Nicolas Martis

former Minister

MACEDONIA

Addressed to the international academic community

Documents of Ancient Greek, Hebrew and roman writers.
Excerpts for the Old and New Testament and other sources

Athens, April 1995



The so-called "Macedonian Question", is in fact a great political and historical fraud that was deliberately fabricated by the Communists in 1944 in order to wrest Greek Macedonia from Greece and absorb it into the Communist bloc, thus breaking up the West's eastern flank and gaining control of the north Aegean seacoast.

The political motives behind the creation of this spurious Republic have been rejected by: i) The U.S. Roosevelt Administration which was quick to assess the true motives for setting up a "Macedonian" State and issued clear directives denouncing it. This is an excerpt from a circular by Secretary of State Stettinius (See Document 1 Circular Airgram #868.014/26 Dec. 1944) "This Government considers talk of Macedonian "nation", Macedonian "Fatherland", or Macedonian "national consciousness" to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic nor political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece. The approved policy of this Government is to oppose any revival of the Macedonian issue as related to Greece".
ii) The Truman Administration, by means of the Truman Doctrine and the help of the American taxpayers, along with the sacrifices of the Greek people, the blood of hundreds of thousands of Greek dead and wounded, saved Greek Macedonia from the Communist threat.

President George Bush acknowledged these sacrifices before the Greek Parliament in 1991, by stating that Greece single handedly put a stop to Soviet expansionism at that terrible time.

iii) President Bill Clinton on October 2 1992, before the elections, confirming his predecessor's stance he stated: "The United States position must be clear. If the southernmost former Yugoslav Republic wishes to receive American recognition, it must first accept the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, satisfy its neighbors and the world community that its intentions are peaceful and abide by the European Community's decision which rejects the use of the name Macedonia. A Clinton Administration will stand by these principles and ensure that Greece's legitimate concerns are met".

iv) On June 19 1992, at a Managers Conference in Paris, Dr. Henry Kissinger made a statement about Greece's demand that Skopje should not be allowed to use the name "Macedonia". He said "I believe that Greece is right to object and I agree with Athens. The reason is that I know History which is not the case with most of the others including most in the Government and Administration in Washington. The strength of the Greek case is that of the History which must say that Athens have not used so far with success" (See Document No 2).

v) Newspapers of international repute, such as "The New York Times", espoused similar positions. Note, for example, the following article published on July 16 1946: "During the occupation... a combined effort was made to wrest Macedonia from Greece - an effort that allegedly continues, although in altered form... The main conspiratorial activity in Macedonia today appears to be directed from Skopje" (See Document No 3).
The Macedonian Question, is more than a mere squabble over a name. It is a well-designed scheme for annexing the northern Greek provinces of Macedonia and Thrace. It started during the inter-war period, by the decisions of the Comintern and the Balkan communist parties seeking to establish a united (Macedonian and Thracian) State. Subsequently it was Tito, in 1944, who tried to establish such a State within Yugoslavia. He changed the name of Southern Serbia (which had been known as Vardashka since 1913) to "Macedonia" and then proceeded to establish, out of the Slavs of the region (Bulgarians and Serbs), a new Slavic nation inappropriately called "Macedonian" (See Document No 4).


To transform this theoretical concept into a political reality TITO: i) Concocted in 1944 a "Macedonian government" as a first step to the setting up of a Socialist Republic of Macedonia".

ii) Dubbed the local Slavonic dialect "Macedonian language". A special committee worked for years to turn this dialect into the "official Macedonian language".

iii) In 1968 the "Macedonian Church" came into being irregularly, by a government coup. As a result, it was not recognized as a formal Church by any Orthodox Patriarchs or by the Vatican.

iv) In 1969, the "History of the Macedonian nation" was published. Any reference in the world's archives to Macedonia and to historical figures and historical events connected in any way with Macedonia over the millennia, was manipulated and forcibly given a "Macedonian (Slavic) identity".
Thus, politicians and historians collaborated: a) to usurp the name, the emblems, and the history of Macedonia;

b) to set in motion expansionist aspirations, by renaming Greek Macedonia as "Aegean Macedonia", i.e. part of a united Macedonia and issued maps limiting Greece's northern frontiers to Mount Olympus;


c) to allege the existence of a "Macedonian minority" in Greece.
Their theoretical basis for these claims was based on the assertion that: a) The ancient Macedonians, Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies, etc. were not Greeks (an allegation which is repeated in the recent FYROM's school textbooks for 1992-3). See also attached extracts from the book of Evangelos Kofos "The vision of Greater Macedonia" (See Document No 5).


b) After the arrival of Slavic tribes in the Balkans in the 6th century AD those Slavs, that managed to reach the Byzantine Provinces of Ancient Macedonia, intermarried with the local non-Greek Macedonians and thus they formed a new ethnic group, the "Slavo Macedonians" who subsequently were simply referred to as "Macedonians".
World history does not record a similar case of usurpation of a people's name and history by another group of people.


Lack of the slightest credibility on the part of the pseudo-Macedonian "nation" of Skopje is furthermore revealed by the single fact that Skopje's Bulgarians and Serbs discovered only after 1944 that back in the sixth century they had been transformed from Slavs into Macedonians.

To claim that the Ancient Macedonians were not Greeks, however, and to use the term "Slav" with reference to the creation of the "Macedonian nation" is a trick.

The "Macedonian Nation" does not, nor did it ever exist. The Macedonians were Greeks, they spoke the same language and worshipped the same gods (who were inhabiting the Macedonian mountain of Olympus) and performed the same sacrifices, in the same sanctuaries as all the other Greeks.

The Macedonians, together with the rest of Greeks, possess according to Herodotus, the kind and constituent element that composed a nation:
"And next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common and the likeness of our way of life " Herodotus, History VIII, 144,2 (Loeb, A.D. Godley) .

The Greek identity of the Ancient Macedonians and their name is attested, among other sources, by:
a) the Hebrew sources (the Bible, the book of Maccabees, the Talmud as well as the Jewish writers Josephus, Philo Judaeus and others (doc. 6, p. 44-45).

b) the New Testament:
c) works by various classical authors, including

Hesiod
Strabo
Herodotus
Helanicius

Polybius
Isocrates
and Titus Livius
Thucydides
and Arrian
d) the fact that the Macedonians took part in the Amphictyonies and the Olympic Games
e) the archaeological sites of Dion, Vergina, Pella, Beroea, Amphipolis, etc., which have yielded 70,000 finds and thousands of Greek inscriptions from Macedonia and the East (See the Kuwait inscriptions in Document No 7)
f) the four ancient theaters in Macedonia (at Dion, