a party conference held on October 4... in the Bureli camp.” On November 26, 1949 the newspaper “Nova Makedonija” published an article entitled “Bloody epilogue of Zahariadis’s betrayal” in which attributes of DAG’s defeat were blamed on Yugoslavia and the names of the NOF leaders were disclosed. (Paskal Mitrevski, Pavle Rakovski, Kicha Baleva-Vera, Mincho Fotevski, Urania Pirovska, Lambro Cholakov, Lazo Poplazarov, Tashko Hadzhiianov, Mihail Maliov, Vido Kushevski and others.) On November 27, 1949, as the newspaper “Nova Makedonija” reported on November 29, 1949, Macedonian refugees from Greek occupied Macedonia gathered together in Freedom Square in Skopje and protested against our arrests and rallied against “the wild terror of the Greek Monarcho-Fascists who were out to exterminate the Macedonian people in Aegean Macedonia.” They also protested against the terror and arrests ordered by the traitor Zahariadis, especially against the NOF leaders and against the DAG fighters. They protested against Zahariadis’s plot to hide his own mistakes and pin his Party’s responsibility on Yugoslavia and NOF. After the rally protest resolutions were made and sent to the CPY Central Committee and to Lazar Kolishevski. We are forever grateful to the refugees from Greek occupied Macedonia who raised their voices on our behalf, but with what kind of face did Mihail Keramitchiev speak in that rally?! That clearly says that the man does not have even a grain of conscience.

In the prison hospital

In the early part of December 1949, I got a high fever, a severe nose bleed and I could not eat anything. When Ibrahim saw me bleeding he advised the administration. They took me from my cell directly to the prison hospital. I was placed in a small cell, but compared to where I had been this was a much more pleasant place. The walls were painted with green oil paint and communist slogans were written on them. There was also a red star, a hammer and sickle and a figure of Stalin. This was probably the cell of former Albanian communists. I was examined by a doctor. They gave me injections and some pills to lower my temperature. They also gave me hot soup for breakfast. Somehow I slowly recovered and began to get my strength back. Five days later some people came and took me to another prison hospital. That’s when I began thinking about committing suicide, I wanted to die. I ran down the hall in hopes that one of the guards would shoot me. But as I found out no one shot me. To my surprise policemen ran from all corners of the building after me. They caught me, tied my hands and put me in a car. I had not seen so many policemen in one place. The new prison they took me to looked like a clinic because it was on the main floor and the floor was laid with boards. There were two Albanian women in the room with me. One was a girl. She had given birth to an illegitimate child and was confined in this prison because she refused to disclose the father’s name. She was a village girl and very cheerful in nature. The other woman was a radio announcer working for Radio-Tirana during Mehmed Zog’s time and during the Italian occupation. Her name was Delphi Ruzhe Banushi, a very intelligent woman. She had a breast cancer operation. She was aware that she was going to die soon and wanted to die even sooner. She spoke a little Greek. When I told her in which prison I was held and about the old woman next to my cell, she told me that the old woman was a princess who did not want to leave Albania to escape communist rule and was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment. She told me that she personally knew the old lady and that she spoke French well and that I should greet her in French when I returned to my cell. I told Ruzhe I did not speak French but somehow I would find a way to convey her greeting to her. I told Ruzhe that I had already tried communicating with the woman in both Macedonian and Greek but she did not respond. Ruzhe said that the woman might be afraid of provocations. I stayed in the prison clinic for a week and found out that beneath the main floor there was a basement where many prisoners were kept. We overheard them speaking Serbian and Greek. I gathered the Greeks were Monarcho-Fascist officers who had been captured and the Serbs

were Titoists, so I wanted no part of them, especially their swearing and cursing. After a week’s stay at this hospital, being treated with injections and pills for my fever, my nose kept bleeding even when I was sleeping. But it seemed no one really cared for such “trifling” things in totalitarianism. One night they took me back to the same cell in the same prison. I met with Ibrahim in the morning and then I started to write on the walls of the washroom again to make contact with my friends. Unfortunately there was no response, not even from “Brother”. I began to feel overwhelmed with depression and disappointment. I thought that, perhaps during my absence they had taken them somewhere else, but that feeling did not last long.

