Tsontos
02-22-2006, 12:34 AM
The Martyrdom of Macedonia
Record of Bulgarian Crimes
Editor's Note - Under the title "Black Book Of Enemy Atrocities," we publish a series of catalogues of the unspeakable crimes
committed by the Bulgarians in Greece during the period 1941-42.
The object of these outrages was the extermination of a heroic people, which, because it valued its national and political
independence and had opposed two predatory empires and a blood-thirsty neighbor: they are an indelible blot upon the records
of the countries responsible.
If there is Divine justice and the civilized world possesses a conscience, these cannot be forgiven either in heaven or on earth,
for the authors "know what they do."
Black Book of Enemy Atrocities Eastern Macedonia
Executions
Part I
On October 16, 1941, at Ano Porroia, 60 Greeks, who were being held in the village of Livadia, were executed by a Bulgarian
squad.
On October 3 and 4, 1941, 18 youths were executed in the village square at Neos Skopos. Their bodies were taken and cast into
the River Struma in the presence of their relatives. In addition, the following persons were executed in this village:
1. Two brothers, john and Eleutherios Bakintzis, 2. Two sons of Constantine Hamazis, 3. Alexander Trigeras, 4. Andromides,
and 5.Capsalis. The executions and massacres continued up to October 6. On October 2, 1941, 15 youths were executed at Neos Skopos, 150 persons were shot at the villages of Tholos and Gazaron, and about 20 at Chomos. In the district of Serres the place usually chosen for the mass execution was the village Elaton.
Reports show that from October 1 to 3, 1941, in the Serres district alone, the number of persons executed or done to death by the Bulgarians amounted to 3,000. At a date subsequent to October 1, 1941, 17 persons were shot at Angista, among them the preceptor Cachramanides, the butcher Michalis, the baker Antonis, and one Manousarides. During October, 1941, at Ano Kerdylton and Kato Kerdylion, there was a mass shooting of 400 vilIagers.
Murders
In September 10, 1941, four prominent citizens were arrested in Kava II a and were sentenced to death and executed. The pretext given was that Bulgarian soldiers had been found shot in the environs of the city.
In September 29, 1941, G. Samaras, an employee of the tobacco dealer Petrides, and another employee whose identity was not ascertained were executed in Kavalla.
In October, 1941, in Kavalla, Lieut. Vamvetsos and a sergeant major of the gendarmerie, Kyriakopoulos by name, who were accused of assisting the British, were sentenced to death and executed.
On June 22, 1941, the Archimandrite Synesios Demetriades was arrested and sent for trial by court-martial. On the way, he was murdered by his escort of Bulgarian soldiers.
On October 10, 1941, four persons were murdered by the Bulgarian soldiers between Ano Porroia and Kato Porroia.
On September 30, 1941, the village of Megalokampos was attacked by Bulgarian soldiers, gendarmes and irregulars, who carried out a general massacre of the inhabitants and then set fire to the village.
During a period of seven days from September 29, 1941 the Bulgarians made extensive arrests in the district of Siderokastro, followed by wholesale massacres. The number of persons missing is estimated at 400.
During October 1941, a number of inhabitants of the village of Meletopoulo, near Serres, were immured in the village school and burned to death.
On September 29, 1941, the Bulgarians issued an order forbidding the inhabitants of Drama, and in particular those of Kratika quarter. Simultaneously heavy gunfire was directed from the barracks to the centre of the city. At noon Bulgarian army cars made a tour of the house; the male population was arrested and murdered at random. The massacres continued on the two following days. Five hundred women and children, who had taken refuge on those days in the church of Aghia Trias, met a terrible death under its ruins; those of them who sought to escape from the burning building were mown down by the bullets of the comitadjis. During the period a further 600 persons were executed in Drama, 300 by shooting, and hanging.
In September, 1941, a 15-year old boy, G. Ioannou by name, was beaten to death in Drama by Bulgarian comitadjis. In the same month the mutilated bodies of five demobilized Greek soldiers were found in Kalliphytos-street, Drama. Women and Children Victims.
On September 30, 1941, the surviving inhabitants of the Kratika and Gyftika quarters were assembled in the centre of Drama; they were taken thence and massacred. Women and children on their way to buy bread were fired upon and killed by persons in the prefecture building itself. Wives visiting the places where their husbands were detained before execution were themselves included in the numbers of the victims. Children, wandering completely destitute through the streets of Drama were ruthlessly done to death. Employees on their way to work as, for example three employees of the Melissa Mineral Water Company, were shot at and killed by the Bulgarians.
Seventeen persons in Drama were killed when a hand grenade was thrown into a stable where they were being detained.
