FYROM and Greece: Preconditions for an agreement of lasting peace and good neighborly relations.

22 / 07 / 2010

Hitler also gave Skopje and Vardarska, to the Bulgarians of Skopje. Vardarska, you guessed it, is southern Yugoslavia, which is post 1991 an independent country that now calls itself “Makedonija” but the rest of the world FYROM. Skopje´s Bulgarophile population went frantic and joyous out in the streets to welcome Hitler´s troops and the Bulgarian King they brought along with them.

D. For what Mr. Petrov calls “persecutions of the (Slavo-)macedonians during the Balkan wars” of 1912-1913, which today, according to Mr. Petrov, are “defined” (by whom?) as “genocide” there “must be a request for reparation of war damages from the occupation and the division of Macedonia and the genocide against the Macedonian people” – said Petrov.

Where can we start from, now? It is a fact that there were no Slavomakedonci during the 1912 war of liberation against the Ottoman empire. Tito´s so called “Makedonci” nation had to wait until 1944 to be invented. At that time the Bulgarophile Slavs of Macedonia were still Bulgarians. They were calling themselves “Bugari”. Todor Petrov is speaking of persecutions but somehow he is forgetting about Serres. My hometown is Serres, which the Bulgarian army burned down completely ninety sever years ago to the date, on June 28, 1913, during its hasty retreat, because its population was not deemed friendly to Bulgarian occupation. 4050 out of its 6000 homes and a thousand stores were burned down. Is this burning down of a major Macedonian city (Doxato in Drama province was the next town to suffer the same fate), plus the summary executions of Greek notables also considered genocide?

Can I and my family sue the Bulgarian state, almost a hundred years later for reparations? But wait, Petrov, is not saying anything about Bulgarians, he almost forgot all about his Bugari / Bulgarski grandparents. True enough, he is a Makedonski now! So, now, it is definitely getting definitely a bit confusing here. Whom should I have to sue? Should I forget about the original Bulgarians and direct my lawsuit against the FYROMian government in Skopje instead, and demand reparations for their “genocide against the Macedonian Greeks of Serres” and the “war damages” inflicted upon my own family´s property, for the Bulgarian occupation of Serres?

No division between the two existed at the time, and the grandparents of today’s Slavomacedonians were proud Bugari being separated by the Bulgarians by a mere “l” (BuLgari) not Makedonci. Therefore, I suppose that I have every right to sue either of them or better yet, both of them! I will find an attorney in Sofia and sue the descendants of both the Bulgari who burned down my hometown, and another attorney in Skopje and sue the descendants of the Bugari – the Slavomacedonians who did the same and whomever wins (I think both will) I will be happy. Me and my brother, and all of our children will now be rich! Victims of Genocide that we are, we will win so much money for the war reparations of our torched down city of Serres that the next step will be to hire yet two more attorneys and send them off to the next mission: Reparations for war damages from the Bulgarian (must I call it “Bugarian/(Slavo-)macedonski”?) occupation and division of Macedonia during the first world war. Speaking of genocide, should we maybe remember the 70,000 Eastern Macedonian Greeks that were taken by the Bulgarian army as “hostages” during the 1916-1917 years of WWI, and only 12,000 of them returned alive? But we are not done yet! What about the second world war? The same week that the Nazi Germans broke through the Thessaloniki – Central Macedonian front, the Bulgarian army followed suit and occupied our province FOR A THIRD TIME IN AS MANY DECADES! Our province was split in half, and the western pat remained with Nazi – occupied Greece, while the Eastern part, including my hometown Serres, and further east the rest of Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace were given by Hitler to Bulgaria. Talk about “the occupation and the division of Macedonia”, indeed!

The Greek Macedonians were now openly persecuted. All the Greek priests had to leave their churches on a day´s notice and all the Greek teachers were thrown out of the schools. Both were replaced by Bulgarians who were brought in from Bulgaria that same week. Greek doctors and attorneys had to sign off their property and were expelled, and so was the case with any and all elected officials. The best homes were all confiscated and given to Bulgarians who were brought in by the thousands to stay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x2iXVcKRpk

Within a week´s notice, all the Greek street and commercial signs everywhere had to be with Cyrillic and no Greek sign could stay up anywhere. Food became scarce; the economy collapsed and food coupons became the only means of acquiring foodstuffs. Opportunities opened up for the occupational authorities. If you declared yourself a Bulgarian, you were given twice the coupons, twice the rations. New words were invented and entered the Greek language, words immediately forgotten after WWII:

Ντουρντουβάκια / Dourdouvakia: the Greek youth of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace that were summarily rounded up and taken into Bulgaria to work as unpaid slave laborers for the benefit of the Bulgarian state.

Βουλγαρογραμμένος / Boulgarogrammenos was someone who had become “written down” / declared as a Bulgarian”.

Λαδοβούλγαρος / Ladoboulgaros: literally an “oily-Bulgarian”, someone that became a Bulgarian collaborator and declared himself to be a “Bulgarian” in order to get olive oil rations in return and avoid starvation.

I know this is not “genocide” in the literal meaning of the word, but it is a hell of a lot harsher than any bogus “genocide” the Greeks are being accused of by the likes of Todor Petrov and his group. But using hunger to change someone´s ethnic identity, really hits the borderline, if you ask me. On another note, the word Genocide has a very particular meaning: Killing off the genes, killing off the procreated future of a nation. Is this what happened to the Bulgarians / Slavomacedonians after Macedonia´s liberation from the Ottomans? Some, several thousand actually, left, especially from the Kilkis area and relocated to Bulgaria. But so did several thousand Greeks who felt trapped into Serbia and Bulgaria, especially from the Monastir district, Stromnista or Philippoupolis. Was that a Genocide too? We need to remain serious. The Greeks from Bulgaria and south Serbia (later renamed Vardarska and now calls itself Makedonija, or FYROM) left because they felt unwelcome, and so did the Bulgarians of Kilkis, but nobody was massacred or suffered the fate of the Pontian and Asia Minor Greeks, Christian Assyrians and Armenians in the hands of the Turks during and after WWI. THAT was genocide.

So, now we return to Todor Petrov´s proposal in Vreme. The article is titled:

“Aegeans require a signature for reconciliation”. By “Aegeans” the article means the descendants of the defeated Slavomacedonian partisans who left Greece and relocated to Skopje after the Greek civil war, as if Florina has anything to do with Aegean (it is like saying the “Pacifics”, as in the Pacific Ocean, speaking of the people who live in Colorado).

“The presidents of Macedonia and Greece, George Ivanov and Carlos Papoulias, must sign a statement of reconciliation of the two countries”. Indeed, the President of the World (Slavo-)macedonian Congress / Светскиот македонски конгрес, Todor Petrov / Тодор Петров, announces that he will encourage the process of reconciliation and unity…!

So, then, where do we start from? I propose that we start from “A”:

“Great Britain must apologize for her agreement with Russia to assist the Greek government defeat the (Communist Party-led) partisan movement during the 1946-1949 Greek Civil War, in which the (Slavo-)macedonians, took active part.”

But, I wonder, why only the British? The British after all had all but given up on their presence in Greece by the time the civil war became heated, in 1946, ceding their position of dominance in the Greek political and military events to the Americans. I propose that Todor Petrov and the World Congress of the (Slavo-)macedonians amend this slight oversight and immediately send a forceful demand to president Barack Obama insisting that:

“The US must apologize for her agreement with Great Britain and Russia to assist the Greek government defeat the (Communist Party-led) partisan movement during the 1946-1949 Greek Civil War, in which the (Slavo-)macedonians took active part.”

I just want to see Obama’s face when Svetskiot Makedonski Kongres / Светскиот македонски конгрес president Todor Petrov / Тодор Петров presents Obama with his group’s demands for the expected US apology!

Now, since “reconciliation precondition” A and B are already assigned, we can call this one: “Todor Petrov’s reconciliation precondition A-1″.

Once this is done, and Great Britain and the USA move expediently to conform with Todor Petrov’s and Svetsiot Makedonski Kongres’ very reasonable demands for British and American apologies, I am sure that presidents Carolos Papoulias and Georgi Ivanov can then hastily move to the next step and tackle “reconciliation precondition B”…

What else can I say…Good Luck!

PS1: The damage that the Slavomacedonian expatriate community has done, comfortably sitting in their Toronto, Indiana or Melbourne suburbs, to their home country, FYROM over the years, idiotically demanding an ever harder position against Greece is beyond measure. Skopje’s body politic has for years been hijacked by the kinds of Nikola Gruevski and Todor Petrov who have been imposing their criminally self-defeating ultra-nationalist policies on the young nation, leading it from one blind alley to another and from one humiliating defeat to another.

Todor Petrov’s latest proposal, as published in Vreme and exposed here for what it’s worth it, is indicative of the narrow corner into which they have squeezed themselves.

Lasting Peace, good neighborly relations and reconciliation are indeed needed, but it takes two to tango and they obviously cannot be achieved by people who make ludicrously unsupported claims of “genocide” or “exodus” and demand “apology” and “war reparations” for the war of the Greeks against the Turks and Bulgarians during the first and second Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. Every nation, even the Turks, at some point or another like to pretend that they have been the victim of everyone else. The problem with Nikola Gruevski, Todor Petrov and VMRO-DPMN is that they have overstretched the net of their ultra-nationalist mythology and ethnic hatred against the Greeks just a little bit too far and they are now trapped in it!

PS2: I may or may not agree with everything said on the videos above but I think that they are well-researched and very informative. M.E.B.

(1) http://www.vreme.com.mk/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=5&tabid=1&EditionID=2055&ArticleID=143490

(2)http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/07/11/skopjan-myth-about-deca-belgaci-exposed-testimony-of-irene-damopoulou-part-ii/

Miltiades Elia Bolaris, June 30, 2010

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22 / 07 / 2010 | |

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