On the road to Dures

On December 14, 1949 at midnight I heard my cell door unlock and two people step inside. One was the guard and the other was an officer. The officer spoke and said: “Prepare yourself to leave and take everything with you!” I picked up my green military blanket and left my rug for Ibrahim to remember me by in this Tirana prison. As I write down these lines I do not know where Ibrahim might be. Would he still be in Albania? Would he still be a guard or promoted to a higher rank? Would he still be working in this prison or would he have been transferred to another prison? Perhaps he has retired from his job? I left him my rug, one of my most valuable possessions, to show him my appreciation. Surely Ibrahim would have kept the rug if he had known what it meant to me. My rug was hand woven by my grandmother Ristovitsa Mangova, Krsto Mango’s mother, who left for Yugoslavia in June 1948 when the village D'mbeni was burned down to the ground by the Monarcho-Fascists. She left the rug for Krsto but when he was killed on August 11, 1949 I took the rug with me as a reminder of my grandmother. While preparing to leave I placed my entire attention on listening to all kinds of sounds. Walking in the hallway I heard cell doors unlocking. In about an hour they had gathered all eleven of us in the prison yard. I first greeted my husband-to-be, Mincho, then Paskal and the others as they stood in a row. When the guards saw the way we greeted each other they prohibited us from speaking. We were then handcuffed in pairs and tied together with three loops of thick rope. The leftover rope at the end was curled around Tashko Hadzhiianov’s waist. We kept greeting each other with our eyes and by bowing our heads. None of us looked like our former selves. The men had grown long hair and long beards. We all thought that this would be the last time we would see each other. We thought that we were on our way to be executed. It gave us some comfort though, being connected by the rope to each other in this way, as we had fought together, and together we would be in the other world. They loaded us into a truck. There was a policeman standing over each one of us with a machine gun pointed at our head. There was also an officer sitting beside the driver who spoke Greek well. When the truck left the city, we could hear the song “Chupe Mashala” being sung in the distance. A strong December wind was blowing. We were all wrapped in our long coats, had our collars raised and our hats placed over our heads. Only Paskal had a military coat. Mihail Malio spoke up and in Greek said: “They are going to execute us.” Pascal then in a calm voice replied: “Perhaps they are taking us to the Yugoslav border

and will release us.” Mincho then jokingly said: “Do you not see the kind of predicament we are in? Now you are asking for too much!” Everyone laughed. A hungry chicken dreams of millet. Our greatest concern at the moment was “what would become of us.” It is interesting to note that even in dire moments such as these we maintained our fighting spirit. We did not care if we were shot or not and joked among ourselves even though the policemen kept ordering us not to talk. At one point a strong gust of wind blew Lambro Cholakov’s hat off and he yelled out: “Stop the truck, I lost my hat!” We all cracked up laughing and Mincho, who was tied to Lambro, said: “Leave it, you will find a better one where we are going!” One of the guards in poor Greek said: “Asi to mikro, apo pu kseris pu tato pate?” (You, the little one, how do you know where you are going?). We all looked at each other and started laughing. After hearing the guard joke and given that we had traveled for this long, we gathered that we were not being taken to be shot. Realizing he had made a mistake, the Albanian guard became angry and began to swear at Mincho, who at the time was curled up in his overcoat and blowing on his hands to keep them warm. Mincho looked at the guard and said: “And might you be that courier who used to cross the border and go to Yugoslavia?” (Esi ise to kuriri pu to pigane stin Yugoslavia?). It was dawn when we arrived in a small town. Mincho asked the officer where we were and he, without thinking, said: “In Dures”. The officer became startled after realizing he had made a mistake giving him information and began to swear and yell: “A esi to kuriri, to mikro…”

On board the “Michurin”