The horror caused by the massacres was such that many of the survivors lost their reason. Among such cases are those of Constantine David, a merchant, and Alanopoulis, a dentist. Thirty-one refugees from Pontus were killed for wearing the Greek costumes of Pontus on the occasion of a holiday. The village of Pormani was burned to the ground. All the inhabitants perished. In Drama an additional method of massacring the inhabitants was employed. They were summoned at night to the police stations for examinations. Those who were allowed to return to their homes were set upon and murdered indiscriminately by the Bulgarian night patrols. The number of victims in the Drama-Kavalla district (9/29/41-10/1/41) is estimated at over 9,000 so far as can at present be established. In the village of Karmitsa, soon after October 1, 1941, the Bulgarians assembled all the inhabitants in the village square and the church, and killed them with hand grenades and machine gun fire. More than 187 persons are reported to have been killed in this manner.
On September 30, 1941, the town of Protostani was bombarded from early morning by three batteries of field artillery posted on either side of the Granitos defile. As the inhabitants left the town they were attacked and decimated by the Bulgarian peasants, who had come down from the villages of Goriani and Kallithea. A group of survivors were murdered on the Alistrati-Drama road by Bulgarian soldiers traveling in motor transport. Bulgarian soldiers and comitadjis dispatched any peasants who had chanced to survive. All the villages in the Granitos and Panghaen defile, running between Mount Menikos, were razed to the ground. The inhabitants were slaughtered. As in the case of Serres and Drama, so too in Kavalla. During the three days September 29 to October 1, 1941, the Bulgarians pillaged and massacred on a wide scale.
On September 30, 1941, the industrial Hadjimoisiades was murdered by Bulgarians at a distance of 100 yards from his house On the same day, 17 tobacco workers were murdered on the way to their work, and 10 others as they were leaving their houses. Likewise, the following two persons were murdered on that day: Seidaris, a chemist, and Simantov, employee of the tobacco merchant Bevenisis.
Part II
The village of Doxato, near Kava II a, was a particular target for the Bulgarians' savage wrath.
On September 29, 1941, detachments at the Bulgarian army assembled its population, men, women, and children, in the village school, to which they set fire at four points, while an airplane circled overhead machine-gunning the village. In another part of Doxato the inhabitants were bound together in groups of ten, and were then led to an adjacent ravine, into which they were hurled under the fire of machine-guns. The Bulgarians thus rounded off their deeds of 1913. According to the most conservative estimates, the number of victims of these two crimes amounted to 1,200.
On October 2, 1941, in the village of Kyrghia, the Bulgarians murdered the following persons: (in addition to many others unidentified) Theodore Raghides, aged 80; G. Aslanides, aged 86; Ignatiades, aged 85; and his wife Stamatina, aged 70.
On the same day 70 inhabitants of this village who had escaped to the mountains were treacherously murdered by the Bulgarians after they had been invited to return to their homes. Known names of some of the innocent victims include the following; Stavros Papadopoulos; Alecos Aslanides, lawyer; Constantine Markides, grocer; Athanasius Voutsas, grocer. Included in the general massacre were the inhabitants of the villages of Platanovryst, Ptelca and Kouslouki. During 1942, the Bulgarians murdered Dr. Kopsidas in the Drama district. During 1941, the Bulgarians murdered four persons in a prison between Serres and German-occupied Macedonia who endeavored to escape into the latter district.
On September 10, 1941, a parrots and four civilians whose names have not yet been ascertained were executed at Karkani, near Serres. They were accused of illegally possessing firearms. Acts of Violence and Pillage
During a period of three days, July 24 - 27, 1941, Bulgarians entered the village of Eptamili, near Serrres, and plundered the houses. They assaulted the village priest, Papanicolaou by name, and subjected him to various indignities.
The vicar of the village of Provata, Serres, was ordered to stop the service in his church because he failed to include the Bulgarian Metropolitan in his prayers. Both he and the village treasurer were fined 15,000 drs. each; in addition, the priest was deported.
Between April 20 and July 20, 1941, the Monastery of St. Prodromos, at Stavropegiaki, Serres, was ransacked and pillaged by one Karat Zoff, the representative of the Bulgarian Metropolitan.
Constantine Apostolides, a merchant, accompanied by two of his colleagues was transporting goods to Salonica by car.
At the river Struma he and his companions were arrested; the cars, with their loads of merchandise, were driven off towards Bulgaria in the charge of Bulgarian drivers. This is but one example of the systematic pillaging practiced by the Bulgarians. Equally indicative of Bulgarian methods is the experience of Michael Chasapis, the owner of a cinema. Comitadjis proposed to him that he should take them into partnership, and that a legal agreement should be drawn up, but that no monetary consideration should be paid by themselves. Chasapis protested to the German authorities, but was dismissed without a hearing. Fearing that his life would therefore be in danger he left his home and fled to an unknown destination. In Serres, a form of head tax was imposed on persons of 15 years of age and over, while those of 13 years of age and over were required to compulsory labor for the cleaning of the roads.
In the district of Serres a part of the crops was confiscated and dispatched to Bulgaria. Next, the balance was requisitioned without payment on pretest that crops were being concentrated. To justify these acts of robbery it was stated that payment would be made to the villagers subsequently by redemption of the agricultural loans which they had obtained from the banks. Simultaneously, however, the banks' books were seized, and the Bulgarians compelled the villagers to repay agricultural loans direct to them.T he towns of KavaIla, Drama and Serres suffered particularly heavily in the period of September 29 to October 1, 1941. Bulgarian armed forces covered by aircraft roamed the streets, firing at random. The inhabitants shut themselves in their houses, night and day; arrests were made, assaults and murders committed among every class of the population indiscriminately. Doctors, lawyers, and other professional men were arrested and subjected to indignities and maltreatment for days on end. Most of the male inhabitants between the ages of 19 and 50 years were taken as hostages to Bulgaria. During Easter week 1941, the village of Aghios loannis suffered the same fate as the village of Eptamili, being plundered and pillaged by the Bulgarians. In a village in the Drama area, the leading member of the community was harnessed to a cart and forced to draw it through the streets amid jeers and physical maltreatment; Greek flags and other national emblems had been fixed to the cart. On June 23, 1941, the Archimandrite Demetrius Nicolaides, of Micropolis, near Drama, was taken to the garrison headquarters; he was there beaten and kicked savagely, and dragged along the ground by his beard. Later, he was conducted to Kato Vrontous, where a Bulgarian lieutenant confiscated a sum of 6,00 drs. which he was carrying on his person. At Micropolis he found ten other Greeks suffering similar treatment at the garrison headquarters at Kato Vrountas.
Part III
On May 29, 1941, the Bulgarian mayor of Elioupolis, accompanied by two Bulgarian police officers, went to the monastery of Eikosifonissa, which they occupied in the name of Bishop Boris. They seized everything they could lay their hands on, down to the personal possessions of the monks and expelled the abbot of the monastery, Parthenios Joannides. On June 6, they also expelled the Archimandrite Averkios Vamvakas.
In the Drama area there was an incursion into the farmlands by Bulgarian peasants, who harvested and seized the crops in the fields as also all domestic animals, thus compelling the farmers to abandon their homes. The campaign of systematic pillaging was, however, not alone, where Bulgarian peasants have established themselves as though they were the rightful owners of the farmlands. It extended to the town of Drama itself. With the organized military assistance of the Bulgarians, traders and other business men were seizing the property of the Greek inhabitants.
During Easter week 1941, the villages of Palaiokastron Christon and Lefkon suffered particularly at the hands of the Bulgarian military forces. In all three places robberies and outrages were committed in the homes of the villagers.
In October, 1941, a prominent inhabitant of Micropolis, Papaioannou and his wife Mary, were ruthlessly beaten and maltreated, and a sum of money in their possession, 17 gold pounds and 25,000 drs. were confiscated. Demosthene Mertzekis was put to a most cruel torture for refusing to sign a declaration that he was voluntarily leaving his home. Michael Papavasiliou, a priest living in Kavalla was taken to Pentalofon, where he was confronted by a crowd of jeering Bulgarian officers. For a period of two days he was mocked at and maltreated. His shoes and vestments were taken from him; he was tied to a bed, and had his fingernails removed with pincers.
Papageorgios Papachristodoulou, a priest living in Kato Lakaeovikion, wasbeaten and his beard torn out on July 20, 1941.
On October 1, 1941, the Bulgarian arrested in Drama a doctor, Procopiou by name, and a merchant, Palakides by name. They were subjected to physical maltreatment and then released.
Outrages
In October 1941, Bulgarian officers and soldiers confined the male population of Dete-pali, near Serres, in the school building and then outraged the women of the village.
On April 1, 1941, in the Arabatzi-Machala district of Serres, a Bulgarian officer, accompanied by a corporal, entered the house of Abraham Marangos. They confined him in a part of his house, and then violated his wife.
On July 20, 1941, in the village of Kato Lakaeoyikion Bulgarian soldiers and gendarmes violated the wife and 14-year-old daughter of the village priest, Papageorgios Papachristodoulou. .
Deportations and Expulsions
On June 5, 1941, the Metropolitan Constantine of Serres was deported on the entry of the Bulgarian forces into his diocese. During the period April 20, to July 27, 1941, G. Avramides, a priest, was deported to Nigrita after the Bulgarians had staged the following scene: They planted a bomb in his house and then made a pretense of discovering it in order to accuse him of secreting arms and ammunition.
Two priests of Serres, John Kappos and Panaghiotes Hadjithomas were likewise deported to Nigrita for having included in their prayers during a church service the name of the Greek Metropolitan.
In addition the following priests were deported from the Serres district: Demetrius Papadopoulos, of Evanghelistra; Theodosius Theodosiades, of Peotapolis; Athanasius Pharmacopoulos of Lefkin.
At the beginning of May, 1941, the abbot of the monastery of St. Prodromos Ignatius Papamichail and a monk, Vicentius, were deported from Stavropegiaki.
Part IV
On Easter Day, 1941, the Metropolitan Basil of Siderokastro was brought under escort of a squad of lancers before the Bulgarian military governor. The latter ordered him to leave Siderokastro, together with all the priests of the Metropolis, before noon on the following day.
The Metropolitan was removed to Serres in a heavy rainstorm. On May 31, 1941, he was expelled from Serres, with two of his priests. At the moment of his expulsion his vestments were taken from him, as also a sum of 3,500 drs. The Bulgarian escort robbed him of all his personal effects. Eight other priests were expelled from
the metropolis of Serres. Those who have remained have been compelled to retire into private life.
On May 12, 1941, the Metropolitan Alexander of Zychne was expelled. His property was seized, as also that of the Metropolis, which had been surrounded by detachments of Bulgarian soldiers.
Reports show that up to the end of June, 1941, 1,200 persons had left their homes by reason of the seizure of their property and the threat to their personal safety. The abandonment of their homes was accompanied by countless scenes of horror. For example, it is reported that a woman was killed by her relatives in order that she might not be subjected to the criminal assaults of the Bulgarian soldiers.
On October 6, 1941, Dr. Pro Despotides of Siderokastro, was arrested and de
ported across the River Struma after undergoing terrible torture and maltreatment.
During May, 1941, the Archimandrite Hieronymos Yamalakis was compelled to leave the town of Drama under pressure from the Bulgarian archbishop's representative. He was not permitted to take with him even his personal correspondence. Likewise, towards the end of July, 1941, two other priests were expelled from Drama because of their vocation.
The following priests were also expelled; Makarios Papadopoulos and G. Alexides, of Kokkinogheton;
Spyros Xanthopoulos and K. Valavanis of Petroussa; Gregory Mavrides and D. Nakos of Protostani;
Dionysius Klavdianos, of Kallifyton. They were jeered at and stripped of their possessions. In addition,
the priest Th. Zikmides was expelled from Xipotamo.
The fate of the priests in the villages of Trigonon and Paranestion is unknown, no trace of them having been found.
It is reported that of mass expulsion of some 100 youths took place.
During September 1941, 72 professional men-doctors, lawyers, etc., were ordered to leave Drama within 48 hours. Towards the end of June, 1941, a priest whose name has not yet been ascertained was expelled from Eleftheroupolis because of his vocation. For those same reasons three priests, whose names are also unknown, were expelled at that time from Siderokastron.
Among the persons expelled during 1941 was the Mayor of Xanthi. The Greek Metropolitan of Kavalla was expelled on June 14, 1941. He was forbidden to take with him any of his possessions.
During the year 1941, 65,000 persons left their homes in the districts of Eastern Macedonia for parts of Greece not occupied by the Bulgarians. Of their number, 15,000 were ordered by the Germans to make their way to Central Greece. The remaining 50,000 persons were left homeless and starving outside Salonica, being forbidden to stay in the towns of Central Macedonia.
During September and October, 1941, the Bulgarians deported to Bulgaria among others, the
following numbers of inhabitants from various villages: 20 from Protostani, 8 from Choriste, 7 from Kokkinogheia, 12 from Platanion, 5 from Photoleivos, 9 from Pyrgos, 10 from Xirotanion, 11 from Perithorion, 13 from Kyrgheia, 9 from Kalabaka, as also 15 from the hamlet of Doxato.
On September 29, 1941, the town of Alistrati was bombed and machine-gunned by Bulgarian airplanes. Many of the inhabitants were killed; the remainder fled to the town, terror stricken. According to the admission of a German employee of the jurgenfahl Tobacco Company, the victims numbered 3,500 men and women, and on a journey made two days after the massacre, from Alistrati to Protostani, his car was passing over corpses in the roadway.
During the same period, in September 1941, a whole district, comprising the villages of Minare, Photoleivos, Sylandri, Kalos Agros, Protostani, was being burned by the Bulgarians. The inhabitants were robbed, tortured and murdered.
On October, 1941, in Photoleivos, the Bulgarians burnt to the ground the Caucasian quarter of the village, the only one to survive from a previous act of terrorism.
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