KING CONSTANTINE’S TELEGRAM - Part 04

Under the cover of darkness they silently slipped over the terrain, avoiding roads and open spaces, being constantly reminded by their

Partisan guides to keep quiet. They crossed over high mountains and steep slopes ever mindful and vigilant of the flying Greek menace above as they made their way to the borders.

The lucky ones spent the nights indoors in designated villages. The others slept outdoors in the open spaces of the frigid mountains questioning the wisdom of their elders and wondering, which was more dangerous the falling bombs or the freezing cold.

INTERVIEWER – The Queen’s orphanages or whatever they were called. Was that one of those?

RISTO – Yes. The orphanage in Leros was created especially for that purpose.

INTERVIEWER – By Queen Frederica?

RISTO – Frederica was its sponsor and supporter. Regarding the orphaned Macedonian children who ended up in Leros and in the hands of Frederica, they were adopted by Greek families and brought up as Greeks. Some of them later found out that they were not Greeks. I know one lady from Zhelevo, my mother’s friend, who was brought up by a Greek family. But she found her way back.

INTERVIEWER – So the people that stayed in Northern Greece, North-Western Greece after the end of the civil war, were they discriminated against in terms of travel passes…? I was reading your Dad’s story…

RISTO – The people who remained behind were mostly supporters of the Greek regime in power. There were also those, the unfortunate ones who were caught, before they could leave and who belonged to families that openly identified as Macedonians. And let us not forget those who were socialist sympathizers.

After the so-called Greek Civil War was over only horror and fear ruled the land. Those who fought on the losing side became reclusive and wanted to forget the past… but they were constantly harassed and reminded of it by those who won.

The Greeks expressed great hatred for those Macedonians… who only fought for human rights and for wanting to be free. This fear became ingrained in the people’s psyche and by the time I was born, it was normal to be afraid and reclusive, it was part of daily life in Greek occupied Macedonia. That’s why we left Greece… That’s why the villages kept emptying.

One of those unfortunate people to get caught and remain in Greece, after the Greek Civil War was over, was my father Nikola. Nikola was forcibly taken from his village, along with a number of other men, on April 17th, 1947 and sent to the Greek island prison camps. He was kept in prison until January 17th, 1952, the day he arrived back in Oshchima.

On several occasions I asked my father what he had done and why he was sent to prison but to the day he died he did not know, because no one would tell him. All he knew was what his jailers told him, “that he was a danger to the Greek state”.

Later, as I began to research the so-called Greek Civil War, I found out that my father was a victim of American policies in Greece. He was a victim of Lieutenant General James A. Van Fleet’s military tactics.

On March 1, 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman announced the decision to proclaim the “Truman Doctrine” for engaging the U.S. in Greece. Greece was granted credit and advanced military equipment to equip its government army. At the same time Van Fleet, an American General anti-guerrilla specialist, was made available to the Greek government.

With Van Fleet’s strategy and tactics applied in the last battles fought in the Vicho and Gramos battlefields, DAG was defeated and ejected outside of Greece.

So what exactly was Van Fleet’s strategy and how did it involve my father… and he didn’t know about it?

Van Fleet was familiar with the concept of how to starve a guerrilla army. In order to do that, he said, you will have to rob it of the ability to feed itself and of the ability to recruit new fighters.

Most of the food and recruits that supplied the partisan army came from the Macedonian mountain villages.

To stop the food supply all residents from the small villages were removed and placed in towns and large villages. These places were guarded by the Greek army and by the Greek police. Curfews and restrictions of movement were then placed so no one could move without authorization. This cut off most of the food supply to the partisans.

To stop the partisans from recruiting new fighters, the Greek government arrested basically every man, capable of carrying a gun, who was not loyal to the government or was affiliated with the partisan movement. All these people were sent to the Greek island prison camps.

My father was affiliated with the partisan movement. All his brothers and sisters were partisans and fighting in the war. He was the only young person left home to look after the farm and his aging mother and father, so he became a target of Van Fleet’s strategy.

So, to starve the partisans out, Van Fleet basically emptied all the small villages of their population and arrested every man who might be a potential partisan.

The people from the small villages were moved to the large ones because the Greeks didn’t have enough policemen to send to every village to defend them. The move, of course, was done by force.

INTERVIEWER – All of them – they moved all the villagers out?

RISTO – Yes they moved them all. All the villagers were moved. They moved them into already occupied houses and told the people that they had to share the space and the food. Then the Greeks went looking for and hunting down partisans who were on the move.

The civilian people had limited mobility and curfews were in effect, even in the large villages guarded by the police.

But in spite of what Van Fleet had done, his Greek forces still could not defeat the Partisans.

On August 10 – 14, 1949, a Greek government offensive was initiated against DAG. A force of 60,000 Greek government troops, commanded by General Van Fleet of the U.S.A., organized in 6 divisions from all branches of the military, with 200 tanks and armoured cars and with about 100 aircraft of all types, was unleashed on Mount Vicho.

Opposing this force was commander Michos Vlandas of the resistance with 9,863 fighters and 40 cannons. DAG was defeated in the period during August 13 and 14 with 1,859 dead, wounded, missing and captured fighters. The Government side sustained only 256 dead and 1,336 wounded.

On August 15-16, 1949, DAG units retreated into Albania but in the following days about 6,000 were transferred to reinforce the fighting in Mount Gramos.

On August 20, 1949, the CPG Central Committee Politburo held a meeting and promised its fighters that “Gramos has all the means necessary to deliver the enemy a death blow” and coined the slogan “Gramos will become the tomb of the Monarcho-Fascists Government troops”. That, however, never happened! All Zahariadis wanted to do was kill more Macedonians.

There is now a bust of General James A. Van Fleet in the city Kostur, who did a lot for the Greek government army to end the Greek Civil War.

This is yet another statue to rub in the faces of the Macedonian people to remind them of the genocide they experienced at the hands of the Greeks and foreign powers.

In spite of everything the Greeks had done, even with American help, they still could not defeat the partisans. So they began to use napalm.

Here is what Van Fleet said to a number of Greek officers during a meeting while pointing at a map:

[“Well, dear generals, you only have to take two handfuls of space. Two handfuls of space and nothing more! We dressed and fed your army well and armed it with the best weapons we have. Now you have everything! The most modern aircraft, the most modern cannons, mine throwers, mortars, napalm bombs and bazookas!”

Van Fleet paused for a moment, looked at the audience and continued:

“Being in possession of such weapons should boost your courage but for only five days, gentlemen, in just five days you can put an end to this war”. He hit the map with his left hand and continued, “here 90 aircraft will drop their bombs and napalm, hundreds of artillery pieces will thunder and just as many mortars will be dropped. On top of that, nearly 80 thousand troops, assisted by over two hundred tanks and armored cars will be stomping this ground! For no more than five days! Don’t take the communists out of the trenches and bunkers, leave them there dead…

You have five days and if you don’t destroy the enemy in these five days, adios amigos, we’re gone... The American taxpayer spent a lot of money for you and for this war,” concluded Van Fleet.] (Petre Nakovski)

On the tenth day (August 20th) since the beginning of the “great battle” for Gramos, with the approval of General Van Fleet, head of the U.S. military mission in Greece, the air force renewed its attacks, this time with napalm bombs, thus unleashing a new, never before seen horror against the Partisans... And still the front could not be broken… It did not even move...

[That day the airplanes came shortly before noon. They did not drop bombs or fire on us with their machine guns. First they flew low

then high and we could see barrels being dropped from not too high above our positions which exploded about fifty to a hundred meters above us. Fire and flames fell on us. Everything began to burn. Everything burned, the ground, the trees, the rocks, the mountain, we were burning too… Those people, who unfortunately got splashed by this never before seen burning fluid, caught fire and burned like candles.

There was squealing, screaming and many sounds of horror as people rushed out of the trenches looking to the sky and begging for help. All you could see are flames running at you screaming and begging for help, flames that you had to put out with your bare hands?! We fought the flames all day, then, at night, under the light of a full moon, we buried the burned corpses in mass graves.

The aircraft attacked us in this manner, with that damn fire, several more times, but we quickly learned we could avoid being burned by burying ourselves deep into the ground. We dug tunnels in the bunkers and trenches and before the barrels fell we hid underground like moles.] (Petre Nakovski)

The offensive began on August 10th, 1949 but the war did not end until August 30th 1949.

Earlier I mentioned that the partisan fighters were sent to Russia, more precisely to the Soviet Union; to Uzbekistan. Why do you think only the fighters were sent to the Soviet Union?

If you recall, during the Greek Civil War Stalin was having difficulties with Tito which led to Yugoslavia breaking relations with the other socialist countries.

According to secret CIA documents, the conflict between Stalin and Tito was about Tito not adhering to the idea that the Soviet leader did not want problems with the allies America and England because of the Yalta agreement. So Tito continued to supply the communist rebels in Greece with weapons, equipment and officer corps to fight on the Greek partisan side. Stalin sent a letter to Tito criticizing him for opening the “Greek line” and for helping the Greek communists who started a fight that had no chance of success because Athens

was supported by America, “the most powerful country in the world”.

One of Greece’s most prominent historiographers - Tassos Vournas, in his book “History of modern Greece – the Civil War”, on page 176 wrote that Stalin, on February 10, 1948, literally told the Yugoslav delegation in Moscow that: “I do not agree with you, my Yugoslav comrades that the revolution in Greece should continue. That struggle has no hope of success. What do you think the UK and the USA, the strongest countries in the world, will allow it to bring down a line of communication with the Mediterranean Sea? Nonsense! And there’s almost nothing of naval forces! No! The revolution in Greece should stop, as quickly as possible.”

So, why would Stalin want the Macedonian fighters from the Greek Civil War, especially since he did not approve of the struggle, to be sent to the Soviet Union? And why did Tito want to continue helping the struggle after Stalin told him to stop and gave him a good reason for it. And then, before the war ended, why did Tito close the border and refuse to allow Macedonians fighters entry into Yugoslavia unless they disarmed? Yes, Yugoslavia would not allow them entry unless they surrendered their arms.

I have not found evidence to support this, but I was told that Stalin had threatened Tito with creating an independent Macedonian state out of the People’s Republic of Macedonia with aims at breaking up Federal Yugoslavia. And he was going to use the Macedonian fighters to do it.

But since none of this materialized, I am led to believe that it was only a bluff. But this does not answer the question as to why Tito continued to support the struggle in Greek occupied Macedonia, knowing full well that the struggle was not going to succeed because the United States was about to crush it. On top of that, why didn’t the United States object to Tito’s involvement in supporting this conflict? In fact Yugoslav and American relations were never as good as they were during this period of time?

It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Unless, of course, Yugoslavia was working together with the United States and with Greece, in an

attempt to control the war inside Greece and prevent it from ending prematurely.

To make conditions so unbearable so that all the Macedonian people would leave and abandon their homeland just like Britain wanted.

And is this not exactly what happened?

INTERVIEWER – Some of the new areas I want to explore with you are about your father... The trauma of his imprisonment on the island and the discrimination he suffered after it must have impacted greatly on his life... I felt that he was very bitter about the treatment he received and that he never really got over it. I wonder how this also impacted on you as a child... whether he told you stories about his life and whether you then took on his trauma and made it your own. I wonder whether this is why you now spend your time writing history, translating texts and trying to right the wrongs of your father’s generation.

RISTO - Like I said before, my father was basically kidnapped by the Greek authorities and thrown in jail without being informed why. Wouldn’t you be bitter if that happened to you, especially if you didn’t break any laws? Well, this is how it was in Greece for us Macedonians! He wasn’t just thrown in jail, he was tormented and tortured and as far as he was concerned, he had done nothing wrong!

Macronisos was by far the worst experience in his life. No one and nothing deserves to be treated the way they were. Routinely, in the hottest hours of the day, they were forced to run up hill single file between two rows of policemen, while they beat them with sticks to unconsciousness. Rarely did anyone make it to the top standing. It was a sad sight to see, especially the streams of blood running downhill, painting the sand red. What was even sadder was the aftermath, the humiliation of being forced to sign false confessions of acts they had never committed and on top of that swear loyalty to the same regime that imprisoned and beat them.

After a while many of the captives became crazed with fear and had to be isolated in wire cages. Even a glimpse of a uniform threw them into a frightful screaming fit.

