“TO THE POLITBURO OF THE ALBANIAN PARTY

“TO: THE POLITBURO OF THE ALBANIAN PARTY

FROM: THE CPG CENTRAL COMMITTEE

Dear comrades,

With this letter we would like to ask you the following questions:

1. A certain number of Tito’s agents operating in our ranks have been apprehended and jailed in accordance with a CPG decision

made during a Vicho-Gramos DAG unit Conference held on September 30, 1949 and in accordance with a decision made during a general meeting held afterwards with the Slavo-Macedonian fighters. This is also in agreement with Mehmed Shehu. The arrests were made in order to put an end to the anti-revolutionary activity of the aforementioned agents, as well as to discover their accomplices which still exist, both in the ranks of the fighters who retreated from Greece and in the units acting there, as well as those existing among the Slavo-Macedonian refugees in the People’s republics. In order to discover and liquidate their accomplices we need to act quickly. Therefore we need to begin and end the investigation quickly. However, 25 days have already passed and not only did the investigation not begin, despite of our endeavour and the frequent urging of Comrade Mehmed Shehu, but quite the opposite, our Comrade (Periklis Kalodikis), who is familiar with the whole issue and was supposed to take part in the investigation, was completely excluded from the matter and has become the object of the investigation.

2. This delay unfortunately has caused us great harm. The accomplices of Tito’s agents, whom we have already arrested, were inside our units and have been operating in Greece. They have fled to Yugoslavia, surrendered our units and did us great damage. This will now probably happen with Tito’s agents who have left Greece with the Slavo-Macedonian refugees and are now in the People’s republics. Had we finished the investigation in time, they surely would not have done much harm. You realize that by prolonging the investigation you are creating serious problems for both of us. We are asking you to put an end to this situation. We consider your Comrade Georgi’s (lieutenant of the Albanian Security Service ‘Sigurimi’) suggestions unacceptable. Even though he is responsible for this matter, we do not accept Georgi’s idea that the investigation should begin in December and we ask you to allow us to do our own investigation or, if possible, to hand over the prisoners to another people’s republic and end the delays which have harmful consequences for our movement.

3. As we mention in part 1, our comrade who was appointed to investigate Tito’s agents, has himself become the object of the investigation. Our impression is that your in investigation, according

to the way it was conducted, and from what we understand from our dealings with Georgi, you are moving in a direction to put the CPG’s policy regarding the Macedonian National Question into review from the time our Party was founded. Why does Comrade Georgi, on the issue of your requirement to acquaint yourselves with the CPG’s policy regarding the Macedonian Question, prefer to take the path of the investigation and why have you not asked us for a more credible opinion of the problem that interests you? Our belief is that you have or hold your own reservations on the CPG’s policies not only on the Macedonian Question, but also on the recent period, Hitler’s 1941-1944, before and after Varkiza...

October 27, 1949, CPG Central Committee Politburo.” (100)

Our Albanian comrades stood their ground and kept us in prison in isolation in Tirana until mid-December 1949. Then, after six days on a ship following the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles, Marmots, Bosporus and the Black Sea, we arrived at a prison in Odessa. After nine days of “vacation” in Odessa we arrived in Moscow through Kiev.

More information about what happened to me after that can be found later on the attachments entitled “Robiashi” and “Under investigation”. They were written at different times and on different occasions. But they are an important part of my biography.

Now please, turn the page…!

ROBIASHI (101)

1. Condemned without a trial...

We were eleven Macedonians. Eleven leading activists of the Macedonian national liberation movement in Greek occupied Macedonia. We were arrested on orders from Zahariadis and the CPG Central Committee. I was arrested on October 3, 1949...

I was placed in strict isolation and solitary confinement for two years and eight months while the interrogations in Moscow lasted

two years and five months. (I will write about that in a separate document). On May 30, 1952 I was told:

For having ties with international reactionaries and for organizing activity in their favour in accordance with Article 58, items 4 and 11 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, the USSR Supreme Court Special Council decided to sentence you to ten years of deprivation of personal liberty and forced labour in the “Correctional Labour Camps” - ITL, without the right to write any letters to anyone… I was not even allowed to write to my aging parents or friends and tell them that I was alive and where I was located. At the time I did not even know where my wife and child were and that they had been taken away…

The very moment the verdict was read I felt very bitter and angry...

