Macedonia by N. Martis - 3

MACEDONIA by Nikolaos Martis - 3

His Holiness Pope John Paul, at Methodius' tomb in Czechoslovakia on April 22 1990, declared that these two is apostolic monks of Thessaloniki in Macedonia had blazed the trail for the Greek and Byzantine tradition in Europe ant it was to them that the Slavs owed their Christianity. In an encyclical in 1980, John Paul had already pronounced "the Greek brothers" Cyril and Methodius "divine patrons of Europe" (see Document No 19).

Skopjan historians and politicians have had the audacity ever since 1944 - and more recently in the FYROM's school textbooks printed for 1992-93 - to claim that the ancient Macedonians, Alexander the Great, the Prolemies, and Cyril and Methodius were not Greeks, indirectly claiming for themselves links with the great deeds of the Macedonian personalities as cited above. (see Document No 5)

Such allegations which undermine the very foundations of contemporary civilization, are offensive not only to the Greek people, but to anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of history, to any honest person cherishing truth.

Macedonia is the home of the unique monastic community of Mount Athos, which was founded in AD 863. This ark of Hellenism and the Orthodox Christian faith is represented by twenty principal monasteries, 121 Skites (lesser monastic establishments), 1,700 buildings, 100,000 m2 of frescoed surfaces, 15,000 icons and 15,000 manuscripts both illustrated (Martis The falsification of Macedonian History)

To recognize the people of FYROM as "Macedonians", given their claim that the ancient Macedonians, Alexander, the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, and even Cyril and Methodius were not Greeks, would lead to such absurdities as, for instance:

1. Should we consider not Greek but Slav the Macedonian Former President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr. Constantine Karamanlis, and some three million Greek Macedonians throughout the world, who are proud to bear, as Greeks, the Macedonian name?
2. Should we give a new name to the Hellenistic Period (336-30 BC) and, thencefore, call it the FYROMian Period?
3. Should we "slavicise" in our history books the Macedonian Ptolemy I (who built the Library of Alexandria and preserved the works of the ancient Greek philosophers for posterity), Ptolemy II (who translated the Bible into Greek), and Ptolemy V (whose vow on the Rosetta stone, now preserved in the British Museum, is in Greek, Egyptian and hieroglyphics)?
4. Should more credence be given to Skopje's distorters of history than to the Old and New Testament texts and the works of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish writers who identify the Macedonians as Greeks?
5. How should we identify the Macedonian masses who watched Greek comedies tragedies and- presented in the Greek language, of course, in Macedonia's ancient theaters at Dion, Vergina, Philippi, and Thassos. Were they FYROMians, i.e. new style "Macedonians"?
6. Was the "man of Macedonia" who appeared in AD 50 to St. Paul in a vision in Troy in Asia Minor and spoke to him in Greek (acts 16:9) not a Greek?
7. Are St. Paul and Silas - who, as we are told in Acts 17:4, 12, en- Intered Greek men and women in Thessaloniki and Beroea - to be contradicted?
8. Is more credence to be given to Skopje than to three Popes who categorically stated that St. Cyril and Methodius were Greeks, i.e. 1. (ACTA) PIUS p.p.xi, 13.2.1927, 2. (ACTA) IOANNIS p.p.xxiii, 11.05.1963 and 3. Pope John Paul, who, since 1980, has repeatedly confirmed, it despite Skopje's claim of ethnic ownership of these two famous Greek Byzantine personalities? Is Mr. Gligorov to be condoned for his unseemly conduct in attempting to mislead world opinion from the United Nations rostrum with his statement that "Christianity was the Macedonian people's gift to the Slavs"? (see Document No 20). I have already cited that in both the Epistola Enciclica and in 1990 the Pope himself declared in Moravia that if the Slavs became Christians they owed it to the two Greek monks from Thessaloniki.
9. When the Romans minted coins bearing the name "Macedonia", with Greek lettering and Macedonian emblems, were they influenced in doing this by the non-Greek ancestors of FYROM?
10. The very fact that the ancient Greek gods were perceived by ancient Greeks to have their home on the Macedonian Mount Olympus laughs to scorn the claim of FYROM' politicians and authors that the ethnic boundaries of their pseudo-Macedonian nation extend to the top of Mount Olympus. Should we deduce that the identity of the Greek "12 Gods" run the risk of being appropriated by the authorities of the new "Macedonian Republic of Skopje"?
11. The Macedonian language: Skopje's claim that the ancient Macedonians' language was not Greek is preposterous. The National Research Center in Athens has collected and published 5,000 Greek inscriptions from Macedonia. We challenge Mr. Gligorov and all those who thoughtlessly accept Tito's fabrication of a "Macedonian language" to produce just one inscription in this supposed ancient "Macedonian, non-Greek" tongue- and we will give them the name of Macedonia.