They unloaded us off the truck near the port and escorted us to a ship tied with ropes to shore. As we began to climb up the steep iron stairs I noticed the large letters “MICHURIN” on board the ship. That was the name of a Soviet cargo ship which carried ore from Albania to the USSR. Two of the Albanian officers who had brought us here boarded the ship with us. Tied together we descended down the stairs in darkness and landed in a dark room at the bottom of the ship. The Albanians untied us. A Soviet sailor dropped in a lamp; that’s when we began to hug each other. Because the Albanians had fulfilled their obligation they gathered their rope and took off our handcuffs. Mincho addressed the Albanians with the words: “Goodbye and take care of your handcuffs and rope.” In the room inside the ship where they had placed us there was only one opening. It was located on top of the stairs down which we had descended. Soon after we got settled, a Soviet sailor-officer in civilian clothes came and closed the hatch on the opening. The only light we had after that was that of the lamp. We stayed here in the port of Dures for two days while the ship was loaded with ore and who knows what else. In the morning they opened the hatch, gave us porridge and boiled water and shut it again. The men had overgrown hair and beards and we were all dirty, unwashed. We pounded on the hatch for a while. The civilian came. Urania and I asked if we could come up, wash and go to the bathroom. The man said okay but nothing came of it. During the night they brought us two tin cans, one empty and the other full of water and told us to wash in one and go to the bathroom in the other. They put the tin cans in the corner of the room and hung something like a curtain around them. In the barn like room we were in, at the bottom of the ship, there were also closets with beds inside. They could be locked from the inside. Mincho and I took one and called it “the closet of happiness.” This was our cruise on the ship “Michurin,” it was also our “wedding trip and honeymoon.” On December 16, 1949 “Michurin” left the port of Dures and (for us) sailed away heading for an unknown destination. We all began to sing the Greek song: “Ena karavi apo ton Pirea,” (A ship from Piraeus) modified to sound something like this:

A ship from Dures, Sails to an unknown place, With a group inside of it, With their thoughts constantly on dry land, This is what we the people of NOF are,

This how we the people of NOF fare.

It may have sounded a bit sarcastic, but in the situation we were put in by Nikos Zahariadis how else could it have sounded? Looking at it another way, this was our way of expressing our “gratitude” to him for what he had done to us after we had given him our all with our Macedonian movement fighting for freedom and democracy. Inside the ship we could not tell if it was day or night because there was no natural light coming in. We knew it was another day when we received our food which consisted of porridge, boiled water, broth and sometimes fish soup. The lamp burned day and night as we kept putting notches on the wall to keep track of the number of days we were on the ship. Around the fourth or fifth day after we had left Dures we felt the ship slowing down. We thought that we were approaching a harbour and indeed we were. After a while that same sailor, or officer in civilian clothes, opened the hatch and we were able to see a piece of blue sky and land, seashore and rocks, not very far away. From this we concluded that we had left the Dardanelles behind and that we were somewhere in the Marmora Sea about to enter the Black Sea.

Thinking they will take us to Romania

– My memories of Zahariadis’s treachery and psychological trauma

For some reason we had the impression that they were taking us to Romania, to Konstantsa Harbour. Paskal and I had visited Romania before. I had been there twice and I had visited Konstantsa. My first visit was an official visit in December 1948. I went there with a delegation of Greek women. I visited several working collectives and greeted the workers on behalf of the women in Greece fighting for their freedom and against the Greek Monarcho-Fascists and Anglo-American imperialists. The second time I went to Romania was in June 1949. That’s when I visited Konstantsa. I had just returned from the Second International Peace Congress. Paskal and Taki Papadimitriou, Minister of the Provisional Government of Greece, were returning from Georgi Dimitrov’s funeral. They were part of President Partsalidis’s delegation. We knew that the centre of ELAS-Press and the Informburo headquarters were located in Romania, in Bucharest. That was on April 20, 1949. I want to briefly mention a few things here. For the II International Peace Congress, part of which was held in Prague, our delegation did not receive entry visas from the French government. The Congress was held in Paris and Prague at the same time. Our delegation consisted of Miltiadis Porfirogenis (Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government of Greece, leading the delegation), Petros Kokalis (Minister of Education) and Rula Kukulu (President of the Pan-Greek Democratic Union of Women). From the NOF side, included in the delegation were Pavle Rakovski, Done Sikavitsa (Member of the NOF General Board Secretariat) and myself (NOF Vice President and AFZH secretary). As head of NOF’s educational activities and chief editor of the newspaper “Nepokoren”, Pavle Rakovski greeted the Congress in Macedonian. Done Sikavitsa at that time was responsible for the placement of children in the People’s Republics so he greeted the Congress on behalf of NOF in that capacity. I remember then having a conversation with Kokalis where he proposed not to separate the Macedonian children from the Greek just so that they could study the Macedonian language, but we were adamant and determined in our demands. He backed down and agreed with us. He was a good friend. By profession he was a physician specializing in phymatology and did not care much about “current events”. He mostly did what he was told. That’s when I visited the village Liditse, which the German fascists had completely burned to the ground when, on May 31, 1942, Czechoslovak anti-fascists killed Reinhardt Haidrih the Gestapo leader.

We used this occasion to visit the homes where our Macedonian children had been placed. We also visited the factories in the city Olomuz. There they gave us a car full of candies and chocolates. After that we went to Ostrava where the people gave me 50 pairs of shoes for the Partisans in Greece, 6 transistor radios and many other gifts. We donated the various packages of candies and chocolates to the children’s homes in Liberets and Prague. There I also discussed the deficiencies in the homes but from what I had seen I was convinced that the children were well housed and cared for. I took several photographs of the children to show to their mothers. In Liberets I took pictures of small children one of whom was Doncho, Urania’s son. When I met Urania in Breznitsa, on August 6, I gave her a picture of her child but she was not able to recognize him. In Prague we were accommodated in the hotel “Paris”. The Greek representative of “Iafka” for Czechoslovakia, responsible for taking care of our accommodations, was Maximo. When I told him who I was and that I was Macedonian, he took a liking to me and told me a lot of things. One interesting point he made was about the Macedonian National Question. In the thirties in accordance with the Comintern position on this question, the Communist Party of Greece agreed to an “Autonomous Macedonia”, for that he was imprisoned by the Greek reactionary regime. As I also learned from him, he was not liked by Zahariadis and was not allowed to participate in DAG activities. But because he spoke French he had been appointed to this job. After DAG’s capitulation he went to Vienna and died there. How true that is I do not know. I was well received in Prague by Comrade Sinkova, member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s Central Committee. She attended the PDEG Pan-Greek Conference on March 1, 1949, held in Prespa, in the free territory in the locality known as “Africa” and was thrilled by my performance when I read a resolution, especially since I had a fever, my temperature being 40° (I was sick). During my stay in Prague, Sinkova invited me to her home and in a conversation said: “You're like a daughter to me.” Rula and I were given custom made military overcoats and other matching items of clothing. I was also given many gifts and more clothing. The Congress lasted six days during which I met Fadeev, twice a Hero of the Soviet Union, and writer Konstantin Simonov, both were with us throughout the Congress. I also met Nikos Zahariadis’s first wife who attended the Congress as a member of the CPG Central Committee. I sat next to Rula Kukulu in the hall. A blonde woman with a young three or four year old girl came and sat beside me. I did not know the

woman. I picked the little girl up, put her on my lap and stroked her hair. I smiled at her and she smiled back. I later found out that the woman was Zahariadis’s wife and that the little girl was his daughter. The woman’s name was Maria Novakova but she had changed her last name in Moscow to Krauzova. The blonde woman smiled at me kindly and said something in Czech. After the Congress was finished we prepared to leave. Porfirogenis and Rula had to leave for Greece, Kokalis and D. Sikavitsa were to remain there and I and Pavle Rakovski were to go to Bulgaria and from there through Yugoslavia to the free territory of Greece. I had to leave to join the units in Belasitsa where DAG Division VI was located. The morning before I left, the same blonde woman sitting next to me at the Congress came to my room but without the little girl. She handed me a letter and said: “I only trust you to personally deliver this letter directly to Kolichka (Nikos) Zahariadis.” She also gave me some candy for the trip. She gave me a hug and wished me good luck as we said our goodbyes. I was puzzled and wondered why this woman would choose me to deliver her letter? Porfirogenis was next door to my room and when he came out I asked him if he knew who this woman was and why she had given me a letter for Zahariadis. He told me that she was Zahariadis’s wife. Then it became clear to me why she had given me the letter and not Rula and why Rula had behaved so coldly towards her. I remembered reading an article in the newspaper “Makedonija” in 1945, when I worked for NOF in Sorovich-Kailersko Regions, saying that Mrs. Zahariadis had left Athens on a plane for Czechoslovakia. I could not even then imagine why Zahariadis had ordered Maximo to have me examined by a doctor because he suspected that I had malaria and kept me in Prague for treatment. I went to a hospital together with Sinkova. They took blood for testing and gave us the results the same day. We were greeted by two doctors, one was a Serb. He approached me and in Serbian said: “Macedonians are healthy as can be but take these drugs anyway.” He gave me a miracle drug against malaria but I never used it, I just threw it away. Then I remembered the dialogue I had had with Zahariadis in the first days of April 1949 after the conclusion of the NOF Second Congress and the KOEM Conference on March 25th to 27th, 1949 when he had invited me to meet with him in the village Vineni in Prespa. For several days in a row he sent a Central Committee courier on a motorcycle to personally pick me up from NOF headquarters in the village P’pli and take me to Vineni so that he could talk to me in person. First he asked me to give a talk about NOF and AFZH’s successes and about the Congress on the “Free Greece” radio program. Then he asked me to write an article about “Peace and Democracy” for