The Russian Federation FORCEFULLY CARRIED me out and put me behind iron bars inside a Stolipinski prison wagon, and after that I was locked up in a Moscow prison. So, the question is:

“How did I and how could I have violated the Russian Federation Criminal Code in my own homeland in Greek occupied Macedonia while taking part in our people’s struggle for our elementary human, civil and national rights…? On top of that, why was I not brought before a court, and why was I not given the opportunity to defend myself…?”

This looked to me like “justice of the strong against the weak”. This was the so-called Iron NATURAL LAW of the Strong applied against the weak. After I grasped this cruel reality I became very cautious. I figured that protesting would be futile, wrong and probably dangerous. I convinced myself to refrain from making objections… I maintained a low profile for as long as I could, that is for as long as this justice of the strong was applied… as a happy moment in our unhappiness. Namely, if we remained in Zahariadis’s hands, we all would have been dead a long time ago…

Knowing that everything flowed with time and changed, I also knew that a lie too naturally had short legs and could not go far…

I arrived in Eastern Siberia (Irkutsk Oblast) to serve my sentence with a certain feeling that I would not be here in these Correctional labour camps for too long. I arrived with my morale very high...

2. Hard times...

In January 1955, by some internal need, I had a great desire to write some things down. This is what I wrote:

“January 10, 1955... It is hard… I have fallen into a social pit in which social waste from many Asian and European nations is thrown. These are the so-called fanatics from various religious sects including Sabbaths, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Greek Catholics, Old Believers, followers of the Orthodox Old Testament, Christians and so on, all of them considered enemies of the Soviet government. In addition to them there are also those who have been accused of being Russians spies, saboteurs, terrorists, Bukharinians, Trotskyites, Gestapo, Ukrainians and Moldavian separatists, smugglers and spies from Iran and Turkey, Hungarians, Poles, Czechoslovakians, Bulgarians, Yugoslavian Ustashases and Chetniks, Japanese, Chinese, Manchu, Koreans, open fascists, professional pawns and terrorists, lumbar proletarians, scoundrels, jokers and drifters... All these people are blind with hate for which I gave everything that a man has and can possibly give. I live among them now all alone, very cautiously, because if I were to accidentally step on the tail of one of these reptiles, I might as well consider myself dead. The danger of being attacked by any of them is always there even without stepping on their tail. Three times now I have been in this extremely difficult position, once in 1953 and twice in 1954. I always try to maintain my coolness, that is, the calm that radiated out of me and with which I am able to cool and calm down the attacker without causing an attack on anyone else who is around. I think that the feeling of my human dignity and the knowledge that I have as a Communist, stand very high above these subjects and gives me the ability to do this.

I have been here barely three months, in this camp, named 0-41, and I have often spotted those of the S.S. glancing at me like they knew me or knew of me. To them, I am not a political prisoner who, until recently, wore, like they did, a number on my back, that is, I

represented a number. (In 1954, one year after Stalin’s death, those numbers were abolished. The prisoners stopped wearing them on their backs.) Two days ago, while looking at me and pointing at me by tilting his head, one of them said to the others:

‘Tsvain kizhte hat dizei man ...’ (This man is two-faced…) The German then lowered his voice and I could no longer hear what he was saying…

And here, at this point, the following words came to mind: ‘One day the NOF leaders will sit on a court bench and will pay.’ This is what Olimpios, a DAG Headquarters Coordinator at the Kaimakchalan whom I knew from before, said. He was a brutal teacher. He finished teacher’s school in Lerin when I was still in the gymnasium so we knew each other from then. He said this to me sometime in April-May 1947. Obviously he thought I was Greek and that is why he confided in me and expressed his chauvinism by telling me what the Party leaders and DAG were planning for the Macedonian national liberation movement, that is, against NOF...

And here we are! We, the NOF leaders, are paying dearly just as our heroic Macedonian people have paid in the past in Greek occupied Macedonia. We are paying for their classical organizational incompetence and well-organized betrayal...

But the day will come, when the black speck of betrayal, with which these people tried to blacken NOF and its leaders, will blacken and defile them and History will expose them, for being the main culprits for the tragic end of the popular revolution in Greece...”

