Sklithro–Zelenich in World War II (1940–1945)

The years of the Second World War remain among the most difficult and defining in the memory of Sklithro–Zelenich. For the people of the village, the war was not experienced as a simple story of occupation and resistance, nor as a sequence of military events alone. It was lived as a time of uncertainty, pressure, fear, and difficult choices—when identity, survival, and belonging were constantly tested.

Like many villages in Western Macedonia, Sklithro–Zelenich entered the 1940s already under strain. The interwar years had been economically hard. Crop yields were inconsistent, imported goods were expensive, taxes were heavy, and many families depended on seasonal work in the cities or migrant labour abroad. At the same time, the village lived under increasing political and cultural pressure. By the 1930s, and especially after the Metaxas dictatorship began in 1936, the Greek state intensified its efforts to suppress the Macedonian language and identity. Speaking Macedonian in public could bring fines, beatings, or humiliation. Schoolchildren were punished for using their mother tongue, even in play. Officials and police monitored villages closely, while communities learned to live, as elders later recalled, with “two tongues”: Macedonian inside the home and among trusted neighbours, Greek whenever authority approached.

Yet village life continued. Daily rhythms still followed the agricultural cycle. Songs, wedding customs, lullabies, laments, church feasts, and family obligations bound people together. The Asia Minor refugees who had settled in the village after 1923 had, by 1940, become part of village life through shared work, hardship, neighbourly ties, and, over time, kinship itself. Economically strained and politically pressured, Sklithro–Zelenich entered the war vulnerable yet still held together by a strong communal ethic. This pre-war world—marked by repression, endurance, and quiet continuity—shaped how the village would respond once war arrived. The broader regional pattern was similar: Western Macedonia entered the occupation already carrying the effects of earlier divisions, state pressure, and unresolved tensions around language and identity.

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS & VULNERABILITY BEFORE THE WAR

The interwar years were economically difficult. Crop yields were inconsistent. Imported goods were expensive. Government taxes were heavy. Many families relied on seasonal work in cities or migrant labour abroad. By 1939, the threat of war loomed over an already strained economy.

Young men felt the pressure acutely. Many had served in the Greek army during the 1930s, experiencing discrimination based on language or origin. When mobilization orders came in October 1940, Macedonian villagers marched to the front with mixed feelings—some resigned, some bitter, all uncertain about what awaited them.

THE VILLAGE ON THE EVE OF WAR

On the last calm evenings before the Italian invasion, elders remembered a stillness that felt unnatural. “The dogs barked differently,” one recalled. Rumours spread of mobilization, of Italian advances, of reservists being called to Florina. The village priest held special prayers. Families prepared bread, wool clothing, and talismans for sons heading to the front. Women wept quietly at night. Men tried to reassure them, though they too were afraid. It was the last breath before five years of fear, violence, hunger, resistance, and moral testing that would shape an entire generation.

On the eve of the Second World War, Sklithro—known to its people as Zelenich—was a Macedonian-speaking village living under the tightening grip of Greek nation-building. By the 1930s, and especially after the Metaxas dictatorship began in 1936, the state intensified efforts to suppress the Macedonian language and identity. Officials visited villages regularly to enforce bans; speaking Macedonian in public could lead to fines or beatings. Teachers punished schoolchildren for using their dialect, even during play, while police kept lists of families labelled “Slavophones, Bulgarians but, never Macedonians.”

Under this pressure, villagers learned to live with what elders called “two tongues”: Macedonian inside the home and among trusted neighbours, Greek whenever an outsider approached. Songs, wedding rituals, lullabies, and funeral laments continued quietly in the dialect, preserving identity in the private sphere even as the public sphere demanded silence.

Daily life still followed the agricultural cycle, and traditions bound families together in ways that would later prove crucial. The Asia Minor refugees settled in the village after 1923 were, by 1940, fully integrated through shared work and hardship. At the same time, small, clandestine expressions of Macedonian political awareness began to circulate, affirming a distinct identity denied by the state.

Economically strained and politically pressured, the village entered 1940 vulnerable yet unified. Men mobilized for the front with mixed feelings born from discrimination during earlier army service, while families prepared quietly for what was coming. This interwar foundation—resilience under repression, cultural continuity, and a strong communal ethic—shaped how Sklithro-Zelenich would respond to the war’s demands once the fighting reached its doorstep.

THE 1940-1943: WAR ARRIVES IN SKLITHRO-ZELENICH

The years 1940 to 1943 transformed Sklithro-Zelenich from a quiet agricultural community into a village living under conditions of fear, hunger, violence, and moral testing. These years created the foundations of the village’s defensive stance and its refusal to surrender to any faction.