On many occasions they had visits from the Greek and sometimes the foreign (French and English) press but no one dared complain. The same policemen who tortured them were walking among them exchanging uniforms for prison clothes every time they had visitors.

The press was reporting fair treatment and compared the prison to paradise with their blessings. In fact they were so afraid that they would have agreed to anything. If the guards said pigs fly they would have agreed. At one point the authorities were so convinced of their rehabilitation that they allowed them to vote in the national elections. To their surprise they didn’t vote the way the authorities expected.

The elections, however, brought change and improvements to their situation. They could finally complain without fear of retribution. Unfortunately everyone was so convinced by the exemplary reports in the press that no one believed them. Even the minister of corrections who paid them a visit in person one day refused to believe them. He found the mere mention of abuse preposterous until some of the men, one by one, dropped their drawers to show him their mutilated genitals. The minister and his visitors were so shocked at the sight that they brought up charges against the general in charge.

The abuses inflicted upon them were not limited to their bodies, they were forced to work for free like slaves and on top of that they were robbed of their prisoner entitlements. With their money the prison guards purchased building materials and with their labour they built sleeping quarters, offices and recreational facilities. Even after they complained, not even a drahma was returned to them. They had to do with very little to survive. They survived only because they were able to organize the people into a skillful labour force willing to work for anyone and for whatever they could afford to pay them.

After almost two years of enduring life in the military camp, it was time for some of them to be released. To qualify, however, each had to sign a statement admitting to crimes they did not commit and swearing loyalty to Greece (the ruling regime). They were given two choices. Sign a confession and leave or remain a prisoner for life.

They were allowed to withdraw previously signed confessions given that most were signed under duress. Macedonians received the most abuses. How could one tell a Macedonian from a Greek, by his confession? Without exception all Macedonians, even the uneducated farmers, were accused of being members of the Communist Party. To the Greek regime, at that time, being a communist was the worst crime one could ever commit.

But my father’s ordeal did not end when he was released from prison.

He arrived in Oshchima on January 17th, 1952, penniless and with no material possessions.

He found his house empty, every member of his family was gone, they were refugees, found somewhere outside of Greece. He was all alone. His father’s house was looted and stripped of all possessions. Everything was gone, his father’s tools, their farming tools, furniture and clothing, everything.

His parents, brothers and sisters, along with ninety-percent of Oshchimians, abandoned everything and fled the country in a hurry to avoid death by Greek bombs. When the war was over no one was allowed to return.

The day after his arrival in Oshchima, as required, he reported to the police station in Zhelevo. He showed the authorities his release papers and in return he received his identification card and travel pass which restricted him to a radius of thirty kilometers.

Three days later he received a summons to report to the military headquarters in Zhelevo. The moment he walked into the office, the man in charge looked at me and said, “You will die at a blink of an eye.” He then told him to turn around and go home. To the last day of his life my father pondered the meaning of his remark without knowing what it meant.

A day later he received another summons to report to Zhelevo for an interview with the plain clothes police. When he inquired as to why

he was summoned, one of them asked him what was happening in Oshchima. In response my father recounted his day’s activities, i.e. what he did that day, which fields he visited and so on. The policeman then asked him not to be naïve and to tell him what he was interested in, i.e. about his neighbours’ activities, not his own.

After telling him that he didn’t associate much with his neighbours, the policeman got upset and told my father to leave and come back the next day. When my father asked why he had to come back the next day the policeman’s reply was, “To keep an eye on you.” His smart remark made my father mad so he sarcastically said, “Why don’t you give me a bed next to yours so that way you can keep an eye on me all the time, even when I am asleep?” The policeman became furious and told him off. He then changed his mind and told him he wanted to see him once a week on Sundays.

The next Sunday he again asked my father, “What is happening in your village?” Again my father gave him the same answer. This time the policeman told him to get lost and never come back, which suited my father fine. I think he was trying to turn my father into an informant to spy on his neighbours.

A little while later the police again summoned my father to Zhelevo. This time they gave him a letter with instructions to report to the military authorities in Maniuk, Kostur. After he arrived there and showed them the letter, they told him to go back home. They said there was no need for him to be there, as they hadn’t asked for him. My father didn’t even care to speculate about what games the police were playing with him.