the “Cominform Bureau” newspaper published in Bucharest. I then asked him why he had chosen me and not someone like Paskal or Kochopulos or someone else more qualified to write the article. He said he had chosen me because I was famous and internationally known. (I did not know then that they had made a movie of our delegation attending the 2nd International Women’s Congress held from December 1st to the 6th, 1948. I found that out later during the Moscow trials when the translator Aristotelis Papunidis informed me that the film was being previewed in Moscow cinemas. Our delegation, especially Rula Kukulu and myself, was highlighted giving speeches at the Congress. To this day I have not seen the movie, I looked for it but it seems like it is hidden in some remote archive somewhere.) The next day Zahariadis asked me if I had thought about the previous day’s proposition. I told him no because I was not the right person for the job and I wouldn’t be able to carry out such duties. That’s when he said: “You, Vera, should be looking at Moscow and not at Belgrade.” So I said: “I can only look to Skopje in Macedonia, that’s as far as I can see.” From what he said I gathered that he probably wanted me to criticize Yugoslavia, especially through the Cominform Bureau. Because I refused he later put me under house arrest in Bucharest, Romania and kept me in isolation abroad, away from my organization and my people until August 1949, before DAG’s defeat.

During out meetings I took the opportunity to ask Zahariadis: “Are the statements circulating around our people that you have jailed activists from NOF and AFZH true?” He said: “It is not your concern!” So I asked: “How can it not be my concern when some of my people are missing? Where is Dana Popova the AFZH secretary from the village Smrdesh? Where is Sofia Giakova-Bozhinitsa the secretary from the village German? They are among the most active of our secretaries. Where is Atanas Makrievski, NOF’s Main Board courier?” I also mentioned other names... He said: “That is a job for the Party.” I stopped asking him about this. There were too many incidents. I only asked him to allow me a day’s visit in Bitola. A delegation of NOF had been invited by President Risto Kalaidziev to join the Macedonian Association visiting Sofia and attend the anniversary of Yane Sandanski’s death. I asked Zahariadis if on the way back I could go and visit my mother for a day in Bitola. To that he replied: “Why not? You can stay even longer.” So on April 9th, 1949 Mincho took me to the border by jeep and I stayed with my mother in Bitola for a whole day and night.

I want to mention here that Zahariadis was always approachable for discussion and I was always open, direct and frank with him during our meetings, especially about NOF activists. I also want to mention that at the same time many Macedonian fighters from political organizations and DAG were jailed in Albanian prisons and camps. Some remained there for 10 years but after the normalization of relations between the Parties they were given an opportunity to return to Macedonia, to their families, as was the case for Giorgi Turundzhiev, Miltiadi Popnikolovski-Tsvetko, Atanas Makrievski, Dana Popova and others, some returned through Bulgaria. In May, I don’t remember the exact date, Maximo purchased plane tickets to Sofia for me and for Rakovski. Rakovski left before me, and I followed him via Belgrade to Sofia. I sat in the plane with a Yugoslav person returning to Belgrade from Prague. He asked me: “Why don’t you stay in Yugoslavia?” I said: “I have obligations in Bulgaria”. When he got off the plane in Belgrade I gave him some “dinars” (Yugoslav money) to go buy me cigarettes, but by the time he got back the plane was ready to take off so we said our goodbyes through the window and I never did get my cigarettes. When I arrived at the airport in Sofia I was met by the “Iafka” agent for Bulgaria. He informed me that all the others had already left. Pavle Rakovski had left for Yugoslavia via Petrich and from there he was to head to Aegean Macedonia. While in Skopje he met with Goche and Keramitchiev and was handed a letter for Zahariadis. Without giving it a second thought he took the letter and delivered it to Zahariadis. The contents of the letter gave Zahariadis reason to assemble all NOF cadres and enact the KOEM resolution, which Zahariadis himself wrote and which no one, except for Pavle Rakovski, signed. As for deserters Keramitchiev, Goche, Vangel Aianovski and others, they could have freely expressed their views when they were in NOF. They did not have to cowardly abandon NOF and desert when they were needed the most, especially out there on the battlefields. Why did the deserters have to put a wedge in the organization and in its dependable leadership from afar? That was not praiseworthy; it was inhuman. I asked the “Iafka” representative in Sofia if I could return to NOF in Greece through Yugoslavia. They sent a jeep that took me to the Yugoslav border via Petrich to Strumitsa. As usual, no one was waiting for me on the Yugoslavian side. The person responsible for receiving me never arrived. After several attempts at contacting them through the Petrich office, I was informed that no one was coming. I had to return to Petrich where I was placed with a Macedonian family, a young couple with a small child. The people were very nice to me. Yani, the

“Iafka” representative there was running out of options as to what to do for me so I proposed that I leave for Division VI in Belasitsa. The next day I left with some Bulgarian soldiers and arrived at Division VI Headquarters. While visiting with Division Commander Vazvazanis I met Petri Iorgas, CPG Central Committee representative, Eritriadis, CPG District Committee Secretary for Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, whom I knew very well from May 1947 when he was involved with NOF and attended an all NOF rally on May 20 in the Mishovata building in Kajmakchalan. I was well received by Iorgas and Vazvazanis who immediately took me to the building where the Division Headquarters was established. After a bit of rest Iorgas came back and told me that Hrisa Kalimanova was there. I immediately left and went to her barracks where we greeted each other with a long embrace because we had not seen each other since 1944. The next day a meeting of all the Partisans was convened where I briefed the participants about the Peace Congress. I told them how we had been received and many details about what had been said and done at the Congress. After that I asked Iorgas and Vazvazanis to help me get to Vicho from Kajmakchalan as soon as possible. “Iafka” then informed me that they had spoken with Zahariadis about my transfer but it could not take place through the Solun plain because there were too many enemy soldiers there and all the roads were controlled by them. They said that I could go through Yugoslavia if I wanted; the border was only a few hundred metres away. I thought about it and figured that it was some sort of provocation so I refused. I couldn’t go through Strumitsa because “Iafka” did not show up to take me. I asked Iordas to contact General Headquarters again and make new arrangements for my transfer back. Hrisa Kalimanova was in charge of the women in Division VI in relation to General Headquarters. When I received confirmation that I was to go to Bulgaria and Romania and wait there for further instructions, I said goodbye to everyone. When I said goodbye to Iordas he said: “What, you are going to marry Mincho?” When I said yes he said: “Where did you find him?! He has links with Tito!” I said: “Mincho is too young to have a relationship with Tito”, but it became clear to me in what kind of situation I found myself. So I said to myself: “Vera be careful!” I returned to Petrich with a courier, who was connected to “Iafka” in Petrich and with Stati, a DAG officer who had been in Bulgaria all this time. When we arrived at the border, all three border watchtowers (in Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) were empty, there were no border guards. We stopped in the centre of the triangle. I told Stati: “You see those three watchtowers that are empty? That’s how it should always