During the Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1944), the Macedonian-speaking population found itself trapped between foreign occupiers, competing Greek resistance groups, and nationalist agendas that sought either to assimilate, expel, or use them as pawns. The region was carved up: eastern and central Macedonia were annexed by Bulgaria, while western Macedonia (Florina, Kastoria, Edessa) and Epirus fell under German and Italian control.

In the Bulgarian-occupied zones, a harsh campaign of Bulgarization was undertaken. Schools, churches, and administration were switched into Bulgarian, and locals were pressured to declare themselves Bulgarians. At first, some welcomed the Bulgarians as liberators from Greek repression, but enthusiasm collapsed as forced conscription, requisitioning, and brutality set in. Entire villages were punished for showing pro-Greek sympathies, and thousands fled or were deported across the border.

Macedonians in Greece were thus not passive victims but active participants in the anti-fascist struggle, fighting on two fronts: against the Axis occupiers and against their own state’s denial of their existence. Greece used Macedonians to legitimize a Greek national narrative, by framing them as proof of “Greek Macedonia.

THE ITALIAN INVASION OF GREECE (28 OCTOBER 1940)

Italy’s invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940 marked the first rupture in the wartime life of Sklithro–Zelenich. At dawn, church bells across Greece rang as the Metaxas government called men to arms. In the village, the news spread by word of mouth. Men gathered in the square while families packed bread, salted cheese, wool socks, and small tokens of protection. Macedonian-speaking conscripts marched north toward Florina and from there to the Albanian front. Many had already served in the Greek army during the 1930s and knew the discrimination they might face there. Commanders mocked their language, reduced it to a dialect, or questioned their loyalty. Still, they marched.

CONDITIONS ON THE ALBANIAN FRONT

The Albanian front was remembered as a frozen nightmare. Soldiers slept in ice-crusted trenches. Frostbite claimed fingers, toes, and faces. Snow covered entire units. Supplies often failed to arrive. Some Macedonian soldiers wrote home saying they felt they were dying for a state that did not recognize them. In village memory, one episode came to stand for the emotional burden of that winter: the story of the five deserters.

Oral Testimony: Wartime Memory in Sklithro-Zelenich, Western Macedonia, 1940–1945 (Anonymous Informant, 2025)

This oral history, recorded in October 2025 with a male informant from Sklithro- Zelenich, Western Macedonia, documents the profound upheavals experienced by the village between 1940 and 1945. The testimony—blending Macedonian dialect expressions, childhood memories, and community lore—offers an intimate reconstruction of survival during the Italian and German occupations. Edited for clarity and academic cohesion, it preserves the emotional texture and moral depth of village memory during the Second World War.

THE ITALIAN FRONT & THE FIVE DESERTERS

Italy’s invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940 marked the first rupture of the village’s wartime experience. The thunder of artillery from the Albanian frontier could be heard across the valley. As the informant recalled his grandfather saying in Macedonian,

“Bojo sa zafati”—“the battle has begun” (Anonymous Informant, 2025).

Many young Macedonian men from Sklithro-Zlenich were conscripted into the Greek army and sent to the Albanian front. Among them were five men who soon reached a breaking point. Exhausted, starving, half-frozen—abandoned their posts after weeks of combat. They moved at night, hiding in ravines, following familiar mountain paths back toward Western Macedonia. When they reached Sklithro-Zelenich, they hid in a barn, terrified as desertion meant immediate execution.

The man who discovered them was Yani Tsesmegis. His decision would remain one of the defining moral episodes of village memory. Yani understood the danger to the whole village if the deserters were found, but he also saw their desperation. He agreed to help them on one condition: they had to return to the front and avoid bringing destruction upon the community. To save their lives, he disguised three of them in women’s clothing—scarves, long skirts, and shawls—and under cover of darkness escorted them through the mountains, avoiding Greek patrols, until he returned them to their unit. They survived.

The remaining two refused to go back. Instead they fled toward the Yugoslav border and never returned to the village. Their departure remained an open wound in communal memory—one more example of how the war could split lives permanently. As one informant later explained, they believed they were being sent to die for a country that did not even call them its own. In this early episode, the war revealed what it would continue to demand from Sklithro–Zelenich: impossible choices made between fear, conscience, and survival.

“They said they were being sent to die for a country that didn’t even call them its own.”