The Slavic dialect spoken in Central and Western Macedonia (Northern Greece) is an ancient Greek language. It contains 1164 Homeric words. Due to the long coexistence of Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians, this dialect has been enriched with Bulgarian words and endings and has nothing to do with the so-called "Macedonian language" invented in 1944-45, which is a mixture of the Bulgarian and the Serbo-Croatian languages.

After 1913 whilst Greece and Bulgaria exchanged their nationals (96,000 Bulgarians and 46,000 Greeks were exchanged) the same was not done for Serbia which retained its Bulgarian nationals, changed their names (ending of ITS) and obliged their children to be taught Serbian at school.

The endeavor however of the Serbs to make Serbs out of the Bulgarians was not successful as is deduced from the events related below:

In 1941 when Hitler's army entered Skopje, there were thousands of Bulgarian flags there to greet them and the German army was welcome as liberators. King Boris of Bulgaria was received in 1942 in Skopje as a liberator. The Communist Part of Skopje left the C.P. of Yugoslavia and joined the Bulgarian Communist Party, and Western literature was read in Skopje in the Bulgarian language. The testimony of the American Henry Morgenthau is also of great significance. Serving in Greece between 1925 and 1926 as President of the Committee on Refugees for the Community of Nations, he wrote -in his book "I was Sent to Athens" and "When the Turks and the Bulgarians left, Macedonia remained a purely Greek region" Then, as now, on the northern borders of Macedonia there were inhabitants speaking a local Slavic dialect alongside the Greek language. These people were, and still are, Greeks.

The case of Skopje is unprecedented in the annals of world history. Having stolen the name "Macedonia" and appropriated ancient and Medieval Greek Macedonian History and civilization, they have turned to usurping everything Macedonian, i.e. deriving from Macedonia. Thus:

a. They claim that Alexander the Great was not Greek. Besides all other documentation, it should suffice to cite the Old Testament sources:

- Daniel's prophecy (chapter VIII, par. 20-21) "The Goat" Greek king will defeat the "Ram" Persian king.
- The book of Macabees A, in which "Alexander is identified as the Greek king in Daniel's prophecy".
- Talmud refers "Alexander, the Macedonian king of Greece".

b. They claim that the Bulgarian Czar Samuel was a "Macedonian". Byzantine sources called the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who defeated him, as "the Bulgar slayer" not "Macedon slayer" nor "FYROM- slayer".
c. They claim that the Iliden uprising of 1903 was a revolt of "Macedonians" against the Turks. In every country's archives, and in the reports of the four Consuls and vice-consuls (British, French, Austrian and USA) in Monastir (now Bitola) and Thessaloniki in 1903, it is described as a revolt by Bulgarian Comitadjis. (see Document No 21, Photocopies of these reports that are connected with the Iliden Affair) Seventy original issues of them are kept in microfilm at the Museum of "Macedonian Struggles" in Thessaloniki.
d. In 1986 they deceived the Vatican by gaining permission to hold, at the Vatican, an exhibition of "Macedonian" icons -which were in fact Greek Byzantine icons. Later a Vatican spokesman stated that they had been "tricked by Skopje"
e. In June 1989 they deceived the Russians by putting on an exhibition in Moscow of fourth to sixth century "Macedonian" terracottas. The inscriptions were all in Greek.
f. In 1990 Skopje translated into the "Macedonian language" a Papal encyclical, which was issued in 1985 in Latin and French. The encyclical - in Macedonian language was subsequently passed off, as if it were issued by the Vatican Press, thus recognizing the "Macedonian Language".
g. Another example of falsification of History is the case of participation of Alexander A in the Olympic Games. In a Text of the Skopjans is stated that "In the 5 c. B.C., Herodotus wrote that the Greeks refused to take part in the Olympic Games proposed by Alexander, on the grounds that the Macedonians were racially of a different origin"

They are purposely hiding the next paragraph of Herodotus text, which states; "But Alexander proving himself to be an Argive, he was judged to be a Greek. So he contended in the furlong race and an a dead heat for the first place". Herodotus V 22,2 (Loeb. A. d. Godley).

h. Besides King Alexander the A' of Macedon, other Ten Macedonians, among which a woman called Belistiche (see Document No 22), also participated and were victorious in the ancient Olympic Games. As it is known, these games were open only to athletes of Greek origin.
i. FYROM writers and politicians willfully claim that the Treaty of Bucharest, which ended the Balkan War of 1912-13, divided Macedonia in 1913 and subjugated it under new rulers: the Greeks, the Bulgarians and the Serbs. Under Ottoman rule (1450-1912) there was no administrative district called Macedonia, the region was divided up into sanjaks and vilayets.

The treaties of 1913, which fixed the Greek Bulgarian and Greek - Serbian borders, make no mention whatsoever of the word "Macedonia". The truth is that Macedonia was liberated after five centuries of Ottoman rule. Greek Macedonia, which by historical coincidence, more or less extended over the regions of the ancient Macedonian Kingdom, became part of modern Greece. The maps published between 1913 and 1944 refer to Macedonia only as part of Greece. (see Document No 23)

Skopje never belonged to ancient Macedonia (see Document No 24, maps)

In ancient times Skopje was the capital of Dardania. During the era of the Turkish occupation, Skopje was the capital of the Vilaeti of Kossovo until 1912 and the capital of the administrative district of Vardar in the period 1913-1944.

The list of their fraudulent assertions is endless.

Macedonia is a non ordinary region. According to the ancient historian Polybius (History IX 35.2), Macedonia was the Greeks' bastion against the Barbarians. A guide to Thessaloniki written by German archaeologists and historians for the occupying forces of 1941-45 calls the city a "bulwark of the Greeks ever since the third century AD".

The Greek presence and influence in Macedonia were crucial not only in antiquity and the Hellenistic period; but also in the Roman, Byzantine and Turkish periods.

In Thessaloniki -- "And that city (Thessaloniki) is the metropolis of what is now Macedonia " Strabo, VII, Frg. 21 (Loeb, H. L, Jones) -- many typical examples of Byzantine architecture from the fifth to the fourteenth century are still functioning even today.

Vassiliev (E. Vassiliev, The History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 863) says that "in the fourteenth century, on the eve of its ultimate destruction by the Turks, Greece concentrated its intellectual activity in Thessaloniki to demonstrate its last splendid blaze"

In this century Macedonia has seen:

1. From 1903 to 1908 the Macedonian Struggle between the Greeks and the Bulgarians.
2. In 1912-1913 two Balkan Wars.
3. In 1916-1917 the First World War's famous Front, created in Thessaloniki

During the Second World War, Greece also played a decisive part in the presentation of democracy no less than three times:

1. In October 1940 it was from the territories of Macedonia and Epirus that Greece foiled the Fascist threat, gained the first victory, and, as Noel Baker said, prevented the Axis Powers from winning the War there and then.
2. In February 1941, when Anthony Eden (the British foreign Minister) told the Greek Prime Minister that Turkey and Yugoslavia refused to fight against Hitler's Germany, the Greek Prime Minister retorted that Greece would fight Germany alone.

The Greeks heroic struggle along the fortified positions of Macedonia and Thrace, and the battles waged by Greeks, Britons, Australians and New Zealanders in central Macedonia and later on Crete, with the aid and support of the Cretan people, delayed Hitler's assault on Soviet Russia by two and a half months, with the result that the initial German victory in the Soviet Union was transformed into a humiliating defeat. The above Greek struggle was praised by Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, General De Gaulle and Moscow. (see Document No 25)

Greece suffered more human losses per head of population that any other nation, not to mention incalculable material damage. Greece's losses, as recorded in Peace and Justice, amounted to 8% of the population, in contrast to the 3% loss suffered by the Soviet Union. (see Document No 26)

3. Between 1946-1949, Greece was plunged into a disastrous civil war, which Stalin and Tito had fomented with the sole purpose of taking Macedonia away from Greece, and making it part of the Republic of Skopje. Macedonia's salvation then was paid for by the money of the American Taxpayer and the blood of the Greek People.

Had Macedonia been lost then, the Eastern Alliance would have gained control on the North Aegean and the consequences for the struggle of the World's democracies would have been harsh indeed.

As President Bush observed in the Greek Parliament in 1991, it was Greece which blocked Soviet expansionism.

It is ironic that Mr. Gligorof should be seeking to achieve by deceit what his predecessors failed to achieve through wars, slaughter and persecution of the Greeks of Macedonia.

In conclusion, I wish to express my hope that the falsification perpetrated by the politicians and historians of FYROM will not endure for long. History will not condone it for ever. Scientists and scholars have a duty to reveal the truth.

My conviction that the international community to which this essay is addressed will not allow the refutation of history, is furthermore justified by the fact that three great universities in the United States, have expressed their interest in examining the Historical facts related to Macedonia. (see Document No 27).

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
YALE UNIVERSITY

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