3. An unexpected turn of events...

Three weeks later I wrote the following:

“January 31, 1955. They took me to the Central Camp 0-25, near the large railway station in the town Taishet, on the Trans-Siberian Railway (Irkutsk oblast). I’ve been here for twelve days. They called me in and took the address of my parents in Lerin. I was also photographed. This was the day before yesterday. Today they supplied me with food for three days. This means that I will be

traveling by train for three days. The days after that I don’t know. What will happen next...? I don’t know. All indications, primarily by the attitude of the camp authorities, suggest that something pleasant is going to happen. I have no doubt that I am on the threshold of a new life... I dreamt again about the huge dragon that I often dream about, moving above my head over the ceiling of my cell. In this dream I often hide in a church. But this time the dragon was far and high in the sky and then turned into a dragon-shaped paper with a long tail. At one point a flock of blackbirds attacked it and split it into pieces... Clearly, this is just a vivid projection of what my subconscious is telling me.

But what brought about this change…?

I don’t know. In my case there was no indication or reason for this. My release could be the result of a variety of reasons. I will soon find out…Patience...!..

Our struggle has been slandered. The Macedonian national liberation movement in Greek occupied Macedonia was deemed... counterrevolutionary. They say it helped our opponent (the reactionaries). NOF organized the Macedonian people in the struggle and sent them to DAG’s ranks. They were dedicated and devoted to the revolution. They were determined fighters. Entire Macedonian villages and entire Macedonian families, regardless of sex, joined… but now they say the Macedonian involvement had a counterrevolutionary role. They say that this helped the reactionaries. They say the Macedonian mass participation in the struggle prompted the Greek people to fight back en masse against the revolution.

In the end the enemy finally managed to involve a large mass of Greek people and got them to fight against the revolution and win – that’s true.

In order to succeed in this, the enemy, among other things, in its propaganda campaigns against the revolution, used the existence of NOF and the participation of the Macedonian people in the organized struggle – and that is also true.

But does this mean that NOF and the Macedonian people’s participation in the struggle are guilty of what they are being accused…?

DEFINITELY NO…!

The Macedonian people’s struggle for freedom and elementary human, civil and national rights against the Greek government was a social phenomenon. The initiation of the Macedonian national liberation movement was a LEGAL ACT as any social phenomenon would be. It was an iron clad historic event with a need to develop a process of life for the Macedonian people. What occurred during the Second World War was a natural consequence of historic change, and not only in Greek occupied Macedonia but also in the entire Balkans in general. It was inevitable and unstoppable, like any occurrence in nature. If a rainstorm damages a field the storm is not to blame… If the Macedonian national liberation movement harmed the field of politics then the blame should be placed on the leadership that initiated this movement - the Party politics and the bad Party leadership policies are to blame...

Exposing the truth about the Macedonian participation in the struggle is an imperative task that every Macedonian patriot must undertake and should begin immediately. It will be my task from the very moment I am released...”

4. Prisoners...

Great honesty and courage are needed for a large country to publicly acknowledge its mistake against a small country. The Soviet communist Party leaders, led by Nikita Khrushchev, had that honesty and courage and publicly declared their wrong-doing. They also condemned Stalin’s destructive policy towards the CPY and Yugoslavia.

By doing this the Soviet leadership publicly acknowledged that I did not work for the “international reactionaries” or for the Yugoslav leaders…

Given the new situation, the USSR Supreme Court “Special Counsel” reviewed our case… The change was not easy but a new verdict was reached. My penalty was reduced to five and a half years… time already served...

Suddenly I found myself “free” in Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan and together with my friends Mitrevski, Poplazarov, Cholakov, Hadzhianevski, Nikolova (Vera), Iurukova, Fotev and Kolenchev. (Maliov and a DAG captain, a Macedonian, I forget his name, were never again together with this group.)

We were “free” but only in the sense that we were released from prison and left on the streets of Alma-Ata. Otherwise, we did not have a choice... We were brought here by coercion and now we had no right to leave the city...

At first we all got together in a small room. The room belonged to a Russian man who Kolentsev and Mitrevski had met on the train on our way here. It was cramped but we all slept on the floor, one beside the other, exactly like sardines in a can. Thanks to our Russian friend we got another room at his sister’s place. With help from Kazakhstan’s Red Crescent, we slowly settled down. We all managed to get jobs. Almost all of us worked as controllers (ticket checkers) in the public transit buses. But there was no fundamental change in our position. We were ex-convicts, and now exiles...