A couple of years later, the plain clothes police again summoned him to Zhelevo. This time they confiscated his travel pass. They also informed him that, until further notice, he was under house arrest and confined to the borders of Oshchima. No reason was given except that he now needed permission from the chief of police to travel.

This is how my father was treated by the Greek regime in his own native home where he was born.

My father told me all kinds of stories of his experience, not just in prison, but of his entire life. But did that make me bitter? Did it make me take on his trauma? Did it make me want to spend my time translating texts and trying to right the wrongs of my father’s generation? No.

But it made me think. I was born in Oshchima and I admit I am a product of the traumatized generation but I did not know that. I was born and grew up in that environment and that was normal for me.

Fear, suspicion and mistrust, especially of strangers, were a normal thing and part of daily life. This is how it was for us, for me, the Macedonian generation that was born in Greece after the Greek Civil War. But, in spite of all that, I turned out to be one of those curious ones who wanted to know more. Not just what happened but “why” it happened.

I heard our stories, our narrative, a dozen times over, but no one seemed to be able to tell me why these things were happening to us, over and over in our history.

This is, I think, what made me want to know more and when I found out more I wanted to write and translate our narrative, our history, to learn why things happened, not just what happened but why it happened.

It is good to know why things happened for all our sakes… to avoid repeating our mistakes. We, as a Macedonian people, are more than the “non-existent” people our occupiers have made us to be and we need to know that. Our long occupation has left us with a terrible inferiority complex. We need to shake it off. But before we can do that we need to know who we really are and not just what our Balkan neighbours and the Great Powers have made us out to be.

We have been robbed of our past, of our glories and of our heritage and we need to take them back. We have always existed and still exist. We have been a nation before we had a state. Not the other way around; like the Greeks.

I am one of the first writers to expose the Greek “falsity” and the Greek artificiality, and now every Macedonian that has read my articles knows that.

I am not bitter or angry at Greece and the Greek people; I am disappointed however with how Greece treats us. I believe Greece is not alone in this. Greece is just another pawn of the Great Powers; an instrument, and has to do what it has to do in order to survive… but it is sad to see that after it was given custody of Macedonia and the Macedonian people, instead of nurturing them it did everything in its power to destroy them. And in doing so, it not only demonstrated its intent but also its lack of humanity, its lack of compassion and lack wisdom.

It is important for Macedonians to know who they are even if they can’t do anything about it. One day circumstances will change and they need to be prepared. That’s all I can tell you for now.

Now let us get back to our story.

Greece was created by the West and has been supported by the West. Greece has been the bulwark for Britain in the prevention of Russia entering the Mediterranean waters.

In the old days, the British were sympathetic to the Greek cause but at the same time they wanted a strong Turkey to counter Russia. Initially, the British were prepared to support Turkey to prevent Russia from gaining control of the Turkish Straits and threatening the Mediterranean trade routes.

“Canning (a British politician, 1812-1862) had planned to head off Russia’s advance, not by direct opposition, but by associating her with England and France in a policy of emancipation, aimed at erecting national States out of the component parts of the Turkish Empire. Such States could be relied upon to withstand Russian encroachment on their independence, if once they were set free from the Turk. The creation of the Kingdom of Greece was the immediate outcome of Canning’s policy” (Page 372, Trevelyan, British History in the 19th Century)

Earlier I explained that Greece was a “Western creation” for the purpose of achieving two objectives. One, to keep Russia out of the Mediterranean Sea and two, to break up the Ottoman occupied Slav lands into small, nationally divergent, easily manageable and loyal states.

Created by the Western Powers, the new Balkan States would be loyal to their creator; British politicians were counting on it. The Western Powers introduced “nationalism” in the Balkans as a way of replacing the Ottoman Empire, not with a single state but with many “divergent”, manageably sized states. Nationalism, however, was not a way with which Balkan people identified before the 19th century.

As I mentioned earlier, for over 2,300 years the region was without borders and without a sense of national identity. For over 1,800 years the people in the region lived with “religion as the only unifying force” which brought them together and allowed them to live in peace. Lack of borders and freedom of movement allowed the diverse people to travel anywhere within the empire to settle and mix with other people.

So, how does one create “national consciousness” where one does not exist?

