Slav Macedonians and Bulgarians in WWII

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Even more ominous for the troubles to come, 27 high-ranking communistic cadres were released by the Gernlans in June 1941 from the Akronauplia prison camp, where they were under detention by the Greek authorities. They owed their release to the intervention of the Bulgarian embassy in Athens. They too declared Bulgarian nationality, although a few like Andrcas Tzimas or Samariniotis who later played a key role in political developments, were not Slav Macedonian. Most of them came from the districts of Kastoria and Florina, and included some of the protagonists in the events to be described below:


Lazaros Adamopoulos or Danios of Oinoi (Kastoria)
Lazaros Zisiadis or Trpovski of Dendrochori (Kastoria),
Zisis Kallimanis of Kalochori (Kastoria),
Theodoros Euthynuadis of Kastoria,
Anastasios Karatzas of Dendrochori,
Zisis Delios or Batzios of Kalochori,
Kyriakos Pylnis of Xynon Neron (Flonna),
Lamipros Moschos of Dendrochori,
Lampros Roukas of Ieropig (Kastoria),
Diamantis Tsistinas or
Dalis of Kastoria, Andreas Tsipas of Agios I'nnteleimon (Florina)
and Lazaros Bozinis of Aposkepos (Kastoria)

The circumstances of the release of the Slav Macedonians communist cadres from Akronauplia in June 1941 are not well known. According to Giannis Ioanlnidis, member of the Political bureau of the Greek Communist party’s Central CoMmittce and himself a prisoner in Akronauplia, the release was arranged by him and other leaders kept in the same prison.

According to Papakyriakopoulos (War Criminals, 35). the release was arranged by the Bulgarian embassy in Athens and the Bulgarian Club of Thessalonica. See Uranros, 103-4, for additional information about the release of the communist prisoners. A list of the released communist cadres can be found in Antonis Flountzis, 1937- 1943. Akronatiplia kai Akronaupliota (1937-1943: Akronauplia and Akronaupliotes), Athens 1989, 214, 407-8, 470, 475, 484-9, where there is more information about the released Slav Macedonians.

Some evidence on the released communists came out in the trlal of the prominent Axis collaborators in 1945. A witness In the second trial of the Bulgarian war criminal Anton Kaltchev. Athanasios Prontistis, a highranking official in Chrysochoou service In Thrssaloniki and member of an anti-communist resistance orgnanization the PA0, maintained that as many as 97 communists were released from the Akronauplia prison by the Germans after declaring themselves Bulgars. According to the same source, 11 more Slav Macedonian communist cadres were kept in the Cassandra Agricultulral Prison, but they refused to register as Bulgars. (Makedonia newapaper, 11 May 1948).

According Cryshochoou in 1944 the declarations of Bulgarian nationality for the expected benefits were estimated by the Greek authorities, on the basis of monthly returns, to have reached 16,000 in the districts of German-occupied Greek Macedonia.

According to British sources, declarations of Bulgarian nationality throughout Northern Greece reached 23,000 of which however as many as 10.000 were renounced by 1044. ( F0371/58615, Thessaloniki consular report of 24 Sep. 1946 ).


to be continued....

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Anton Kaltchev

According to the Greek authorities in Macedonia, which were mainly pre-occupied with foreign propaganda disseminated among the Slav Macedonians, the Komitato was the brainchild of a most resourceful and able Bulgarian officer, Lieutenant Anton Kaltchev, who had emigrated to Bulgaria as a youth from the Slav-speaking village of Spilaia in the Kastoria district.

Kaltchev was a member of the 'Koniglicher Bulgarischer Verbindungs Offizier beim Befehlshaber Salonika Agais', the Bulgarian liaison staff with the German Thessaloniki Macedonian command, which consisted of some 20 to 25 officers. Their instructions were to protect and defend the 'Bulgarian' population of Italian- and (German-occupied Macedonia ), to transmit German and Italian orders to this population, to transmit its complaints to the occupying forces, to translate its petitions to the occupying forces, to avoid contact with the Greeks, to avoid making public speeches for propaganda purposes and to report regularly to Thessaloniki.

Kaltchev, according to his own statement in court, was born in 1010, and attended the Greek primary school of his village for three years. He emigrated to Bulgaria, where his family owned some landed property, in the late 1920s. His father had already emigrated to Bulgaria in 1912, when the rest of the family also planned to leave, but they were prevented from doing so by the outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans in the autunn of the same year. In 1931, on graduation from a Sofia secondary school, he was admitted to the Dresden Military Academy, from which he graduated In 1935. He then enrolled in the University of Leipzig and was appointed teaching ascistant.

In 1940 Kaltchev returned to Bulgaria and taught at the Reserve Officers School till the following spring, when Bulgaria joined the Axis and he joined the Bulgarian army as a leutenant. He was sent to Tliessaloniki in August 1941 to join the group of Bulgarian liaison officers attached to the Gemman and Italian occupying forces in Central and West Macedonia. He served In turn in Amyntaion, Edessa and Kastoria.Kaltchev was also reportedly involved in the operation of a Bulgarian propaganda organisation active in both Yugoslav and Greek West Macedonia, the 'Okhrana'. The Greek branch was allegedly organised by him, and was sometimes called the 'Bulgarian-Macedonian Comnittee'. It was based in Florina and presided over by Menelaos Gheles or Chhelev, a lawyer and prominent Bulgarophile of the town.

source
Giannis Koliopoulos, Leilasia Fronimaton, Volume A


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After the war was over many Slavamcedonians were accused of collaborating with the Bulgarians, was by far the largest group, 663 (69 percent) of the 959 people accused. Most were from central and western Macedonia though there were also many from the prefecture of Thessaloniki, particularly in 1946,' when the regional courts started to operate. The number of accused in this category seems disproportionately large in relation to the number of trials, but this is due to the fact that in some cases several people (usually from the countryside) were tried en bloc.

They tended to be from the same or neighbouring villages, sometimes they were blood relations, and their declared occupation was either farming or some sort of manual work. So quite often more than one person stood in the dock; indeed, in trial no. 173-17411945, the nummher of accused was no less than 64.

One of the first trials to be held involved 8 people from Rizari, in Edessa prefecture. All declared themselves to be farmers. Two were not specified in the records. The accusations against 6 members of the group were particularly serious. Witnesses for the prosecution stated that the accused had expressed pro-Bulgarian sentiments since 1941, as soon as the Bulgarian troops had arrived. They had then joined the armed Okhrana groups and had gone around wearing the organization's blue uniform. They had tried to intimidate their fellow villagers into joining the Bulgarian Club, denounced Greeks to the Bulgarians, ripped up Greek flags, and organized pro-Bulgarian demonstrations in Edessa. With other Okhrana members (there was some doubt as to whether two of the accused had participated), they had mobbed the village; in the ensuing fray, at least two men had died and one woman had been injured


In their defense, the accused admitted that they had carried arms, but maintained that it had been out of fear of guerrilla attacks. They had not known, they said, that the Okhrana was a Bulgarian organization, and they denied having taken part in looting and violent assaults.

http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/wiki/images/1/19/Bulgars_in_vardar.JPG


The court found two of them guilty of collaborating with the enemy and oppressing the people and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The other 6 were sentenced to death, because, apart from the abovementioned charges, they were held responsible for people's deaths. 2/3 of their property was confiscated as well. These were the first collaborators to receive the death penalty, and they were executed in Eptapyrgio prison.

These people were accused of manifesting pro-Bulgarian sentiments when the Bulgarians arrived (by flying Bulgarian flags, for instance, or putting up portraits of King Boris), of joining the Okhrana groups, of complicity in the arrest and execution of Greek citizens, of spreading Bulgarian propaganda, and of assisting efforts toward Macedonian autonomy. Inhabitants of urban centers were chiefly accused of joining the Bulgarian Club (some even holding high executive positions) and of attending Bulgarian churches, taking part in Bulgarian celebrations, joining Bulgarian choirs, and so on. The list of accusations was usually very long, being relevant to many of the articles of the Constitutional Act: the charges leveled against someone accused of "national unworthiness" might include a whole string of offenses, such as spreading propaganda or belonging to the Security Battalions.

The testimonies started to grow more complicated and to reveal the true nature of the problem when the witnesses recounted the activities of an accused prisoner during the occupation who, having been a loyal friend of the Bulgarians in the early years of the occupation, would suddenly appear as a member of Slovenornakedonski Narodno Osloboditelen (Front Slav Macedonian National Liberation Front). These were the Okhranists, armed members of Bulgarian-sponsored units, who were quick to join the Slavic-speaking units officially under the jurisdiction of EAM in order to avoid punishment after the occupation. Some of them even chose to espouse the SNOF manifesto regarding the autonomy of Macedonia. Others seem to have moved on to SNOF afteractive service with EAM.

Many of the accused had absconded and were tried in absentia. They tended to be either fanatical supporters of the Bulgarian cause who had accompanied the departing Bulgarian troops in October 1944, or autonomists who had managed to flee to Yugoslavia. In 1945, 51 (15%) out of a total of 362 accused of collaboration with the Bulgarians were absent, and in 1946, 69 (23%) out of a total of 301. The sentences imposed on them were particularly harsh: 253 were found innocent, but of the 410 found guilty, 78 were sentenced to death, 65 received life imprisonment, and the rest were sentenced to penal servitude or prison terms.


Source:
[Eleni Haidia, The punishment of collaborators in Northern Greece, 1945-1946(publish in Mark Mazower, After the War was Over, pages 48-50)]