This is how we were treated there...

5. Appeal...

After Tito’s visit to Moscow in June 1956, I proposed to the comrades that we launch an appeal to the USSR Supreme Court. I don’t know WHY and HOW but Mitrevski convinced or intimidated the others and they would not support my idea. I felt like this man was trying hard to work against me and behind my back. I felt like he was preparing some kind of intrigue against me... In June 1952, Poplazarov and I were brought to camp 0-25, in the town Taishet where we remained together for three months. Before that I had not had much contact with Poplazarov and we almost did not know each other. But here we became good friends. One day he asked me if,

when I was in Moscow, they allowed me to read the minutes of our hearings and sign them for confirmation. I told him yes. They gave them to me too and I read them, he said. And from what I read I saw that you did not try to implicate me with anything. Yes, I said to him, I have been careful not to say anything which would make the situation difficult for anyone in the group... He then said to me that all the time that he was with Mitrevski in the ship and in the prison cell he tried to persuade everyone that we should be afraid of you. He said that, in order to ease your own situation, you were prepared to collude with Mitrevski against the rest of us, and that you were going to “invent” things against each. He claimed that you were prepared to do this and you would do it – but not him. He then asked us to make up things, fictional things, about you...

He only convinced Vera Nikolova and she then tried to make up things that would make me look like a Yugoslav spy who worked against the CPG and against DAG. That is why I was brought to face her, “to look her in the eye”, as the Russians used to say. Mitrevski, of course, did the same. He invented the idea that;

a) I was an OZNA agent, and

b) I was secretary of the political committee (I was neither one nor the other).

I was accused of recruiting agents and sending them to the field to undermine the CPG and DAG. As a result, Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Petrovich Firsov, my interrogator, twice led me to confront Mitrevski…

Both Poplazarov and I concluded that Mitrevski did this himself, that is, he tried to provoke false accusations against me and against the others in order to make my situation the most difficult, hoping that the Russians would find it more difficult to decide which two to execute. And if they decided to execute only one of us, he was hoping it would be me…! But why do this now? What was he afraid of (if he was at all afraid) and how would it have helped our situation by giving up on the appeal? This was unclear to me.

I decided to appeal on my own anyway and submitted the request on my behalf. If Tito was a “tavarish” (friend) of Khrushchev, and we have been sentenced for being Tito’s supporters, I wrote, then the very grounds for the indictment and the verdict should clearly be dismissed. So I appeal to you to review our cases...

6. Collision...

A few months later, in May 1957, we were invited to go to the Kazakh Ministry of Internal Affairs. Here they familiarized us with the new “Military Collegium’s” verdict at the USSR Supreme Court for which we had to sign to conform. (Apparently, it was now called the former Special Council). The earlier rulings were ANNULLED. The very ACT against us, due to “ostustvia sostava prestuplenia” (in the absence of evidence?) was LIQUIDATED. We were legally rehabilitated... Soon afterwards, we were granted newly built apartments in Alma-Ata Region of KIZ (Kazakh Agricultural Institute), in the 272nd quarter...

Then came my “public clash” with Mitrevski. To the question: “What do we do next…?” Mitrevski’s idea was to immediately apply for visas and leave for Skopje. My idea was to remain here among our people. I was convinced that our place was among the thousands of our fighters and people who had immigrated here in this country. We needed to be there and not to allow Kotsopoulos, Gusiopoulos and the other “Opouloses” to act and to disorient our people… which unfortunately did happen. Thousands of Macedonians were later sent to Bulgaria instead of the People’s Republic of Macedonia… For more information on this see v/k “Nova Makedonija”, May 27, 1961.

In a friendly way, Poplazarov tried to convince me differently. He said:

“If you fall back into the hands of the Greek leaders again, this time they will send a truck to run you over and they will say it was an accident…!”

I said: “I am not excluding that possibility... But now that it is well-known that thousands of our young men and women voluntarily

went to the front and were killed, we should not go back to them…? Because it is too dangerous?! This looks like desertion to me...”

Poplazarov looked insulted. I offended him without wanting to...