This sentiment, echoed later by other families, represents one of the earliest acts of quiet defiance within Sklithro-Zelenich, revealing the emotional burden of Macedonians fighting in a national army that not only failed to recognize them as Macedonians but insisted upon erasing their language, identity, and communal distinctiveness. The episode epitomizes the profound moral and psychological complexity faced by conscripted Macedonians, while also highlighting the decisive role of local leadership—embodied in figures such as Yani Tsesmegis—in guiding the village through moments of crisis and safeguarding the survival of its people.

THE GERMAN INVASION (APRIL 1941)

By spring 1941, the war changed form. German forces entered Greece, and occupation followed. Western Macedonia was divided between occupation zones: parts of the region fell under Italian control, others under German authority. The village’s world narrowed under occupation. Movement was restricted, food became scarce, and the ordinary security of village life eroded. The occupying powers did not create all local divisions, but they exploited existing ones, as they did across the wider region. In Western Macedonia, prewar social, political, and linguistic tensions deepened under occupation and became part of a fractured wartime landscape.

The Italians briefly established a camp in Gornite Levidia, the high ground above Sklithro–Zelenich, where soldiers hunted turtles and foraged in desperation—small details that imprinted themselves on young eyes. When Italy capitulated in 1943, the Germans replaced them. Their first entry into the village ended in tragedy.

THE KILLING OF THE BELL-TOWER BOY

The arrival of the Germans was first sensed as a distant vibration, the low sound of vehicles approaching along the road east of Tserna Voda, “Black Water.” By then, everyone in the village understood what such a sound meant. Giogi Poulios, a young boy entrusted with keeping watch, was sent up the church bell tower to warn the village if danger approached. When the first vehicles came into view, he did as he had been taught. He pulled the rope and rang the warning: ding, ding, ding, ding, ding—the clear, urgent pattern every villager recognized as the signal for danger.

The Germans, hearing the bell and assuming it was meant to alert partisans, fired. The ringing stopped abruptly. “He was dead before he could climb down,” the informant recalled, his voice steady but marked by the passage of many years.

Giogi’s sisters, Vassa and Kata, hurried to the tower. Climbing the worn stone steps, they found their brother beside the bell and carried his bloodied body down. “My father had baptized him,” one informant later recalled, the memory still close decades afterward. In the years that followed, the loss remained an open wound for the family. His mother often said she would not leave this world until a grandson born to one of her daughters was given her son’s name. Years later, her daughter Marika kept that promise and named her first son Giogi–Georgo.

“My father had baptized him,” the informant added, the memory still close despite the decades.

In the years that followed, the loss remained an open wound for the family. His mother, especially, carried it heavily; she would often say she would not leave this world until a grandson—born to one of her daughters—was given her son’s name. Her youngest daughter, Marika, quietly held onto that promise. Years later, when her first son was born, she named him Giogi–Georgo, honouring both her brother and her mother’s wish.

Immediately after Giogi was shot, German troops saw a local shepherd, Dimitrios Petsopoulos, trying to flee toward Galabnik Rock. Interpreting any movement as resistance or escape, they opened fire and killed him on the slope below. After that day, the bell tower took on a different meaning in the life of the village. Its tones became part of a shared language of survival: dung…dung…dung for funerals, ding-ding-ding-ding to gather the community, and long continuous ringing whenever danger approached. The church bell was no longer only a call to worship; it had become one of the village’s lifelines.

OCCUPATION, COLLABORATION, RESISTANCE

Daily life under occupation was marked by hunger, fear, and constant adjustment. There were shortages of food and goods, travel was limited, and survival depended heavily on what families could produce, store, exchange, or secure through trusted relationships. But beyond material hardship, something deeper changed. People spoke more quietly. Trust became more fragile. Decisions carried greater risk.

Soon after the occupation began, the broader wartime context across Western Macedonia grew harsher. During the Axis occupation, Macedonian-speaking populations in Greek Macedonia were trapped between German and Italian occupiers, Bulgarian ambitions, competing Greek resistance groups, and the unresolved legacy of interwar repression. In some areas, villagers aligned with whichever force promised protection or recognition. In others, local people tried to hold themselves apart. EAM and ELAS gained support in part because they offered greater equality and recognition of linguistic difference, and in 1943 SNOF was formed to organize Slavophone participation in the anti-fascist struggle. Yet for most villages—including Sklithro–Zelenich—these currents were not abstract political questions. They entered daily life as risk, pressure, rumour, recruitment, suspicion, and fear. Across the region, internal divisions grew sharper as the occupation continued.