be!” “Why?” he asked. “So that all three parts of Macedonia can be together. It is a tragedy what happened to my people when the Great Powers and the reactionary regimes in the Balkans divided Macedonia into three different states,” I said. I had a transistor radio with me, given to me as a gift by the Czechoslovakian workers in a factory. I was given six transistor radios but I gave the others away to Rula and Porfirogenis, to the NOF Main Board and to DAG. I gave one to Division VI Headquarters and I brought one with me. We listened to songs from Greece and Bulgaria. Stati was delighted. We arrived in Petrich at night. I went to the same house I had been at before. When the hostess saw me she was very happy. A jeep came and we left the same evening for Sofia. I was accommodated in the “Iafka” house. Two days later they purchased train tickets for me for Bucharest. I packed my uniform and a uniform that I was bringing for Mincho, along with my materials and gifts from the Congress. I wore the civilian clothes I was given. At the train station I met a delegation of Macedonian women, mothers who had chosen to visit children in the homes in the People’s Republics. Among the mothers was Donka Kalkova, AFZH member from my village, Lazo Trpovski’s sister, who was appointed in charge of the delegation. After I greeted everyone with hugs and kisses, I told them that I would see them again back in the free territory at home. The women came from Romania to visit the children’s homes in Bulgaria, in which some of our children had been placed. I left for Romania. I met Lefteri Apostolu at the train station in Bucharest, at that time he was in charge of ELAS-Press in Romania. He took me to the house where Sofia was located. Sofia was a Partisan blinded during the fighting and was waiting to be sent to the Odessa Filatov Clinic for therapy. But as I understood later, due to the severe damage she had received there was no hope of her ever seeing again. She married in Tashkent and had children. A day or so later Nikos Dafnis arrived and was also located there in a different room of the same house. He was responsible for the Greek branch of “Iafka” in Skopje, for receiving non-combatants and wounded from the fronts and for transportation material assistance to DAG in Greece from Yugoslavia and from other republics. He was also responsible for receiving political workers and for finding care, placement and deployment for wounded Partisans in other Republics. “Iafka” or “Giafka” as the Greeks called it, at the time was established in several places. In Macedonia it was established in Skopje, Bitola and Strumica. It was also established in Nish and Belgrade. There were “Iafka” offices opened in all the People’s Republics. Interestingly, not a

single Macedonian ever served in the “Iafka” establishments, all representatives were Greek. In Skopje “Iafka” was located on “Hristo Botev” street in the “Vinar” building (later destroyed by the earthquake) opposite the former Macedonian Ministry of the Interior. When the borders were closed in May 1949, all our friends from “Iafka” in Yugoslavia were recalled by the CPG. That’s how Nikos Dafnis found himself in Romania. At Zahariadis’s request he was welcomed by Lefteri Apostolu and placed under house arrest in the same house where I was. What happened to Dafnis after that, I don’t know? As for Lefteri Apostolu (military revolutionary brother to heroic Electra Apostolu), he too fell into disfavour with Zahariadis because of his dealings. He returned to Greece during the junta and wrote a book. He died in Athens. Lefteri came to visit us when we were in house arrest in Bucharest. I begged him to make arrangements for me to return to Greece but he told me that I was not allowed to return. Twenty or so days after my arrest he sent me for a medical examination because according to Dr. Koligani’s diagnosis, a DAG General Headquarters doctor, I was suspected of suffering from tuberculosis. I wanted to go and visit the children in the dormitory and the wounded Partisans in the hospital. I don’t know why I wanted to do this. Was it because of an inner desire or something else? But by insisting I was able to ease my nerves in the detention house in the ELAS-Press building where I was under house arrest in Bucharest. With me in the same building were Apostolos Grozos, later CPG General Secretary, Vuros with one of the General Headquarters Chiefs, Miltiadis Porfirogenis’s wife and Panaiotis Dzhimas, who at that time was in charge of publishing. Vuros, during a conversation with Grozos said: “We did okay with him but the other guy is a tough nut to crack.” I then asked them who they were talking about. Grozos then said: “We are talking about Keramitchiev and Paskal.” I thought to myself that they were probably referring to the letter that Goche and Keramitchiev had addressed to Zahariadis and about the famous KOEM resolution” for which I had no comment and knew nothing about except from the news that I heard coming from the front. After my visit to the doctor and after I was found as healthy as a horse, I was allowed to go to the dormitory in Tulgesh to see the children. I was not sick, my illness was an invention of Zahariadis to remove me from NOF and AFZH and keep me away from the people so that I would not influence them in favour of Yugoslavia and they would never know the truth. In Tulgesh I had several meetings with the teachers, caregivers, nurses and the children. I noticed that the climate was not right because of a couple of abusive characters named Tsvetko