Ignoring the fact that the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural pluralistic society, the Western Powers initiated the nation building process anyway.

To them, it didn’t matter what kind of “nations” they were building, provided that the new nations were a “non-Slav” singular society that agreed to keep Russia out of the Mediterranean Sea.

Unfortunately, Macedonia did not fit the Western Power mold and was never allowed to become an independent state. And to make sure it never did, it was partitioned into four parts and given to four different and divergent states with aims at destroying it.

So, what happened to Macedonia during the Greek Civil War was a continuation of what had been happening to it for over 150 years

since the modern Serbian (1806), Greek (1828) and later Bulgarian (1878) and Albanian (1912) states were created.

After the Greek Civil War ended and the Greek borders were closed to the Macedonian fighters and refugees, Greece took measures, legal measures, to prevent the Macedonian people from re-entering the border and returning to their homes.

Let me backtrack a bit and say something very important because this is evidence, I believe, that the Greek Government, even before the Greek Civil War had ended, had plans “to deal with the Macedonians in Greece”.

“In 1947, during the Greek Civil War, legal act L-2 was issued. This meant that all those who left Greece without the consent of the Greek government were stripped of their Greek citizenship and banned from returning to Greece. The law applied to Greeks and Macedonians, but in its modernized version the act is binding only on Macedonians. It prevents Macedonians, but not former Communist Greeks who fought against the winning side, from returning to Greece and reclaiming property.

On January 20, 1948 legal act M was issued. This allowed the Greek government to confiscate the property of those who were stripped of their Greek citizenship. The law was updated in 1985 to exclude Greeks, but still binding on Macedonians. (See pages 116-117, John Shea, Macedonia and Greece, The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation)

Clearly acts L-2 and M were designed to work against the interests of the Macedonian people. Even innocent Macedonians who left before the Civil War were not allowed to return. The way acts L-2 and M were enforced over the years brings another question to mind.

If there were no Macedonians living in Greece, as the Greeks claim, then what nationality were these people the Greek Government refused to allow back?

Why is it that Greek law makes the distinction between Macedonians and Greeks when it suits Greece but not when it benefits the Macedonians?

This also reinforces my theory that Greece all along intended to exile as many Macedonians as possible and enacted these laws in preparation for it.

As mentioned earlier, in the spring of 1948, to save the children, a temporary evacuation program was introduced and implemented on a voluntary basis. It is estimated that about 28,000 children from the ages of 2 to 14 were rounded up and taken across the border into Yugoslavia. From there they were sent to various Eastern European Block countries.

Again, I want to point out that the evacuation program was sponsored and organized by the Greek Partisan Leadership which was fully versed in “Greek Law” (act L-2). Yet they carried out the children’s evacuation program and lied to the trusting mothers that the evacuation was only a temporary measure and that the children would be returned.

Almost all the Macedonian children who were evacuated in 1948 are still not allowed entry into Greece. Don’t tell me that the communists did not know that these children would never be allowed to return?

They knew that there were laws that would prevent every refugee who left Greece without government permission, from returning to Greece. Yet this information was never made available to the Macedonian parents. Why?

INTERVIEWER – You know, during the civil war or during the time when the communists had the democratic, the communist state in the north, they established Macedonian schools didn’t they?

RISTO – You mean when the Partisans established the free territory in the Prespa and surrounding area?

INTERVIEWER – Yes. Because I heard there were schools operating in some places in the free territory.

RISTO – One positive thing that the CPG did was allow the Macedonian people to establish Macedonian language schools in the so-called “liberated territories” (Partisan held territories).

A school to educate teachers in the Macedonian language was opened in the village German in Prespa Region in December 1947. The aim here was to prepare Macedonian language teachers who in turn would teach Macedonian children the Macedonian language.

Among the regions that received Macedonian language education at the time were the villages in the free territories of Vicho and Kaimakchalan. Even though this program only lasted several months, 87 Macedonian schools were opened with the participation of over 10,000 students.

You must be thinking of the schools that operated in German during the Greek Civil War.

INTERVIEWER – Yes but also the schools which operated in the Second World War which the Italians allowed to operate…

RISTO – Well, from what I am told, the Italians didn’t care what the Macedonians did as long as they didn’t interfere in Italian affairs… the Italians were gone soon after that.