RAID FROM LEHOVO

Soon after occupation, armed men from the nearby Lehovo, an Arvanite-speaking Greek village raided Sklithro-Zelenich. They looted several homes and plundered the Karapalidis and Gogi stores, taking flour, sugar, tools, clothing—anything of value.

“They emptied Gogi’s, Karapalio’s, and even our little store,” the informant remembered.

This betrayal struck deeply, for relations with Lehovo had long been strained by political and ethnic divides. Macedonian villagers felt exposed and vulnerable. Fearful and defenceless, the villagers appealed to the Germans for protection.

ZELENICH REQUESTS PROTECTION — AND THE GERMAN RESPONSE

A delegation of Zelenicheni men went to the German garrison in Amyntaio  seeking protection from such raids. The German officer dismissed their plea:

“We cannot protect every village. If you want defence—take guns.”

This statement changed everything.

THE ARMING OF SKLITHRO-ZELENICH

A group of men travelled to Kailari (Ptolemaida) and secured Italian rifles, a machine gun, ammunition, and a British Bren machine gun that was prone to jamming and never worked. They placed the Italian machine gun in the church tower—the same tower where young Giogi Poulios had been killed, , transforming the church into the village’s defensive heart. Old Ottoman rifles were refurbished, bullets filed to fit older chambers.

“You could tell which gun was firing by its sound,” the informant recalled.

About twenty men formed a defensive militia. Their aim was not ideological conquest but protection: to defend the village against raids, reprisals, and forced political recruitment. According to village memory, they did not participate in raids against neighbouring villages or partisan units. This insistence on armed neutrality would later confuse and anger every faction—Germans, Greek partisans, EDES, and Ohrana alike. In a region where Macedonian-speaking populations were being courted, pressured, or punished by multiple forces, neutrality itself became suspect.

THE AETOS INCIDENT (1944)

One of the harshest blows in the surrounding region came on 28 March 1944, when the village of Aetos suffered a brutal German reprisal. German security forces swept through the area searching for resistance activity. Villagers were arrested, marched outside the settlement along the road toward Pedino, and shot in groups beside the main road. Two survived despite their wounds, but between eleven and thirteen were killed. Their deaths were entered in the local death register the next day, and the memorial erected later named thirteen victims from Aetos, Pedinos, Sitaria, and Nymfaio. News of such massacres spread quickly and deepened fear everywhere. For villages like Sklithro–Zelenich, Aetos was not a distant event. It was a warning of what could happen if armed power turned decisively against a community.

THE MADJIRI INCIDENT

The Germans had been informed—accurately or not—that ELAS collaborators were among the Asia Minor refugee families living in Sklithro–Zelenich. After the Aetos massacre, German troops entered the village and ordered all residents to gather in front of the school. There, the soldiers separated them: Macedonian locals on one side, Asia Minor refugees on the other.

Once the separation was complete, the Germans selected roughly fifty refugees—men and women—and marched them up to the north road (Jiiatos). With armed soldiers positioning themselves along the roadside, it became clear that the refugees were moments away from execution.

The village refused to accept it.

Elders Kuzi Tsilkas and John Tsougios stepped forward. They argued that the refugees had lived peacefully among them for twenty years, that they were part of the village, and that to kill them would destroy the moral fabric of the community. Varvara Frangos, one of the refugees, later recalled hearing every word. The Germans debated. Minutes felt like hours. Finally, they lowered their weapons and released the refugees.

The massacre was prevented, fifty lives were saved.

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Oral Testimonies

Participant A – John Tsougios (Interview, September 19, 2004)

In a 2004 interview, John Tsougios recounted standing with the Macedonian men at the schoolyard. He remembered telling the Bulgarian interpreter—clearly and without hesitation—that executing the refugees was unconscionable.

“If the Germans kill the refugees,” Tsougios told him, “they might as well slaughter the entire village.”

According to Tsougios, this statement caused visible hesitation among the Germans and initiated a discussion among their officers.

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Participant B – Kuzi Tsilkas (Reconstructed from Oral Accounts)

Multiple independent oral sources identify Kuzi Tsilkas as the principal figure who persuaded the Germans to abandon their plan. Speaking through the interpreter, Tsilkas described the refugees as “honest, hardworking people” trying to survive dire conditions.

He stressed that the refugee and Macedonian families had become intertwined—through shared labour, neighborly cooperation, and even intermarriage.

“These people are part of us,” he is remembered as saying. “To kill them is to destroy our families, our village.”

His calm reasoning appears to have weighed heavily on the German commander.

