GREEK NEWSPAPER DEFENDS THE MACEDONIANS

GREEK NEWSPAPER DEFENDS THE MACEDONIANS

Those who have not seen the cornbread and red peppers Macedonians eat, don’t know how much these enslaved people are suffering

“The further our automobile traveled down the fields the more suppressed Western Macedonia was. It was demoralized and stunted... The crying voices inside the villages followed us during our entire trip... The ruined houses reminded us of the miserable life these people lived.

Those who haven’t seen the cornbread and the red peppers these Macedonians eat… Those who haven’t seen their children dying from malaria… Those who haven’t heard the paid teacher, an addicted nationalist, speaking with such contempt for the people he was given to teach... Those who haven’t seen the beaten Macedonians tied to trees and puking blood... beaten to reveal where the revolutionaries are… Those who haven’t noticed the Greek policemen beating women and children with the cruelty of a cannibal… Those people know nothing of how much these enslaved people are suffering.”

These terrifying extracts were taken from a report written not by a Macedonian but by a Greek journalist named Kondos who worked for the newspaper “Rizospastis”. His report, more than anything, reveals the kind of hell the Macedonian people were living in, while the Greek authorities were doing everything in their power to Hellenize them or force them out of their homes.

“Rizospastis” was a Greek communist newspaper which at times wrote stories about the Macedonian people. Sometimes its journalists had no dilemma revealing that a Macedonian national identity existed in Greece. (Genuinely or not), for at least one reporter the Macedonians were not Greeks, or Bulgarians, or Serbians. In one of his reports Kondos, the “Rizospastis” reporter who visited Lerin and Kostur Regions, wrote that those who claim that the people living in Aegean Macedonia are Greeks and those living in Pirin Macedonia are Bulgarians are wrong. This is what Kondos wrote, “It isn’t true. Greeks, Serbians or Bulgarians don’t exist in Macedonia under Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Only Macedonians exist. All one has to do is pay one visit to the mountain villages in Macedonia (Kostur, Lerin) and you will discover that. No one needs to tell you, you will know for yourself from their customs and their nature, which are totally not Greek or Serbian... We are not dealing with Greeks, Serbians or Bulgarians in Macedonia, we are dealing with Macedonians, with Macedonian people who aside from all the punches, aside from all the tyranny, still keep their economic and national existence as a unique culture.”

One time “Rizospastis” wrote a story about three Macedonian men who killed a Greek nationalist (Grkoman) spy in their village who constantly harassed the women. As a result all three were sentenced to death. When the verdict was read for one of them the judge said that he was from Lerin but was not Greek because he was born in Sofia. To that the man loudly replied, “Yes I was born in Sofia but I’m not Bulgarian or Greek, I’m Macedonian!”

“Rizospastis” sometimes wrote stories about the “unprecedented exploitation” the Macedonian people experienced. In 1931 in Kostur Region for example, 13 Macedonian children were jailed because they sold some wood they had collected from the forest. As a result the prosecutor accused them of “selling the wood for too high a price”. He didn’t care that the children had no shoes and had to eat cornbread and peppers. According to the prosecutor they were doing well and didn’t need money for that.

“Rizospastis” also wrote a story about Greek nationalist organizations “selling” Macedonian women like they were market commodities. An example of that was the sale of a Macedonian girl from Rupishta, sold in Lerin for 3,000 drachmas. The buyer gave the seller 1,000 drachmas in cash and the rest in bonds. On the receipt it was written that the buyer had bought a sheep.

According to “Rizospastis” there were Greek army units operating around the Lerin Region villages stationed there to combat bandits but instead they terrorized the Macedonian civilian population. It was reported that a Greek military unit consisting of 40 soldiers had surrounded the village Gornichevo during which time it caught only one bandit. He was a VMRO member belonging to Vancho Mihajlov’s band. But in its pursuit of the bandit the unit punished the innocent civilian population. The soldiers beat and tortured people to extract information from them. It was also reported that these Greek military units attacked and robbed the villages Setina, Zabrdeni and Krusoradi. On top of that if anyone from these villages protested, the Greek authorities allowed the units to execute them. According to “Rizospastis” four Macedonian people from the village Vrben were taken to Lerin and for no reason were beaten to madness. Apparently they were beaten because the authorities had found a bomb at the train station. It was later confirmed that the bomb had been left there from the First World War.

Most terrifying for the Macedonian population were the days around the national elections. During that time extra pressure was placed on the people by the nationalist parties. These parties terrorized the people to vote for them. They threatened to burn down their houses if they didn’t vote for them. During Venizelos’s time an eviction list was prepared to evict 800 Macedonian families. After the people refused to leave their eviction was postponed until after the election. After the election another 200 families were added to the list and a total of 1,000 Macedonian families were forced out because they supposedly were members of a United Macedonian Organization.

Because of hard economic conditions most young Macedonians left their home and went overseas. According to “Rizospastis”, “Thousands of young men from Lerin Region emigrated... They are all now living and working in Australia, North and South America, Australia and even New Zealand. They sound optimistic in the letters they send home but at the same time they are nostalgic for Macedonia, they yearn for their birthplaces and say they will return and fight to liberate them…” At the same time “Rizospastis” also gave several examples of how the Macedonian population was forced to migrate. In one instance a person using a saber occupied the only water pump in the village and refused to provide water to

the poor people. A rich family in Patele sent hundreds of villagers to the prisons on the deserted Greek islands. A man call Partsinas carried a gun and on a daily basis terrorized the poor population in Gornichevo...

According to an article “Rizospastis” published in September 1934, Greek authorities interned two Macedonian men in a Crete prison. The men were from Lesnitsa, a village located in Seres Region. The reason for their internment; they had sung a Macedonian song during a wedding. Also according to “Rizospastis” Macedonian recruits in the Greek army were exposed to great terror because they spoke Macedonian. They were tortured terribly during exercises and were forced to work. They were also confined and locked up for the smallest infractions.

“Rizospastis” published several letters written by Macedonians describing their torture in the hands of the Greek authorities. One man who left his home and went to work overseas wrote that somewhere in Lerin Region there was a “black book” with thousands of names of Macedonians. The Greek authorities would not allow these people to return home even though they had left their homeland legally and went to work overseas and other places legally. This is what “Rizospastis” wrote about that, “Most Macedonians who legally left Greece and went to work outside of Greece were not allowed to return. When they went to the Greek consulates to prepare their return documents the consuls told them ‘no fatherland exists for you, for your families or for anyone else of your kind because you are all communists’…”

A Macedonian man named Lambros Imanuil from Kosinets, Kostur Region, while jailed in the Greek island Anafi, in part, wrote the following letter to “Rizospastis”, “Before I was banished to Anafi I had a store in my village Kosinets on which I hung a sign that read ‘The store of Kosinets’. I had placed that sign there in 1903 before the Greek authorities changed the name of my village. One day the police chief from D’mbeni came to my store and told me to change the name on the sign and put another name; a name that I liked. I wrote the name ‘Malimadi’ in honour of Mount Malimadi. Unfortunately the police chief didn’t like that and a few days later he sent four policemen to visit me. I was 65 years old at the time.

The policemen grabbed me by my arms and legs and took me to Kostur. They refused to let me say goodbye to my wife, see my grandchildren, change my clothes or take clothes with me. After that the Greek authorities sent me to a deserted island concentration camp where I was jailed and treated worse than a criminal. I have been speaking Greek for over 24 years, I have educated my children in the Greek language, I have been going to the Greek church and listening to the priest preaching in Greek, and have obeyed the law all my life, I have done everything the Greek authorities have asked of me and I have remained quiet all my life. What else can I do to avoid being punished?”