One day while we were in the courtyard of the Alma-Ata Bus Authority, Mitrevski said to me:

“I know why you want to stay. It’s not because you say you don’t want the various “Opouloses” to disorient our people but because you want to return with a hero’s aura in my absence. Kotsopoulos and Gusiopoulos mean nothing to you because you alone want to be and remain the new leader of the Aegean Macedonians. That’s why you want to stay…!”

I knew Mitrevski well. Everything and everyone he looked at, he saw through a prism of personal interest to groom his own career. I got to know him well from how he reacted to people, how he treated people and from his attitude towards things and events. Even though I knew him well, I was still surprised by his attitude towards me. But, despite what he said, without hesitation and with a serious tone of voice I said to him:

“Don’t leave, stay here, I will help you, and generally I will stay out of your way, I will stay in the background and not in front of the people in gatherings.”

He just smiled without saying a word. In the evening he gathered all the others and brought them to the room where I was staying together with Hadziianevski and Cholakov (we had not yet moved into our new apartments), and in a serious and official tone of voice he accused me of… betraying the Macedonian people and of betraying them… He said without unity in the group we would be leaving our skeletons here… By that he meant that “without all of us agreeing, it would be difficult to get visas for Yugoslavia”. He then walked out with his mouth foaming…

This reminded me of another time, in 1945, when Mitrevski and I were at Hristo Andonovski’s place in Bitola. A beautiful young woman walked in and complained about a young man named Rade

having slept with her and then not wanting to marry her. The young woman was an AFZH regional activist. Rade, according to her, was also there, they both had arrived from the field. We sent her to get Rade and bring him here to see Mitrevski...

Outside of a few swear words that came out of Mitrevski’s mouth, we all kept quiet in the presence of this young woman. When she left, Mitrevski turned to me and said “watch what I will do to that ruffian…!”

Rade arrived but without the young woman so Mitrevski started to belittle him, quietly and calmly at first then loudly and angrily. As he got angrier Mitrevski’s face began to turn red, his eyes became fiery and he began to foam at the mouth…

After being yelled at Rade agreed to marry the young woman and left. Mitrevski then began to laugh... I congratulated him on his acting ability and on his powers of persuasion…

But because I knew him well his “acting” had no effect on me, especially here in Alma-Ata. But that was not the case with the others. However, I did tell him that I did not believe that this was how he truly felt and that what he said he believed to be true. I told him that at this point both you and I know that you are acting dishonorably and this is not the first time. I left it at that. Time will surely tell who the betrayer was!

It all ended with that… A staged attack against me... I stood my ground and wondered if he was going to accost me. But, of course, the others intervened. After that he went with the others, while Kadzhiianevski, Cholakov and I unhappily prepared for sleep...

7. Pointless insistence…

Soon afterwards, two Macedonian representatives from the Party organization arrived here from Tashkent. One was Ralis Timios, now a resident of Skopje, and the other I did not know. The CPG Central Committee had convened its VI Extended Plenum in March 1956 and the two men were sent here to familiarize us with the various issues discussed. Zahariadis and the policies of his “Greek

Axis” were condemned for allowing the English to be present in Greece during the Greek Civil War of 1945-1949. It was discovered that it was the English presence in Greece that weakened the Greek people’s resistance and undermined DAG’s victory. Ralis and the other man, apparently under pressure from underneath, were sent to familiarize us with the VI Plenum and to inform us that a decision was made to remove Zahariadis from his position as CPG Secretary General. It was through these two men that I asked the Party leadership in Tashkent to help me return to our political immigrants...

Unfortunately my requests were landing on deaf ears. A little later, at a gathering of Macedonian political immigrants in Bulgaria, Kotsopoulos asked: “Why was Rakovski, who expressed a desire to return, still isolated in Alma-Ata?” The answer given was: “Rakovski has isolated himself in Alma-Ata because he did not like the (supposed) apartment he was offered in Tashkent...”

And so the Party’s top leadership, the real oppressors of the Macedonian nation, continued to lead the Macedonian fighters and lie to them not only about the wrong these Greeks committed against them and against the Macedonian people, but also about our (the NOF leadership’s) destiny...