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Participant C – Varvara (Barbara) Frangos (Interview, May 30, 1993)

In 1993, Varvara Frangos, who was among those rounded up, provided firsthand confirmation of the event. She recalled being seized at gunpoint, marched to the top of the village road, and lined up with the men in front and women behind.

Because she had arrived in Macedonia at age six, she understood Macedonian well. She heard every word spoken by Tsilkas and Tsougios as they confronted the interpreter.

“Their bravery saved us,” she said. “I never forgot what they did.”

Her testimony powerfully validates the accounts of Tsilkas and Tsougios.

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Participant D – Jerry (Giri) Karapalidis (J. Karapalidis, personal communication, October 21, 2005)

In a letter to his cousin, Jerry recounts the lived experiences of a young Macedonian villager from Zelenich (Sklithro) during the turbulent years of the Metaxas dictatorship, the Second World War, and the early stages of the Greek Civil War. In his letter he remembered German reprisals as villagers were rounded up at gunpoint and lined along the road, threatened with execution if they did not reveal information about the resistance. No one spoke. After hours under the scorching sun, the soldiers released them—but the trauma remained. Jerry and a number of village boys hiding behind the stone walls of a house watched in terror.

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This was a defining moment. Sklithro-Zelenich showed that even under the harshest occupation, it would not surrender its moral principles. By 1943, Sklithro-Zelenich was a village transformed—armed yet committed to neutrality, traumatized yet united, threatened by all sides yet refusing to abandon its humanity. The events of 1940–1943 shaped everything that came next: the ELAS attack, the mortar tragedy, the retreat of the Germans, and the beginning of the civil conflict that followed.

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The years 1944 and 1945 were the most violent, chaotic, and emotionally devastating in Sklithro-Zelenich’s wartime experience. They marked the collapse of German authority, the rise of partisan and nationalist factions, the direct assault on the village by ELAS forces, the tragic explosion that killed several children, and the beginning of the political fragmentation that would lead Greece into civil war. This chapter integrates all testimonies and regional historical context into one continuous narrative.

THE RISE OF FEAR IN 1944

By 1943 and into 1944, Sklithro–Zelenich had become a village transformed—armed yet trying to remain neutral, traumatized yet still united, threatened by all sides yet unwilling to surrender its humanity. The years 1944 and 1945 would prove the most violent and emotionally devastating of the entire wartime experience. They marked the weakening of German authority, the rise of partisan and nationalist suspicion, the direct assault on the village by ELAS forces, the tragedy of the unexploded mortar, and the beginning of the political fragmentation that would carry Greece into civil war.

By early 1944, German power in Western Macedonia was visibly weakening. Supply lines were disrupted, morale was falling, and partisan activity in the surrounding mountains was increasing. At the same time, ELAS grew stronger in the hills around Sklithro–Zelenich, including around Nymfaio, known locally as Neveska. The village’s insistence on armed neutrality now made it suspect to everyone. ELAS believed its refusal to disarm hinted at collaboration or latent opposition. EDES viewed the village through the lens of Greek nationalist suspicion toward Slavophone communities. Ohrana figures saw the villagers as insufficiently compliant. The Germans suspected partisan ties. The village stood alone, judged from every direction.

THE ELAS ATTACK FROM NYMFAIO (NEVISKA)

In the summer of 1944, ELAS forces advanced toward Sklithro–Zelenich. Their objective was to force the surrender of the village’s weapons and bring the community under partisan control. The village defenders—about twenty men—took positions behind stone walls, on rooftops, and in the fortified bell tower. Fighting broke out at dusk. ELAS fighters opened fire from the tree line. Villagers answered with disciplined volleys from rifles, the Italian machine gun, and the unreliable Bren. The bell tower again became the centre of defence. Partisans launched mortars from the hillside above the village. One shell struck near the tower, scattering shrapnel in every direction.

Sterio, one of the defenders, was hit directly. His foot was blown off. His screams echoed across the square. Villagers dragged him to safety under fire.

Despite hours of combat, ELAS did not break into the village. Shortly before dawn, the attackers withdrew toward Nymfaio. Sklithro–Zelenich had held its ground, but the cost was deep. Families sheltering in cellars were terrified. Houses were damaged. The sense of being marked—politically and morally—intensified. By then, the village was no longer simply enduring the war; it was being judged by every side within it.

THE COST OF THE ATTACK

The defenders were exhausted. Homes were damaged. Fear gripped the families sheltering in cellars. But Sklithro-Zelenich’s unity had held. The ELAS attack proved the village’s defensive resolve, yet it also marked Sklithro-Zelenich for later political punishment.

