10.0 AFTER THE WAR ENDED - Part 02

Mr. Kofos how do you expect people to understand you when there is no logic and no consistency in what you say and do? At one moment in time you want the name “Macedonia” to disappear from the face of the earth! This means that you not only “don’t care” about the name but you “hate” the name with a passion and you want it gone! Now, a few decades later, you are passionately against the Macedonian people from the Republic of Macedonia using it? Even though they live on Macedonian soil, they are not entitled to their own historical and cultural heritage? And your reasoning for that is that it belongs to your Greek Heritage? Yesterday you did not want it and wanted it dead, today you want it so badly that the Macedonian people can’t have it! What kind of behaviour is this Mr. Kofos?

Mr. Kofos you also indicated that the land where the Republic of Macedonia if located today did not belong to ancient Macedonia and you DO NOT consider it to be part of ancient Macedonia. Yet, today there are countless (last count was 150) archeological sites with all kinds of artifacts from the ancient period found precisely in that part of Macedonia! How do you explain that Mr. Kofos? And then you call yourself a historian who specializes in Macedonian history. Sir, in spite of your illogical and irrational approach to all things Macedonian, I am confident that God will be able to understand you. And yes, it is true indeed, that Greeks like yourself, the descendents of the ancient Greeks, are the very people who gave us our civilization and everything associated with it today...!!??

Further on Mr. Kofos, you said: What Macedonians call “Macedonian identity” the Greeks call “territorial claims”. In other words, according to you, the Macedonians want to call themselves Macedonians because they want to make territorial claims on the Macedonian territories that you once called “Newly occupied territories”, “the Administrative Region of Royal Greece” and “Northern Greece”, which we simply call “Aegean Macedonian” which in fact we should be calling “Greek occupied Macedonia”; a name which fits exactly and explains our Macedonian situation in Greece! Mr. Kofos, I am a Macedonian from Greece who was exiled only because I am Macedonian so please tell me why am I being accused of attempting to “lay claims” to my own home”? Your kind on the other hand, Mr. Kofos, are Turkish Christian colonists and settlers deposited on my homeland by the Greeks and in my absence, you have been given my home, my property and my land. And now you dare accuse me of attempting to lay “territorial claims” on your lands? Those are not your lands! Your lands are somewhere in Turkey! This is indeed strange that a Turk from Asia Minor is now a “Macedonian” and a real Macedonian like myself, is “nothing”! Take a real good look at yourself Mr. Kofos, because this is you and your kind! Evangelos Kofos, you claim to be a historian, political analyst and the architect of Greek policy regarding the “Macedonian question” from the Greek side; but really what are you? Please take a good look at yourself!

Interesting is Kofos’s “evolution”, he has admitted that he studied at “Georgetown” University in the United States. In the beginning, either for a seminar or for an acceptance essay, he chose to tackle the “Macedonian Question” as a subject. His professors, however, decisively advised him to take another subject from the list. He was told that this particular subject was too complex and they did not recommend it. They advised him to change it and take something else. They told him that the only people who were advised to tackle this subject were the ones they intended to fail. But he did take it and survived. And at the end he said: I took the subject (the “Macedonian Question”) and I have dealt with it my entire lifetime! Fifty years!

Unfortunately Mr. Kofos, you have forgotten a lot of things, especially the undeniable reality, the reality that most elitist Greeks do not care for the name “Macedonia” and for many years have attempted to bury it deep into the ground! But you Mr. Kofos, defied all logic when you said “the name is everything, the name is propaganda for everything! The name is a symbol!”

Mr. Kofos, allow me to take a few steps back and bring you up to date on the reality of the situation. Do you remember when the United Nations Organization was created? Did you know that Federal Yugoslavia was one of its founding members? Did you know that the creation of the UN Charter had to be internally ratified by its founding members? Did you know that the People’s Republic of Macedonia, as one of Yugoslavia’s republics, had to sign the ratification papers? Had Macedonia not signed those papers there would have been no UN Charter today. These ratification papers do exist, by the way, and can be found in Belgrade!

You and your Greek elite should have known this Mr. Kofos. You should have known that the first freed piece of Macedonian land, then known as “Macedonia”, was a founder of the United Nations, an ally and victor in the anti-fascist war. You should have also known that Greece had no problem with the name then! That name was supported by ASNOM, DFA and SRM. This is a historical fact! It is also a fact that Greece opened a Greek Consulate General in Skopje whose letters, patent, diplomatic and consular documentation stated quite clearly: “Consulate of Greece in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia: SRM!”

So, my question is: what prevented historian Evangelos Kofos from factually presenting the reality of the Macedonian situation the way it was listed in world archives, particularly in those of Great Britain?

Here is a reminder of the “facts” as seen by other people Mr. Kofos:

* “Memorandum – The Macedonian Question. Regarding the situation in Greek Macedonia; facts about the terror in Greek Macedonia. American press reports about the Greek terror in Greek Macedonia. The situation in Greek Macedonia from December 16, 1946. F0 371/58615 HP00201 R16924/298/67.

* “Greek memorandum regarding the Slav threat against Greek Macedonia, from October 20, 1946. F0 371/58615 HP00201 R156551/298/67.

* Loring M. Danforth’s book “The Macedonian Conflict”. Loring Danforth is an anthropologist and professor working in the United States who has analyzed the “Macedonian conflict” in this voluminous and comprehensive work, and has placed special pencil marks on the history of the conflict. He has also provided relevant evidence and clarification regarding the dark spots in the Macedonian national crisis. In his book he has exposed a number of topics, especially those relevant to events that took place in Greek (occupied) Macedonia after the war ended.

There are many other historical documents available that go as far back as the invasion, occupation, partition and annexation of Macedonia by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. There are also war diaries and biographies published in the Greek historiography by senior DAG officials who speak about the Macedonian identity.

Mr. Kofos, you did say that there were “all kinds” of Macedonia(s) over the years and you did say you worked diligently on the “Macedonian Question” for 50 years! So, please allow me to ask you this; How could you have missed all this “other” readily available information on the “Macedonian Question”. Or, did you spent 50 years “spinning” a Macedonian history to fit the current ideological Greek politic? Mr. Kofos, I believe you used the “name” instead of the “identity” as an issue to define the essence of Greek policy towards the Republic of Macedonia because it was too dangerous for you to go directly to the “identity” because if you did, you would have exposed your own “counterfeit” Greek identity! Yes, you heard me right! It is the modern Greek identity that has been fabricated to fit the past and not the Macedonian one. The real issue with Greece is the Macedonian identity. If Greece admits there is a Macedonian identity it will then have to admit that there is an Albanian, Vlach, Turkish, Roma, etc., identity. After all that is said and done, then who exactly are the Greeks? So, this leads me to believe that “the essence of the Greek - Macedonian dispute is the Macedonian identity”. Your identity Mr. Kofos is at issue here, not mine! I know exactly who I am; do you know who you are? I am a Macedonian, like many other Macedonians, from Greek occupied Macedonia! And what I just said is precisely what you want to hide! You would rather “kill” the Macedonian identity outright than admit that it exists. You know it deep in your heart that once you admit a Macedonian identity exists in the Republic of Macedonia, the rest, as they say, is history and Greece will fold like a house of cards!

Mr. Kofos allow me to ask you another question. If a person’s identity is inherited, particularly in a population static region like Macedonia, from the parents then please explain to me how the identity of indigenous people living in Macedonia cannot be Macedonian and yet the identity of people, settlers and colonists brought to Macedonia from Turkey, Russia and Armenia can be Macedonian? How can the indigenous Macedonian people who lived in Macedonia for centuries NOT be the inheritors of the Macedonian heritage and the colonists and settlers deposited there after the 1920’s can?! This clearly defies logic, common sense and all systems practiced on this planet!

Mr. Kofos, in view of what you Greeks preach about us Macedonians and how we are “nothing” in our own indigenous lands in spite of us having lived there for centuries, allow me to tell you “how you practice”! Also, allow me to dispense with the formalities and cut to the chase! It is a fact that you, today’s Greeks, were yesterday’s Vlachs (Vlahi), Macedonians (endopii), Albanians (Arvanites), Turks (Ponti), Roma (Giftes), etc. Yet today you present yourselves not only as modern Greeks but as descendants of the ancient Greeks, of the Spartans, Thracians, Byzantines, Epiriotes, Macedonians and everything else that existed in ancient times, 2,500 years ago! And lo and behold, miraculously you have survived time and still exist! And at the same time you insist that we, the modern Macedonians, have no Macedonian identity?!? Well, this is where you are wrong Mr. Kofos! According to statistics and according to folk knowledge, after all I am from there and I can personally attest to this, the people living in Greek occupied Macedonia were predominantly Macedonians with some Turks, Armenians, Albanians, Vlachs and others living amongst the Macedonians. This shows that Greek claims, that all people living inside the Greek borders today are Greeks, are not based on “ethnicity” but on some other factor. Based on demographic statistics published in the late 1920’s claiming that there were 98% pure Greeks and 2% Muslim Greeks living in Greece, Greek statisticians must have used “religion”, NOT ethnicity, as a basis for their demographics. That too makes no sense but I will leave it at that!

What is truly horrible about all this Mr. Kofos is how Macedonians, almost over night, became Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians after the Balkan Wars of 1912, 1913 when Macedonia was invaded, occupied and partitioned by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Macedonian families in border areas had to contend with some of their members being called Greeks, other members being called Serbians and yet others being called Bulgarian, just to fit your political agenda; the kind of which you have been personally involved, Mr. Kofos, for the last 50 years! Oh, your “Patrida” must be so proud of you! I wonder what your ancestors would have said had they known what you have done! You know those ancestors whom you betrayed when you became a Greek!

According to Kofos: “Individually, every person has the right to self identify. The authorities cannot decide a person’s identity. They are under pressure. Personally I think everyone has the right to an identity. I expect accounts will be led about my identity. This is how we will solve the problem with the name. I am Macedonian and we call ourselves ‘Makedones’. We seek a solution on how to understand each other. That is why we call you Slavo-Macedonians. For people to know who we are when we go out in the world!?” So, Mr. Kofos, this is what you have been busy labouring over in the last 50 years?

At the end of the discussion a female Macedonian student asked Mr. Kofos: “Mr. Kofos, how do you identify yourself when you go abroad – as a Greek or as a Macedonian?” He said, “I identify myself as a Greek but I feel like a Macedonian!”

… Very clever Mr. Kofos. Your response was indeed πονηρι (crafty).

In a strange kind of way, Kofos continued to vigorously use history and politics, in a way that can be described as “the perpetrator prosecuting the victim”, to reprimand the Republic of Macedonia. He emphasized the drawing of a red line, now a fashionable term, and in his high intellectual and analytical manner, insisted that the red line be observed in the eventual solution of the name… (he was thinking of the name “Republic of Macedonia” but did not have the courage to say it). He insisted that first; none of the parties must have exclusivity on the term Macedonia. Second, the final result must be negotiated and not by a temporary solution. And third, the decision to include the term Macedonia must be accompanied by a clear identification of the region where the state is located. At the end he said these were the possible prospects for the resolution of the name dispute. And that he was not naïve to believe that these proposals would be adopted by politicians and that the public would support them soon. He added that he had drafted these proposals and made them available several years ago and that they have been criticized by both sides in the dispute. This is what Kofos said and analytically explained to us.

Mr. Kofos, can we today say that our two countries, Greece and Macedonia, have no other problems, outside of the name issue, which has poisoned our relations since Macedonia’s independence? Regarding the name you said that you Greeks have taken a big step. Yet to this day you have failed to go into details and explain the geographical and historical reasons which entitle you to have this name and to dictate terms to us. Are we to assume that even the water we drink, the air we breathe and the fruits we eat in Macedonia are Greek!?!

Up to now we have heard from many Greek politicians, who repeat Kofos’s theses, who usually say:

“… With only this (for the Republic of Macedonia to change its name) we (Greeks) will open a window into the European future for you (Macedonians) which you so badly need. We (Greeks) have demonstrated and confirmed our honesty and willingness to help you (Macedonians) regarding this. We (Greeks) have created a radical step with the signing of the Interim Accord... You remember how the Greek people did not want to hear about the name... But we (Greeks) swear to you and we guarantee you (Macedonians) that the name “Macedonia” is overburdened with Greek history and no one among our Greek voters and among our colleagues can allow another nation to have that name, whose people came here during the 6th and 7th century AD. It is impossible and unacceptable!”

Mr. Kofos, your recommendations carry no details and do not tell the truth. I just want to let you know that the Macedonians know their own history and do not need you to tell them who they are and where they come from. We have our own historians and analysts in our country and there are historians around the world who say that: “The name ‘Macedonia’ was never Greek, not in ancient time and not in modern times. The ancient Macedonians were never Greek as attested by the ancient Greeks themselves. The sixteen ray sun was never Greek as attested by Greek scholars from classical times such as Efros, Dionisios Kalifondas, Dionisios Perigitis, Atineos and others, who argued that ‘the western borders of ancient Greece reached the Amvrakikos Bay in the northwest and the Pinios River to the east, while north of this line lived the Macedonian ethos’.”

By reading history (and you are a historian) we are convinced that no sharply defined boundaries existed in those days, so how is it then possible today to make sharp distinctions between ancient and modern Macedonians?

If the ancient Macedonians did not disappear, and there are no indications that they all have, then it should be clear to everyone that they continued to live on in Macedonia and became the progenitors of the modern Macedonians. But that does not mean we can put an equal sign between the ancient and modern Macedonians. No one can deny links between ancient and modern nations but not with equal signs between them.

The most important thing here is to stick to the facts: One of the most familiar scholars of Balkan history was the eminent historian Dr. Stoian Kiselinovski, who, along with Dr. Irena Stavova - Kavka, said the following: “After the 1821 to 1829 Greek Uprising, the Greek state was formed which constituted 47,516 square kilometres and a population of 753,400 inhabitants. In 1881, by the Istanbul Agreement, Greece received Thessaly and part of Epirus. But the largest territorial expansion Greece experienced was after the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and after the First World War (1914-1918). After the Second Balkan War, the Greek state received Crete, the islands Samothrace, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Ikaria and the non-Greek territory of Macedonia.

After the First World War (1919), Greece continued to annex non-Greek territories which included Western and Eastern Thrace. Thus, Greece’s territory grew from 63,211 km2 to 150,833 km2 and the population grew from 2,631,952 to 5,531,474 people.” See the London Protocol of 1830 and the book “Minorities in the Balkans” (XX century) – 2004.

And as such, according to Mr. Kofos, “the Second Macedonia” was born and named the “Administrative Region of Royal Greece”. (The First Macedonia being “ancient Macedonia”)

But what Mr. Kofos does not say is what happened to the Macedonian people after that so-called “Second Macedonia” was born?

Fortunately history has a lot to say about that, especially about Greek anti-Macedonian policies implemented even before the Balkan Wars started and are still ongoing to this day, policies such as acts of non-recognition, discrimination, assimilation, imprisonments, exiling, torture and death of Macedonians; not to mention the changing of all names both personal and place names, banning of the Macedonian language, destruction of cemeteries, relics, artifacts, bibles, icons and anything that was of Macedonian origin…

It is very surprising Mr. Kofos that, as a historian, you had nothing to say about all this even though exactly this kind of information exists in all kinds of Greek sources, including in the Greek state archives…

What about Greece’s obligations to the Macedonian people? When the Macedonian territories were handed over to Greece, they came with an obligation regarding the people who lived on those lands:

1) What kind of international obligations were imposed on Greece concerning minorities after World War II?

Just to give you an example. There exists an official document which discloses that on November 1930, at a conference in Athens, Eleftheros Venizelos said: “The issue of the Macedonian minority in Greece will be resolved and I will be the first in Greece to engage in opening Macedonian schools, if the people want them…”

But then what happened? In 1936, when Metaxas’s fascist dictatorship was established it banned the Macedonian language by law and signs were posted in every township warning people to speak Greek only – “Omilite tin Elinikin!” Instead of teaching the Macedonian children Macedonian, like Venizelos promised, children and adults were forced to speak Greek only. In fact evening schools were opened everywhere for parents and grandparents to learn Greek! This is, unfortunately, how you Greeks operate…

2) So, instead of fulfilling your international obligations towards the people you inherited with the lands that were awarded to you, a gift from the great powers, you decided to commit cultural genocide against them by forced assimilation…

3) That forced assimilation, which was stepped up in 1939, was continued after the Second World War.

Surely Mr. Kofos, you must have known that at the start of the Second World War, in October 1940, at the time when the Italians declared war on Greece, the Macedonian people in Greece were found in the grips of the Metaxas dictatorship. You must have known that the Macedonians were mobilized and sent to the front lines. It is no secret that the Macedonian people fought bravely for six months in the Albanian mountains against fascist Italy and were commended by Greek generals for being the best soldiers they had. Also, let us not forget the thousands of Macedonian men who died and left their skeletons on those mountains and the agony their families felt at their loss, as the Second World War continued.

And what did Greece do for the families of those Macedonians who died to protect Greece? It re-initiated the 1939 systemic fascist assimilatory policies and continued to work against the Macedonian people.

Taking a step back, now let us have a look at how Greece referred to its share of the annexed Macedonian territory in official documents after Macedonia was divided. These are the names and references used: “Acquired Territories”, “Occupied Territories”, “Greek Macedonia”, “Northern Greece”, etc. And in communication with Serbia and Bulgaria it used communiqués as follows:

Association Agreement between the Kingdom of Greece and the Kingdom of Serbia signed on May 19, 1913.

Article 2. The territory of European Turkey, after the present war is over, will be divided and given to the Balkan countries under a Peace Agreement reached with the Ottoman state...

Article 3. The two High Contracting Parties ... This boundary is based... starting from the highest point of the crown Kamna, upper Shkumba, will bypass Lake Ohrid, the western coast of Lake Prespa from the village Konsko, Dolno Dupeni, to Rahmanli, pass between the flow of the Tsrna Reka and Meglena and will come out at the Vardar River… etc. Greece also had a similar agreement with Bulgaria.

Article 7. His Majesty the King of Greece pledged that his government will provide all necessary facilities and will guarantee, for a period of 50 years, full freedom for Serbian export and import trade through the port of Solun, via the Solun railway line towards Skopje and Bitola... etc., up to Article 8, 9, 10 and 11. Signatories: Zhan Alexandropoulos and Mate Boskovich (See S. Skoko, “Drugi Balkaniski Rat”, p. 405-408.)

Now the question is: If Macedonia was always Greek, why did his Majesty the King of Greece, so generously allow Macedonian territories to be given to Serbia and Bulgaria?

Mr. Kofos, if Macedonia was always Greek and Greeks always lived in it, then tell us why did the Greeks call this region of Macedonia “The Administrative Region of Royal Greece” and why did the Greek army commit such unimaginable atrocities against a supposedly Greek civilian population?

We will follow the atrocities committed with facts and arguments:

The most authentic evidence of the crimes committed against the civilian population in Macedonia was provided by the Carnegie Commission, tasked to investigate war crimes committed in Macedonia during the 1912, 1913 Balkan Wars. Among the most authentic testimonies are also the testimonial letters Greek soldiers sent to their relatives during the Second Balkan War, which were seized by the Carnegie Commission (see Darko Ianevski’s commentary in “Nova Makedonija”, published October 4, 2010).

Ianevski in his commentary wrote: “When the most important thing for Athens and for Brussels is that Greece occupies the largest part of Macedonia, which they say belongs to the Greeks, and a much smaller part belongs to the Macedonians, and that this is a key argument that Greek Ministers, such as Drukas, bring before the UN, then there is only one thing that remains to be asked: ‘How did Greece acquire this territory and how did the Greeks suddenly become owners of that large part of Macedonia…” Let us examine what they said when they acquired it. They said: “We occupied Macedonia.”

A Greek sergeant, whose signature is illegible, on July 12, 1913, wrote the following to Dr. Panagi Leventi:

“We burned two villages, Dulti and Banitsa, birthplaces of fearless insurgents; we burned everything and killed everyone, sparing only the women, children, elders and the churches. We did this out of hatred and without pity, with cruel hearts and crueler condemnation.”

On July 11, 1913, Sergeant Kletanis wrote a letter to his brother Yoani boasting:

“Dear brother Yoani. The arch-insurgents lived here. We massacred them all. And the places we passed through will forever remain in my memory.”

As one can see, the Greek soldier in this letter was not talking about enemy soldiers but local people who lived there, in places through which the Greek army passed. This means that the Greek army committed crimes against civilians without care or conscience…

On July 15, 1913, Panagis Beglikis confessed to his brother Sotiris about things that took place and said that these kinds of things have not happened since the days of Jesus Christ. “It is impossible to describe what is happening,” said Panagis.

On July 12, 1913, Sergeant Georgios wrote that wherever they went they were avoided even by the cats. What kind of “liberation” was this when even cats run away from the liberators? And how could this Macedonia have always been Greek?

Nikos Theofilatos is also quite particular about how Greece became a great part of Macedonia:

“I was given 16 prisoners to take to the division, but I arrived with just two. The others I killed in the darkness, I massacred them!”

On July 11, 1912, Sergeant Georgios Korkotsis wrote the following sentence which Drtsas certainly did not like: “We occupied the whole of Macedonia except for Thrace.”

According to the Carnegie Commission’s investigation, following the occupation, “the number of houses burned by the Greeks in the Second Balkan War could not have been less than 16,000”. According to the standards then, some statisticians applied for the houses of Macedonian families, having an average of at least six people per home, it is estimated that the homes of about 100,000 people were burned.

“The Greek troops liberated the first Macedonian city, as they have other cities before it, that were formerly Turkish but have always been Greek, and the population which until yesterday was under Turkish slavery, can now freely breathe the air of freedom,” wrote the Greek newspaper “Embros” in October 1912, following the Turkish surrender of Solun to the Greek army. If this was indeed “liberation” from the Turks then why did 100,000 indigenous Macedonian people have to leave their homes? Why did the Greek army have need to burn so many homes and leave 100,000 people homeless?

People were like sheep

And truly, the houses were less of a problem. The crimes committed against the people living in Macedonia, “which was always Greek”, were something altogether different. For example, there was a young lady detained in Seres and later killed along with six others. “They took out their eyes while they were still alive,” wrote Kosta, а Greek soldier. The Carnegie Commission had made mention that the prisoners who survived the Seres massacre had deep wounds, the kind a butcher would inflict when attempting to slaughter a sheep.

Anastasia Pavlovna, a widow from Gevgelia, testified about the crimes committed against her.

And thus the tragic crimes against the people committed by the Greeks were piling up in the so-called 51% of Macedonia which was “always Greek” now under Greek occupation since 1913.

Mr. Kofos, you should be familiar with the following: If we look at the censuses of the ethnic composition living in the northern part of modern Greece from the beginning of the 20th century, i.e. from 1903, 1904 and 1905, and other times when censuses were taken by the Ottoman Empire, you will see that Macedonians were registered as having lived there. And yes such censuses do exist! So, what happened to those people? And if they were always Greek why did the Greek authorities have a need to exchange populations and expel Macedonians from their indigenous lands? In other words, the problem with the name is actually an identity issue which you personally have taken upon yourself to be the architect of its defacement.

Atrocities were committed during the war and atrocities continued to be committed during peace times. So it is better that we identify the historical stages during which the Macedonian people were systemically attacked by the Greeks in Greek occupied Macedonia. If we go back in time before the Balkan Wars and before Macedonia was occupied by Greece, we will arrive at the time of the “Andartes”, led by Pavlos Melas and Germanos Kravangelis. These were times when the Macedonian people were fighting against the Ottoman Empire to free themselves and to create an independent Macedonian state. In those times the vast majority of the people in Macedonia were Macedonians and they called themselves Macedonian. But after Macedonia was invaded, occupied and partitioned, its ethnic composition changed literally overnight. People in Greek occupied Macedonia were told that “this is Greece now and only Greeks live in Greece and those of you who do not agree have 24 hours to pack up what you can carry on your backs and get out!” Then, a little while later, everything that was Macedonian was erased and replaced with Greek, including the names of people and the place names. After that the Macedonian language was banned and made illegal. And this, Mr. Kofos, is how Macedonia became Greek! Now, to make sure Macedonia stayed Greek, discriminatory laws were enacted to discriminate against the Macedonians and frustrate them in order to leave Greece permanently. Then, after the Second World War, agents sympathetic to Greece initiated the Greek Civil War (1945-1949) and gave Greece the chance it needed to literally “empty” Greek occupied Macedonia of its Macedonians. This is how I view the situation from my side Mr. Kofos and this is exactly how Macedonia became Greek!

After World War I was over and things settled in Greek occupied Macedonia, the Greek government initiated a program to change every Macedonian personal and family name and make them Greek sounding. Simultaneous with the name changes, Greek authorities also carried out a campaign to change the name of every village, town, city, river, lake, mountain, road, street and every other Macedonian place name from Macedonian to Greek. News of these changes and the laws to enact them, Mr. Kofos, appeared in the Greek newspaper “Tis Efimeris Kiverniseos” no. 332 on November 21, 1926, you can check for yourself.

No one in the civilized world, Mr. Kofos, forcibly imposed names on people; not personal, not family and certainly no country names! No one in the civilized world has the right, Mr. Kofos, to ban a nation’s indigenous language and then fine the people and make them drink castor oil for speaking it; especially those who spoke no other language. The Greek authorities forced Macedonians, Mr. Kofos, to drink large doses of castor oil and held them captive until they soiled themselves in order to humiliate them; and for what? For speaking a language they learned from their mothers? Is this how civilized people behave Mr. Kofos?

The Great Powers, Mr. Kofos, put the Macedonian people under Greece’s care when they awarded Greece 51% of Macedonia. As the custodian of Macedonian lands, Greece was also charged with looking after the Macedonian people! But instead of looking after them Greece used every opportunity to abuse them. Greek authorities, Mr. Kofos, gave innocent Macedonian children castor oil to drink because they caught them speaking the language of their mothers! How civilized is that?

Is this why, Mr. Kofos, Europe awarded Greece Macedonian lands, so the Greeks could exterminate the Macedonian people; so that Greece could cleanse Macedonia of its indigenous population? So that it could erase the entire Macedonian civilization which existed for centuries? Or was Europe part of this cultural genocide when it failed to provide even the most basic protection of human rights for the population it had no right to hand over to Greece? What gave Europe the right in 1913 to snatch Macedonia from the Macedonian people, break it up and hand it over to Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria? Did Europe not know that only a short decade earlier, in 1903, the Macedonian people had made an attempt to free themselves from the Ottoman Empire and create their own independent Macedonian state? Yes, Mr. Kofos, there were Macedonians living in Macedonia when it was occupied by the Ottoman Empire and that is precisely why Greece implemented all those programs to cleanse the Macedonian lands of the Macedonians when it was given custodial rights in 1913! But that is not all that Greece did!

Soon after it initiated the programs to change all the names in Macedonia, Greece implemented more policies to ethnically cleanse the Macedonian territory it occupied of its Macedonians. In 1923, by the Treaty of Lausanne between Greece and Turkey, Greece expelled all the Macedonian Muslims and replaced them with 640,000 Christian Turkish colonists and settlers. Then in 1927, by the Mollov – Kafandaris Agreement, Greece expelled more Macedonians to Bulgaria, including many of those who participated in the 1903 Ilinden Macedonian Uprising against the Ottomans.

The Christian Turks that Greece settled in Macedonia, Mr. Kofos, call themselves “Ponti” but we call them “Prosfigi”. They call us “endopii” which in Greek means “natives”, “indigenous”. Ironically however, Mr. Kofos, these “Ponti” or “Prosfigi” in a turn of events, which I am sure you had a hand in, today have become the proud Macedonians and we the “endopii”, the real Macedonians, are persecuted and robbed of our lands and our identity!

So the question, Mr. Kofos, is how is it even possible to ethnically cleanse Macedonia, by throwing out so many people, if Macedonia was always Greek? How can Macedonia have been Greek when its entire population was not Greek?!

Now Mr. Kofos, allow me to remind you what happened after August 4, 1936 when the dictator General Ioannis Metaxas came to power in Greece. When this Fascist regime came to power it took strong measures against everything Macedonian. It first banned the Macedonian language and made it illegal to be spoken in public and in private. It then cracked down on those speaking it. Hefty fines were imposed on the old who could speak no other language. The younger generations received beatings, fines, castor oil and jail time on the Greek islands, when caught speaking Macedonian, even to their own parents or grandparents who could not speak Greek.

The Second World War, the Greek Civil War and the sins of the Macedonians

At one time or another every Macedonian, including myself (as a participant in the Greek Civil War), had thought of the following questions:

1. Why are Macedonia and the Macedonian people a problem for Greece? 2. Did Macedonia steal Greek history or is it the other way around? 3. Why do the Macedonian people tolerate the abuse they receive from the Greeks? 4. Why have we remained silent about the Greek genocide perpetrated against the Macedonian people in the years 1940 to 1950 by the Greek government?! 5. Why are there thousands and thousands of exiled Macedonians wandering the world who Greece will not allow to return to their homes!?

Mr. Kofos, as an intellectual you certainly must know that power by itself has no principles. A great Russian writer of fables once said: “The strong always win over the weak.” Your introduction and overall asymmetrical elaboration is certainly based on exactly that political game play.

The problem of course is not just with the name, but with the people who lived and still live in that part of Macedonia, since, as you put it, the 6th and 7th century AD. Even if these people arrived in that region during the 6th and 7th century AD, that’s 16 centuries of living on those lands! Don’t you think that your argument is naïve and shallow when you go before the European public and claim that Macedonia cannot possibly belong to the modern Macedonians because they came to this region 16 centuries ago? After living there for 16 centuries don’t you think they developed their own identity, language, culture, religion, social life and participated in uprisings and revolutions?!

Mr. Kofos, you have the nerve to portray the Turkish colonists and settlers that your Greek government deposited in Macedonia in the 1920’s as “Macedonians” and yet at the same time you deny the right of the true Macedonians, a people, who by your own admission, arrived in Macedonia 16 long centuries ago? Just for the record, Mr. Kofos, I don’t agree with your assessment that the modern Macedonians arrived from anywhere 16 centuries ago. My belief, according to our history and according to our Macedonian tradition, is that the Macedonians have been in Macedonia a lot longer than that. And you think, Mr. Kofos, because you say we have been in Macedonia for “only” 16 centuries, that you “self-made” Greeks have the right to abuse and torment us?

Why don’t you read some of the books written by Greek authors and see for yourself what you Greeks have done to us because you preach that we have been in Macedonia for “only” 16 centuries! (see: ΤΟ ΛΑΜΒΡΟΝ ΕΠΟΣ - ΜΑΚΕ∆ΟΝΙΚΟΣ ΑΓΩΝ - ΠΩΣ ΠΟΛΕΜΙΣΕ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΟΘΗ Η ΜΑΚΕ∆ΟΝΙΑ, Ιωννου Καραβτη. Take a close look at what the Greek gangs did and the massacres they committed against the Macedonian people in Lerin and Kostur simply because someone told them they were not Macedonians but Slavs who came to this region 16 centuries ago! This is precisely what your propaganda does Mr. Kofos, when you make such outrageous claims!

Do you want to know how many more crimes were committed against the Macedonian people by your precious Greeks, Mr. Kofos, then continue reading;

a) Η ΣΒΑΓΗ ΣΤΗ ΖΑΓΟΡΙΤΣΑΝΗ (Massacre in the village Zagorichani on March 25, 1905.)

b) Η ΣΒΑΓΗ ΤΟΥ ΚΛΑ∆ΟΡΑΠ (Massacre in the village Kladorabi on August 5, 1905.)

c) Ο ΑΙΜΑΤΗΡΟΣ ΓΑΜΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΖΕΛΕΝΙΤΣ (Bloody wedding in the village Zelenich on November 13, 1904.)

No less gruesome was the handiwork of Bishop Karavangelis in Kostur who used the Greek Church to make Greeks out of Macedonians by the sharp tip of the Turkish bayonet and the muzzle of the Turkish rifle. Yes, Mr. Kofos, the Greeks and the Turks worked together, hand in hand, in those days to torment the Macedonian people.

What you are doing, Mr. Kofos, kind of reminds me of what Bishop Germanos Karavangelis did in Kostur in the name of Hellenism! Karavangelis was the collector of Macedonian souls which he did in the name for Hellenism. In his memoirs Karavangelis proudly tells all about what he did. His memoirs were published in 1959 in a book entitled “Ο µακεδονικος αγων (Αποµνιµονευµατα) Αρχειον Μακεδονικον αγωνος Πινελοπι ∆ελτα, Θεσσαλονικη, 1959, ΓΕΡΜΑΝΟΣ ΚΑΡΑΒΑΝΓΓΕΛΗΣ”. Feeling satisfied about what Karavangelis did for his “patrida”, the first “tell all” edition turned out to be a great embracement for the Greek people, not because Karavangelis confessed to the atrocities he committed, including the human sculls he displayed of people who he had murdered, like the trophies of animals, but for the pride he showed in doing it, especially from a religious person; a Bishop no less!

In a passage in his memoirs he wrote: “I told them you are all Greeks since the time of Alexander the Great, but then the Slavs came and turned you into Slavs. You look like Greeks and the soil you live on is Greek. After all, our church and dioceses were always at the forefront of freedom. The Bulgarians have proved themselves incapable of even liberating themselves; they depended on Russia to do that for them. Now you are waiting for Bulgaria to liberate Macedonia? And you live under the illusion that European diplomacy will say that Macedonia is Bulgarian? Lerin and Kostur are barely two days walk from the Greek border, while the Bulgarian border is a distance of at least seven days!

…Today I told him ‘you will be with us and you will be the first man I will send down to meet the Greek kings and your children will attend school in Greece’. Kote accepted my offer and I blessed him as a ‘soldier of Christ’ and he became Captain Kote... I paid Kote a monthly salary of ten liras. His children (heroes), today they are officers in the Greek army…

… In early 1901 I went on a long tour and visited all the Slavophone villages of Koreshta Region as well as the villages Rula, Trnaa, Trsie, Drenoveni, Gabresh and Chernovishta and returned them all to Orthodoxy.”

This is what Bishop Germanos Karavangelis confessed but our Kote went beyond that and reached new heights! On October 25, 1903, Kote delivered the head of our famous revolutionary and poet Lazar Pop Traikov, to Bishop Karavangelis for a handful of coins. And this is how Macedonians were bought…

Before that the Macedonian people did not succumb to oppression. For at least 16 centuries, Mr. Kofos, as you put it, the songs and dances never ceased. These were unique Macedonian songs and dances that resembled no other. For at least 16 centuries our path was guided by the rising and setting of the Macedonian sun, guiding our way to the days of Ilinden when we rose up against tyranny in hopes of freedom and creating a Macedonian state. But the 20th century was not what we expected, especially from our Christian brothers, who for almost as many years, suffered along with us. Who would have ever thought that our Christian brothers, who knew our pain, would betray us and be the collectors of our souls, and would exile us to die in foreign lands and not be buried in the graves of our ancestors. This was done to us by no other than Greece, the so-called cradle of democracy, Mr. Kofos, respected by the entire world for its supposed contribution to the modern European civilization! What are we to make of that?

The entire world knows about the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia, about whom the Americans said: “We have recognized Macedonia to prove that it is real”, to show that it is an ancient culture with a unique identity different from the Greek identity but not so different from the culture that exists in Aegean Macedonia in the Lerin, Kostur, Voden, Kukus Regions, in other words on the ethnic Macedonian space divided in 1913.