INTERVIEWER – But they were quite happy to allow Macedonian to be taught in the schools.

RISTO – Like I said, the Italians did not care. The Macedonians were happy to be taught Macedonian in school. The Greeks were the ones who were not happy. The Macedonians knew very well that they were under occupation and played by the rules. They had seen occupations come and go and no one was sure what the future would bring. But the Greeks, even in areas where they were a minority, were not happy to see Macedonians speaking Macedonian and learning to read and write in Macedonian.

INTERVIEWER – Another thing. I’ve heard that in the free territory Markos used to hide in a cave. There was a big sign that said “Zahariadis’s cave” and somewhere further down in the mountain there was a hospital, a military hospital. I’m just wondering where I can find out some more about that.

RISTO – I don’t know the specifics of where that was but here is what Petre Nakovski, who visited those places, wrote:

[Excited by the beautiful scenery we decided to go and visit Nivitsi. The village is located on the lakeshore and is surrounded by rocks on which stunted oak trees grow. It has been said that, in the past, the people of Nivitsi lived off the “tsironi” (smelts, tiny fish) that they caught in the lake and sold to people in the most remote villages in Lerin and Kostur Regions. Unfortunately no one got rich from selling tsironi so today the people of Nivitsi stave off poverty with tourist money. By joining forces the people of Nivitsi built a hotel with a restaurant that offers famous Prespa carp and other local Prespa dishes. They also fixed up rooms in their old houses and now can accommodate paying guests. The hotel parking lot was full of buses. A well-established advertising campaign also brings them tourists from all over Greece.

But we did not come here for the hotel or for the famous carp. We came here because of a significant wartime event that took place in the Sveta Nedela (Golema Bogoroditsa) village church. The Second Congress of the People’s Liberation Front was held here on March 25, 1949. It was here that resolutions were adopted to invite the Macedonian people to join the struggle (Greek Civil War) en masse. It was here that the Macedonian people were told and retold by the Greek Communists that they would allow them to create their own Macedonian state, unlike the Republic of Macedonia which was under Yugoslavia. But there was a condition, a catch. For that to happen, every able bodied Macedonian man and woman had to join the struggle. “All to arms – everything for victory,” read one slogan.

There were many slogans written especially in honour of Zahariadis, the so-called “greatest”, wisest and most respected son of Macedonia and then, a little later, no one wanted to believe that he was the “greatest” liar and cheat! But the leaders of NOF (National

Liberation Front) and all those serving under him, believed and trusted him and that is why they all suffered and many died; because of those beliefs! Everything is known now!!! The entire nation suffered. The older people know and remember… but the younger generation did not want to listen. Now, hopefully, they learned from their mistakes.

We took the rarely used winding circular cobblestone path, now overgrown with grass, to Vronderon which, according to the old map, used to be called Grazhdeno in Macedonian. On the way there we passed a place where the village Piksos, known as Orovo in Macedonian, used to be. There is hardly anything left of Orovo now. The only building left standing is the church now hidden under the shade of a tall oak tree grove. While visiting Grazhdeno we had a great desire to visit the large cave which served as a hospital for the Partisans during the struggle. Wounded Partisans were treated there after the houses serving as a hospital in the villages Nivitsi, Orovo and Grazhdeno were bombed. We expected to find only ruins and empty space in Grazhdeno but, to our surprise, we found new houses and children running in the streets… but the language spoken was Albanian. We surmised that the Greek authorities had populated this village with farmer and pastoralist settlers, refugees from Albania. They spoke to us in Greek but between themselves they spoke Albanian. They said it was easier to understand each other if they spoke Albanian.

After our visit to the cave, the former Partisan hospital, which still has remnants of wooden beds placed in layers of three, we took the road to Pili, or Vineni as it is called in Macedonian. Vineni was the first village in Prespa Region to receive Asian colonists, who, after the Asia Minor disaster, following the Greek-Turkish war, were settled here. The Macedonians call these people Madzhiri. They are distinguishable from the indigenous people not only in speech but also in appearance. They have black hair, bony facial features, convex eyes and eagle noses. They call themselves Pontii, meaning former residents of a region situated above the shores of the Black Sea. During the struggle most of the Pontii fled to Lerin and resided in the city. Their abandoned houses were occupied by the so-called Democratic Provisional Government of Greece, which was established in December 1947 in the village Asamati located in

Prespa Region in the Republic of Macedonia. Before the village entrance, to the left of the road we noticed a piece of plank nailed to an oak tree which read: “Σπηλια Ζαχιαριαδης” (Cave Zahariadis).

There is a narrow, uphill path leading to the cave and in front of the cave, under the wide canvas spread under the shade of the oak trees, the path turns left. There is another wooden sign with the same writing and about ten steps after that there are two connected rocks. Above the rocks there are old cracked oak trees growing with their roots stuck in the crevices of the rocks. Under the low hanging branches, facing west is an ugly, dark chill-giving, gaping hole; the cave entrance.

I turned on my battery powered lantern and carefully put my foot on the first step carved out of stone. There were three or four more steps like that going down and after I took the last one I was in total darkness… This, at one time, may have been a bear cave, but then, during the struggle (Greek Civil War), a brain came to live here. When the brain was here the cave was not a cave, it was a cabin. The floor was covered with smooth planks and hand woven carpets, believed to be gifts from Tito, given to Zahariadis in better days. To the left there was a large desk, a telephone apparatus and a radio transmitter. To the right there was a long table covered with a red cloth and chairs stacked in a pile. These were for the members of his immediate political and military leadership. There was a colour portrait of Stalin, a personal gift, hanging on the front wall. There was also electric lighting and heating.

This is where the brain of one side of the war resided, where political and military solutions were conceived and decisions were made. This is where the decision to attack Voden, Negush and Lerin was made. And this is where not a single bomb was dropped. Vineni and the cave were two places where the government air force did not drop a single bomb. In those days there were few who knew and were able to cross the road to find the cave. Today many come to visit it. The cave that once was a home to bears, bats and spiders and the seat of darkness and misfortune, is now a tourist attraction…] (Petre Nakovski, “On the Road of Time”)

If that’s not enough information and you need to find out more, you can get a hold of a Greek author. But I must tell you that the Greeks will not tell you what I am telling you. They will tell you how they saw things from their perspective. And even though we, the indigenous people, the Macedonian people, are the real victims of this war, perpetrated to destroy us, the Greeks still see us as the perpetrators of a conspiracy to steal land from them. They don’t see things the way we see them…

INTERVIEWER – Yes that’s how I can fill in those gaps.

RISTO – I have used books from Greek authors in my research.

Some time ago when I was writing my book “Macedonians in Greece” I quoted Koliopoulos (Koliopoulos, John S. Plundered Loyalties; Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West Macedonia, 1941-1949. London: C. Hurst & Co., 1999). He is a young author who wanted to write a bit more about the Greek Civil War. He went to the various villages but no one would talk to him. He tells about this in his introduction.

The following segment was taken from John S. Koliopoulos’s book “Plundered Loyalties” but it represents the Greek point of view on the situation in Macedonia.

“In Eordaea, where large numbers of refugees had been settled in the houses and lands abandoned by the Muslims, officials struggled to squeeze out more land, especially in or around Slav-speaking villages like Emporion and Komanos. In the village of Karyochori in the same district more than 200 families were given the land which had previously sustained less than half that number of Muslim families. About 3.25 hectares for each family were allotted, of which only one-third was fertile; or so they maintained ten years later, when 122 inhabitants petitioned the authorities to resettle them elsewhere, preferably in the plain of Central Macedonia. It should finally be mentioned that ever since 1913 a steady trickle of Christian families from the newly-founded independent Albanian state settled mostly in villages in the districts of Kastoria and Kozani and, almost as a rule, with relatives. This kind of settlement went on more or less unnoticed by the authorities, but by contrast everyone

appeared to take an interest in the refugees from European and Asiatic Turkey, who became an instrument of national policy. The opposite would have been surprising. A few hundred Anatolian refugee families were even settled in the brigand preserve of Servia to strengthen communities against the swift-footed and predatory pastoralists of Mt Chassia. Above all, refugees were sent north to settle around and amidst Slav Macedonians in the hope that such settlement would facilitate their ‘Hellenisation’, in speech no less than in sentiment.