EDES (National Republican Greek League), the dominant non-communist resistance group, was hostile to Macedonian aspirations. It depicted them as potential agents of Bulgaria or Yugoslavia and often targeted their villages with reprisals. For example, in 1943–44 EDES-aligned militias and British-supported nationalist bands raided parts of Kastoria and Florina districts, executing suspected SNOF sympathizers and burning homes.

German counter-insurgency campaigns added to the devastation: the villages of Kleisoura (April 1944) and Pyrgi (1944) were among those wiped out, with hundreds of civilians slaughtered, many of them Macedonian speakers accused of aiding partisans. These atrocities destroyed entire communities, forced mass flight into the mountains, and drove thousands of Macedonians to seek refuge in Yugoslav Macedonia, where Tito’s partisans welcomed them.

THE UNEXPLODED MORTAR AND THE DEATH OF THE CHILDREN

Then came one of the most heartbreaking moments in the history of Sklithro–Zelenich: the explosion of the unexploded mortar.

In the days after the attack, an unexploded shell was found half-buried near the road. The Germans brought it toward Izvoro and tried to detonate it by shooting at it, but failed. A group of boys later moved it under a walnut tree near a well-worn path. Not understanding the danger, they began to play with it. They rolled it. Then they jumped on it.

One informant, who had been present but left to go home for lunch, remembered hearing a tremendous blast just after reaching his house. He ran toward the sound and found the unimaginable. Several children had been killed instantly. The walnut tree had split in half, and the force of the explosion had thrown fragments into its branches above. Mothers ran barefoot into the road, crying out the names of their children. At the funerals, silence hung over the village, broken only by the cries of grieving parents.

Even decades later, elders remembered exactly where the children had fallen. This was one of the most emotionally devastating events in the village’s wartime memory. It embodied the cruel randomness of war: even after the battle had passed, danger remained in the ground itself.

BRITISH INTELLIGENCE VIEW OF WESTERN MACEDONIA, 1944 (Based on the report of Captain Patrick Hutchison Evans, British Communications Officer, March–October 1944)

By 1944, as German forces began withdrawing from Greece and the struggle for the country’s political future intensified, Western Macedonia stood at a dangerous crossroads. The region had already suffered three overlapping layers of pressure—the Metaxas dictatorship with its harsh assimilationist policies, the brutalities and suspicion of the Axis occupation, and the rising internal tensions that would soon erupt into civil war. Into this landscape arrived Captain Patrick Hutchison Evans, a British communications officer stationed for nine months in the Lerin (Florina) and Kostur (Kastoria) districts. His confidential report to the British Foreign Office remains one of the clearest contemporary testimonies about the people of the region during the final phase of the war.

Evans observed that the population of Western Macedonia was neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but Macedonian, possessing its own language, customs, and cultural life. This identity was obvious to anyone living among the villages, yet it was precisely this reality that Greek officials insisted on denying—even during the war itself. Evans highlighted that the official Greek position, which claimed that no Slavic-speaking minority existed within Greece, was not a factual assessment but a political construction rooted in the Megali Idea, the longstanding ideology of national homogenization. The Greek state, he wrote, had deliberately cultivated a false impression—both domestically and internationally—that the Macedonian population was either nonexistent or merely “Greek peasants who happened to speak a dialect.” This denial shaped how Greek authorities treated villagers throughout the occupation, reinforcing a climate of hostility, mistrust, and cultural erasure.

Accompanying diplomatic correspondence from the British Embassy in Athens supported Evans’ conclusions. British officials acknowledged that the Macedonian population in the region was far larger than Greek census figures claimed and that its political aspirations were not aligned with Bulgaria, as Greek authorities often alleged, but with the broader idea of an eventual independent Macedonia. These reports also noted that Macedonians in Greek-held territory understood themselves as a single people artificially divided by the borders of Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria after 1913.

Yet Evans also documented something crucial: the deep suspicion with which many Macedonian-speaking villagers viewed the British themselves. Despite being Allied officers fighting against the Axis, British personnel were often associated in the minds of villagers with the Greek monarchy and with the repressive institutions that had dominated their lives during the Metaxas dictatorship. The language bans, school punishments, forced Hellenization measures, and police surveillance of “Slavophone” families had not disappeared during the German occupation; they had continued under collaborationist authorities. To many villagers, Allied uniforms did not guarantee safety or recognition—only the looming return of a state that had long persecuted them.

This wary attitude toward British officers becomes clearer when placed within the broader wartime context. Even before German forces withdrew, Macedonian villagers had endured profound repression from Greek authorities, nationalist groups, and local security forces. The Greek journalist Kondos, writing in Rizospastis, described with disturbing detail how Macedonians in the Lerin and Kostur regions were subjected to beatings, torture, humiliation, and violent suppression of their language. Women, children, and elders were often targeted. These accounts, though spanning both the interwar and wartime periods, show that the machinery of Greek repression remained fully active throughout the occupation. In many villages, German oversight did not replace Greek hostility—it merely added another layer to it.

This environment explains the profound mistrust Evans encountered. For Macedonian-speaking villagers, German occupation did not erase earlier trauma, and liberation did not promise protection. Instead, each shift in power—Metaxas, Germans, partisans, British advisors—felt like yet another change in the uniform of those who would dictate their fate. Local people learned quickly that the danger might not end with the departure of the Germans; it might, in fact, return in familiar forms, backed by Allied legitimacy.

By the time Evans filed his report, Western Macedonia was a region balancing between past repression and future conflict. His observations captured a population struggling to survive not only the military violence of WWII but the deeper struggle for recognition and existence. The villagers’ quiet, persistent Macedonian identity—denied by the state, pressured by occupiers, and misunderstood by outsiders—formed the unspoken heart of the region’s wartime experience. Evans’ testimony, therefore, stands as one of the most honest assessments of what the Macedonian-speaking communities of Western Macedonia endured as the Second World War drew to a close and as the Greek Civil War loomed on the horizon.

By late 1944, Germany began withdrawing north through Kastoria and Florina. Their convoys passed near Sklithro-Zelenich, firing sporadically at suspected partisan hideouts. Villagers hid indoors for hours at a time. Rumours spread that the Germans would burn villages as they retreated. Some villages were burned. Sklithro-Zelenich was spared.

When the last German units passed, villagers emerged cautiously. But liberation did not bring safety. Instead, it ushered in a new period of uncertainty. Many Macedonian communities in Western Macedonia hoped that their wartime suffering and anti-fascist participation would lead to cultural recognition and greater equality but, instead faced reprisals from nationalist forces backed by the British.

The image below is the front page of the newspaper Φλογερά Νειάτα (“Flaming Youth”), the organ (official publication) of the Regional Councils of Florina–Kastoria of EPON (Ενιαία Πανελλαδική Οργάνωση Νέων), the youth wing of EAM, the major left-wing resistance movement during WWII. Date: 26 October 1944

This was printed just after the German withdrawal from Western Macedonia (mid-October 1944), during the chaotic liberation period when EPON/EAM was organizing civic life—schools, culture, local committees, and resistance to collaborators.

English Translation: UNITY IN THE STRUGGLE FOR FINAL VICTORY

United, the Greek and Slavomacedonian youth, within the anti-fascist ranks of EPON, draw from the inexhaustible strength of their land as they march toward the final victory. For the complete crushing of fascism. For progress and for a new culture. A culture of solidarity, cooperation, mutual help. In the darkest years of slavery, the youth carried the spirit of the people, preserved its consciousness, and kept its hopes alive. Their sacrifices, their suffering, their bloodshed—and the countless deeds of courage of anonymous young men and women—became the seeds from which new strength, new character, and new dignity grew in the youth of our land. The heroic struggles of the youth, the unity they achieved, the internal discipline and the fiery faith in their cause, are what ultimately guarantee the victory of the people and the liberation of the country. Today, the youth of Greece and Macedonian youth march side by side in perfect unity—proud, disciplined, filled with confidence in their mission. Within the hardest conditions, which tested their resolve and which raised them to the level that history demanded, they forged through countless battles and sacrifices an unbreakable unity. This unity—deep, genuine, and born through struggle—created their heroic tradition. It is this unity that the enemy feared most and tried to undermine through slander, lies, and terror. Yet the youth answered with even greater determination. The liberated villages and towns of Florina and Kastoria greet the youth’s achievements with joy. The youth’s organizations, with tireless efforts, work to strengthen democracy, culture, justice, and the rebirth of our land. Now is the moment for every young man and woman to reinforce this unity, to deepen the bonds forged in struggle, to intensify their effort so that nothing can hinder the march toward final victory.

EPON and the Youth of Western Macedonia, 1944: A Multilingual Resistance

The October 1944 issue of Φλογερά Νειάτα (“Flaming Youth”), the organ of the EPON councils of Florina and Kastoria, offers a vivid glimpse into the social and political atmosphere of Western Macedonia at the moment of German withdrawal. Its lead article, titled “Unity in the Struggle for the Final Victory,” is especially revealing for its explicit reference to both “Greek and Slavomacedonian youth.”

At a time when the Greek state officially denied the existence of a Slavic-speaking minority, EPON not only acknowledged this community but placed Macedonian-speaking youth at the heart of the anti-fascist struggle. This is entirely consistent with British reports from the same period, such as Captain Hutchison Evans’ dispatches, which described the local population as Macedonian in language and culture.

The article emphasizes the forging of unity through hardship: the suffering of the occupation years, the sacrifices of young men and women, and the shared resistance experience across linguistic lines. For many villages—including Sklithro-Zelenich—this represented the first structured political arena in which Macedonian-speaking youth participated as equals, without pressure to renounce their language or identity.

The vision presented is both ideological and practical. EPON called for cooperation, solidarity, mutual help, and “the creation of a new culture” after the war. In the newly liberated towns and villages, youth organizations immediately took on responsibilities: running literacy programs, organizing cultural evenings, repairing war damage, and supporting refugees and orphans.

Yet this moment of optimism was fragile. Within months, growing tensions between EAM/ELAS and emerging right-wing forces—combined with state suspicion toward Macedonian communities—plunged Western Macedonia back into turmoil. The unity celebrated in Φλογερά Νειάτα would soon be tested by partisan fragmentation, state repression, and the pressures that led many Macedonian-speaking youth into the Democratic Army of Greece during the Civil War.

Even so, the newspaper stands today as a rare and unambiguous wartime primary source documenting the presence, role, and recognition of Macedonian youth during the liberation period. It captures a fleeting historical moment when the dream of a shared democratic future—Greek and Macedonian together—still seemed possible.

THE RETURN OF THE GREEK STATE AND NEW PERSECUTIONS

Greek government forces, supported by British troops, returned to Western Macedonia. Immediately, Macedonian villages—including Sklithro-Zelenich—were viewed with suspicion. Armed neutrality during the occupation was interpreted as partisan sympathy or latent Bulgarianism.

Thousands of Macedonians were branded as collaborators or communists, subjected to executions, intimidation, or forced exile. The violence of the occupation years had not only destroyed property and taken lives but also reshaped political identities: what had been a suppressed minority under Greek rule became, by war’s end, a community identified with communism and separatism in the eyes of Greek nationalists. This perception set the stage for even greater persecution during the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), when the mass expulsion of tens of thousands of Macedonians would be carried out.

One of the most bitter injustices of this period was the arrest of Kuzi Tsilkas—the very man who had saved fifty refugees from execution. Instead of being honoured, he was imprisoned. His “crime” was simply his influence as a respected Macedonian elder, which authorities claimed made him a threat to national cohesion.

Villagers understood the message: Macedonian identity remained suspect and feared by the authorities..

THE SHADOW OF CIVIL WAR: The End of the War and the Uncertain Dawn (Western Macedonia & Sklithro-Zelenich)

By 1945, the guns of the Second World War finally fell silent, but peace did not return to Western Macedonia. Instead, the region stood on the threshold of yet another catastrophe. The political vacuum left in the wake of Axis withdrawal quickly filled with suspicion, reprisals, and competing visions for the future of Greece. For the Macedonian population—long targeted, mistrusted, and pressured to abandon their identity—the end of the war signalled not relief, but the beginning of an even more complex struggle.

Across Greece, accusations multiplied.

• The Greek state treated Macedonians as potential separatists, a “problem” to be controlled.
• Nationalist groups dismissed them as “Bulgarians,” amplifying hostility and violence.
• ELAS partisans, despite moments of cooperation, frequently questioned their reliability.
• British missions recorded instances of discrimination, noting the volatile atmosphere.
• Yugoslav advocacy for Macedonian rights only intensified Athenian paranoia.

Amid these cross-pressures, Macedonian communities were forced into impossible choices. Many young men and women joined the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG), hoping armed struggle might secure long-denied equality. Others fled north into Yugoslav Macedonia, seeking safety and recognition. Countless families were torn apart—some by allegiance, others by survival.

For Sklithro-Zelenich, the close of World War II did not bring calm. The village had already endured German occupation, partisan reprisals, raids from neighbouring villages, hunger, and unspeakable personal loss. Yet 1945 placed the community on the precipice of the Greek Civil War, a conflict that promised to be even more divisive and destructive than the war just survived.

The people of Sklithro-Zelenich emerged from World War II battered but unbroken—only to face a new era of pressure, fear, and uncertainty. The war had ended, but for the Macedonians of Western Macedonia, the struggle for dignity, identity, and survival was far from over.

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