CHAPTER THREE - The Aegean Brigade moves into Tito’s army

CHAPTER THREE - The Aegean Brigade moves into Tito’s army

At a meeting, Stringos, a member of the CPG Central Committee Politburo, said: “The Central Committee had warned Ilia Dimovski -Gotse and Peiov that their behaviour would not bring them any good.

We continued to tell the Slavo-Macedonian communists to subjugate themselves to the Party if they wanted their lives spared. But they did not want to. And if they did not want to then they could go to hell…” This was followed by applause.

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Radiogram:

From: Hiristos Moshos, To: ELAS group divisions in Macedonia, Re: Reporting the desertion of the Voden Macedonian battalion from ELAS to Vardar Macedonia. No. EP 162 Paiak, very urgent.

On October 14, 1944, the Slavo-Macedonian Kaimakchalan partisan unit (the Voden Battalion) left for Serbia (Vardar Macedonia) without our knowledge. A delegate to negotiate its return was sent to Serbian Macedonia. We believe the unit was seduced by Macedonian partisan cadres.

October 17, 1944.

Petros (Hristos Moshos)

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In mid-September 1944 the Macedonian political and military leadership (from Vardar Macedonia), in accordance with the decisions made by ASNOM, took serious measures for the liberation and unification of Macedonia. On September 23, 1944, NOV and

POM Headquarters sent directives to the commanders of the Lerin, Kostur and Voden Battalions as follows:

“Carry out an extensive recruitment program of combatants from the ranks of the Macedonians. All combatants were to receive weapons, ammunition and other war material from NOV and POM General Headquarters. They were to prepare for operations against the Germans in the Aegean part of Macedonia and Greece which would include NOV and POM units.” A few days later, the Lerin-Kostur battalion exploded in size. It grew to about 1500 soldiers and officers. The Voden Macedonian battalion grew to 575 soldiers and officers. But the CPG and ELAS tried to disband the Macedonian battalions because they allegedly had information that these battalions were preparing an attack on Solun. And because of that CPG and CPY relations began to strain again. On October 4, 1944, Svetozar Vukmanovich - Tempo told POJ Supreme Headquarters that he had informed the Macedonian ELAS units not to agree to be disbanded and that they should transfer to Vardar Macedonia. During the night of October 4, 1944 and on October 14, 1944, the Macedonian battalions crossed over into Vardar Macedonia.

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In the context of the two battalions leaving Greek occupied Macedonia and crossing over into the Republic of Macedonia, we in fact abandoned our centuries-old aspiration to free our piece of land. Going to Yugoslavia, to Tito’s Army, however, as our research has shown, was not by chance. That too was perpetrated so that we would abandon the defense of our fatherland. This was the first step of the long plot to remove us from our homes, from our people, in order for our enemies to maximize the depth of our Macedonian tragedy. This was a time when the CPY (Tito) and the CPG (Zahariadis), with their pseudo concerns, showed “interest” in us, giving us our freedom then taking it away from us, leading us to our destruction.

But more tragic than that has been our mainstream history, the so-called “History of the Aegeans” or should I say “History of the victims of foreign interests”, which has turned our tragedy into triumph and which, in the last 60 years, has been calling our

experience a revolution and thereby covering up everything that led us to our genocide.