EVEN THE DEAD MACEDONIANS WERE FORCED OUT

EVEN THE DEAD MACEDONIANS WERE FORCED OUT

“The Cyrillic letters written on the crosses in Macedonian cemeteries were erased, bones from the graves were dug up and burned,” wrote one Englishman

“The Greeks were not only banishing the living Macedonians who they called “Bulgarians” or “Slavs” they also banished dead Macedonians all throughout (the Greek occupied part of) Macedonia. They couldn’t leave them alone even in their graves. The Greeks erased the Cyrillic letters written on the crosses in Macedonian cemeteries. They also dug up the bones from the graves and burned them.” This is what an Englishman wrote in 1928 while traveling through many places in Aegean Macedonia. He was appalled by the terror and atrocities the Greeks were committing against the Macedonian people.

Especially difficult for the Macedonian people were the years after the 1919 to 1922 Greco - Turkish war. After signing the Conversion for population exchanges with Turkey, Greece imported a large Turkish Christian population of settlers and colonists from Asia Minor and settled 640,000 of them on Macedonian lands in Aegean Macedonia, which completely changed the ethnic composition of the region. Settler and colonist families were placed in Macedonian houses and given Macedonian lands forcing many Macedonians out by terror and by killing. “This was most characteristic in the regions close to the borders with one aim; to make life unbearable for the Macedonians. The Greek authorities forcefully removed Macedonians from their homes and lands in order to accommodate the settlers. Fields and even household furniture was forcibly taken from Macedonian families to accommodate the settlers,” wrote Todor Hristov Simovski in his book “Populated places in Aegean Macedonia”.

The worst terror perpetrated against the Macedonian population during those cruel years was carried out by Greek ultra nationalist organizations with the approval of the Greek government. One of the worst organizations was called the “Greek - Macedonian fist” (EEE). It was a Greek national youth organization. Other organizations included “Pavlos Melas”, the pro-fascist National-union of Greece known as the “Steel helmets” and the EMC, a secret Greek national organization.

According to Simovski special anti-terror units were created all throughout Macedonia to allegedly combat the terrorists but instead they were harassing the Macedonian population. They were arresting and murdering Macedonians en masse. One such incident took place on July 27, 1924 when 19 Macedonians were beaten and killed in the villages Trlis, Karakoi and Lovtsen. The story of this massacre ended up in European newspapers describing Greece’s cruelty perpetrated against its Slavic speaking Macedonian population.

But even though the massacre became known, no one from democratic Europe did anything to stop it or to reprimand the Greek authorities. A year later many more Macedonians were arrested in Lerin and in the surrounding region. Most of the Macedonians arrested were shot to death and the rest were jailed in the Greek prisons. Greek assimilation practices and expulsion of Macedonians from their homeland continued for decades. “The Greek nationalist method and practices were well known throughout the world. A French language magazine even published statistics in 1927 unveiling the results of the Greek terror that took place in the Aegean part of Macedonia between 1919 and 1926. According to these statistics, 104 people were murdered, 95 women were raped, from whom 26 were girls under the age of 14, 17 houses were burned, 3,464 people were arrested, 2,327 people were tortured, 1,165 families were robbed and forced out of their homes…,” wrote Katardziev in his book “Macedonia in the 20th century” published by “Kultura”.

The situation for the Macedonian people became even more unbearable under the Metaxas dictatorship. In 1934 the newspaper “Balkan Correspondence” published an article it derived from the

Metaxas regime’s newspaper “Elenikon Melon” from which it concluded the following, “Macedonians, with hands and legs tied, were taken to basements in police buildings and tortured using medieval torture equipment and tactics. The EEE, the Pavlos Melas, and agents of other fascist organizations, terrorized the Macedonian population in the villages Kalenak and Visostani near Lerin and in all the Macedonian villages in Kostur Region.”

“Balkan Correspondence” also wrote, “The Greek state is arresting Slavic speaking Macedonians on a daily basis. In Seres (Eastern Macedonia) it has arrested and imprisoned Macedonians for ridiculously minor offenses such as owing and not having paid debts of 60 or 100 drachmas to the state or to the agricultural bank…”

More terrifying than the physical abuse was the psychological abuse. The Greek authorities and nationalist and terrorist organizations were bent on destroying the Macedonian culture by any means possible.

According to Katardziev “The organization ‘Greek-Macedonian fist’, serving the Greek authorities, created an atmosphere of real hell for the Macedonian people in the Aegean part of Macedonia. In the name of “holy war”, on January 27th 1926, the organization ‘Greek-Macedonian fist’ banned the Macedonian language from being spoken in public places, in restaurants, in gatherings, parties, dinners, weddings, etc. With this order the ‘Greek-Macedonian fist’ rose above the law in Greece and began to order Greek legal, administrative, military, etc., authorities to enforce its orders by not allowing people to speak any other language than Greek. The military obeyed this order and became actively involved in the actions taken to eradicate everything that was Macedonian. As a result it destroyed everything that had Cyrillic letters written on it. The Greek army also broke into churches and removed all Macedonian icons and destroyed the frescos. According to army officials, anything that did not have Greek letters written on it was not Christian. In January 1932, after inspecting the village church in the village Armensko, a Greek infantry lieutenant wrote, ‘In the barrier that separated the women’s part of the church from the men’s part I found three small icons that did not have Greek letters written on them. I was upset over that and increasingly became more upset

when I heard the village mayor speak Bulgarian which he called Macedonian. I got very upset when he told me he was Macedonian so I hit him and told him to never speak that language again. I also told him to tell everyone in the village to never speak another language but Greek.”

In the same report the Greek lieutenant informed his superiors that Macedonians lived in all the local villages and hated everything that was Greek. At the same time the lieutenant recommended that the “best way to get rid of these people is by forcing them out of Greece…”

In a report on the denationalization of the people in Lerin Region prepared in 1931, it was assumed that the nationalization process in that region was not going as planned so it was suggested that the region should be cleansed of its teachers, priests and other officials and they should be replaced with educated Greek nationalists from the southern part of Greece to strengthen those services.

To strengthen their patriotic feelings towards the Greek state, Macedonians were ordered to paint their houses in the Greek national colors, the walls in white and the doors and windows in blue, and to display the Greek flag during every holiday.

This is what the Greek communist newspaper “Rizospastis’ wrote about the hell the Macedonian people had survived, “In the old days before Macedonia came under Greek control Greeks bands were sent there to force them to change their beliefs… Today they are forcing them to show their real Greek feelings. In both cases the whip was never demobilized.”