Mitrevski and Kolintsev were the first to receive their visas and left for Yugoslavia. That was soon after I had my “collision” with Mitrevski. Then, one after another, at different time intervals, they all left. This is what I wrote in my notebook:

“I wrote letters to the CPG Central Committee through the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Central Committee, for which I received no answer. Then I made a request to the CPG Central Committee, through the Communist Party of Uzbekistan Central Committee, to allow me to return and live together with our political immigrants in Tashkent or anywhere else where there were Macedonian political immigrants. I begged them to let me do this because I felt that I could benefit both the Party and our people. However, it seems that even after Zahariadis was removed, his cronies and well-known “friends” of ours still remained in charge of the CPG and preferred me to be as far away as possible. That, of

course, was not because they were afraid of me - one man. No... They were afraid of the truth... They were afraid of the truth which I carried and expressed… I sent them an article I had recently written entitled ‘Critical review of the CPG’s policies towards us Macedonians...’ they remained silent on that... But all their interventions and silence were in vain... No one ever succeeded in killing the truth through interventions and silence. Sooner or later the truth always comes out and wins…!”

In August 1956, my wife and daughter arrived in the USSR from Poland. I left my little girl when she was three months old and met her again, for the first time, when she was seven years old. I contacted the officer of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and spoke to a captain who was familiar with my case and who knew that my family had arrived. She agreed with me that it was unfair for my wife and child to share my fate as a prisoner. But she did not have the authority to personally grant me permission to go to Tashkent. Since I received no reply to the letters I sent from here, I needed to personally go to the CPG Central Committee in Tashkent and they would then clear my way to go to our people there...

She referred me to a supervisor, a Major in the MVD army. He received me and acted humanely. He granted me a leave of absence for five days, plus two days on the road, for a total of seven days.

Because the railways were very crowded, the trip was long, the summer heat was unbearable and because of my fragile health, my wife and I decided to sell a winter coat she brought for me from Poland and purchase a round trip airline ticket to Tashkent. I did not have any other expenses. I stayed with Stoian Kochov in Tashkent, now a resident of Skopje... I was kindly received by P. Dimitriou from the Greek leadership who listened to my request carefully and confirmed that my letters from Alma-Ata as well as my article were received by the CPG Central Committee. I was told that due to the backlog at the immigration centre, my request for joining our immigrants had not yet been considered but he said he would help me with my request to move to Tashkent with my family. He said he would send me some financial assistance as soon as he acquired an apartment for me.

I returned to Alma-Ata and immediately went to see the Major. But there was no trace of him. They had moved him. While these people (Greeks from the CPG) smiled at me in Tashkent, here they sharply protested to the Soviet authorities as to why I was allowed to travel...

I fought hard for two long years in an attempt to obtain permission to be with our Macedonian political immigrants before I came to the hard realization that these doors were tightly locked for me. Staying in Alma-Ata any longer was pointless. I submitted a written request to the Yugoslav Embassy in Moscow to issue me a Yugoslav passport and visa to return to Skopje. I received the documents fairly quickly. However, it was incomprehensible to me why the Soviet authorities refused to grant me their visa so that I could leave. After many promises and a lot of stalling they simply refused to give me my visa...

I could not explain why. Why were Macedonians from Tashkent, and my comrades here, being issued Soviet visas and I was not…?

I came to the conclusion that the Greek leaders had something to do with it. For a long time they did not want me to join our political immigrants and now they didn’t want me to join my people in the People’s Republic of Macedonia. Could it be for the same reason; to prevent me from uncovering the truth about their unprincipled anti-Macedonian position; to stop me from uncovering their genocidal plans against the Macedonian people? Perhaps I am exaggerating and overestimating the value of the article I wrote... But it is a fact that, until that time, no one had written such a convincing and argumentative article that exposed the anti-Macedonian essence of their politics, as I did. In that regard and not without any foundation, I don’t believe that the Greek leaders, one way or another, cared much about my analysis of their policies and whether it was going to become public and found out by the people or by the CPG membership...

After receiving my Yugoslav passport and visa, I lost one year and eight months in a persistent struggle, in the form of written and oral protests and requests to various Soviet organs of power and institutions, including to the editorial office of the Moscow “Pravda”

and through it to Krushchev himself, to the USSR General Prosecutor, and so on. I lost one year and eight months trying to leave the USSR and return to the People’s Republic of Macedonia.

Finally I achieved my goal with one letter which deserves attention. Here is what I wrote: