We are not
mentioning these issues in order to open old wounds. To the contrary, we
must remember the pleasant things in order to create an atmosphere of friendship
and cooperation in the Balkans, and beyond. On the other hand, a return
to history is necessary, even to the morbid events, in or-der to learn
from them. When we re-member the events in the regions of former Socialist
Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) which happened in our days, we
must remind our new gen-erations what happened to Macedonia, and to the
Macedonian people several decades ago, when hard nationalism and restlessness
between the peoples started to govern. The events from the Second Balkan
War (1913) can hardly be forgotten by the Macedonians, as we can see its
consequences everywhere. When the propaganda of Macedonia’s neighboring
countries - Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, through the bish-ops and the schools
did not manage to make "Greeks", "Bulgarians" or "Serbs"
from the Macedonians under the slogan of "freeing" it's brothers
in Macedonia, on 5th of October 1912, the "allied" Balkan states
declared war against Turkey, which very quickly re-sulted in capitulation
of Turkey. Yet, as appetite grows with eating, not only did the winners
not ask the "freed" Macedonian people, but, to the contrary,
each state wished to keep for itself what it had occupied and with a tendency
to grab even more of Macedonia. Bulgar-ia, even though it had occupied
a greater part of Central and Eastern Mace-donia, supported in this by
Austria-Hungary, gave the Greeks an ultimatum: "Solun or war,'. Through
the sudden attack on June 16, 1913 against its former ally and Slavic brother
- the Serbian army, near Bregalnica, Ferdinand's Bulgaria was actually
starting the First World War, which ended as quite a fail-ure for Bulgaria,
and the most horrible genocide known to mankind was carried out upon the
body of impoverished Macedonia. The Greek army, commanded by the throne
heir Constantine, could hardly wait for the moment of attack of the Bulgarian
army upon their allies from the previous day and started a systematic retaliation
against the scant Bulgarian army in the city of Solun. The Greek spies
in the city, along with the Greek police, went to the Macedonian houses
where they killed anybody they could. At that time, along with hundreds
of other Macedonians, the Archimandrite of the Solun Church Municipality
Eulogy and the Secretary of the Mace-donian Archbishopry, one of the founders
of VMRO 'Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization Hristo Batandzhiev,
were beastly tortured, killed and thrown into the sea from a boat on its
way to the bare island Tiriken near Volos. Only in the city of Solun, according
to reliable data, 189 persons were killed on the spot or were confined
and killed. Europe could not remain deaf, so it sent an Inquiry Committee
of the re-nowned Dotation Carnegy Pour la Paix Internationale, in which
were distin-guished persons such as Henry Noele Brailsford from Great Britain,
professor and politician Milyukov from Russia, Gistin Golar Bettler from
the Columbia University in USA, and others. In the Committee's report,
shocking information was stated of the plundering of Macedonian property,
rape of hundreds of girls and women, beastly murders in the villages and
the cities, on approximately five hundred pages. In the letters of Greek
soldiers they speak of rape of girls and women: "By order of the King
- is stated in the letter, we burn the Bulgarian villages" (meaning
Macedonian ones). "We dishonor all girls which we come upon"
-writes N.Zervas on 12 July 1913. Anas-tasos Petros on 14 July writes:
"Dear parents, we are burning villages here, killing Bulgarians, women
and chil dren". Penklos Dumbalis writes: "We caught several Bulgarians
as captives and we killed them all, because there was such an order"...
The Greek artillery and the other armies poured out their wrath on the
town of Kukush the most, because Kukush was the first town in Macedonia
which raised the flag of the spiritual and educational battle in Macedonia
against the monopoly of the Greek church, whose assimilatory policy was
led by fanatic bishops. Terrified old men, men, women, children ran through
the town looking for refuge in the Lazaristic congregation , yet a great
number never reached it, cut down by artillery fire. The town Kukush was
totally destroyed, burned and plundered. Houses, shops, factories, approximately
3,000 structures were totally burned down. On their way to Bulgaria thousands
of refugees never reached the border. They were met by the Greek cavalry
and cut down. The Catholic priests Josif Radanov, Zhan Chelichev, the priest
from the vil-lage of Todorak and other eyewitness-es of the slaughters
recount shocking events to the Inquiry Committee which entered them in
the book: "Anket dans le Balkan" page 317-321, Paris 1914. In
the mindless and savage assault of the Greek army against the unprotect-ed
Macedonian population perished in the Kukush and Lahneni regions in over
200 villages. The Bulgarian and Serbian armies were the same in their "act
of freeing". According to the data of the Inquiry Committee the gangs
of the "Vrhovists" of one Doncho Zlatkov and of others, before
the Bulgarian army entered the towns and villages, plundered the Turk-ish
houses and shops, raped women and killed Turks. The Vrhovist gangs killed
approximately 2000 only of the Turk-ish soldiers returning disarmed to
their villages. The Bulgarian army itself in Seres, under the pretext that
it was re-questing weapons from the Turks, mas-sacred 600 Muslims on 8
November 1912. The Bulgarian army plundered shops, houses and mosques throughout
the city, and requisitioned the harvest of the farmers without giving any
certificate. The Bulgarian officers forced the Turks to carry out massacres
of Greeks in the small town of Doksato and in the other places inhabited
by Greeks. This is only part of what the "broth-erly" and "ally"
armies did in Mace-donia. A dirty epilogue of all that was the Bucharest
Agreement of 10 August 1913 with which the partitioning of Macedonia was
made legal as well as of the Macedonian people. It found itself in three
and four different countries and among foreign peoples, which showed to
be more ferocious toward the Macedonians, than the Turks themselves. Because
the latter never went after their language and religion - as confirmed
by the Frenchman Leon Lamouche from the United Nations. The occupiers of
Macedonia through decades mobilized churches, schools and other institutions
in order to assimilate the Macedonian people, and nationalistic organizations
also appeared similar to the Ku Klux Klan from the American South, which
forbade the language and customs of the Macedonians, they carry out various
crimes such as the assassination of 27 innocent villagers from the village
of Trlis, Ser region (1924), forming special military courts which will
fabricate helpers of revolutionaries etc., all in order to force the Macedonians
to look for salvation out-side of their fatherland. The discriminatory
measures in Greece and in Bulgaria continue today through not recognizing
the Macedonian nation and language, by not allowing the forming of organizations
of Macedonians, etc. And, all this is happening before the eyes of civilized
Europe. Once, between the two World Wars, the United Nations, of which
a diplomat stated that it was noisy like a parrot and timid like a rabbit,
would say a consoling word in protection of the Macedonians. Reality shows,
regretfully, that even the UN did not go too far.
HRISTO ANDONOVSKI, SKOPJE.
THE MACEDONIAN TIMES - APRIL 1997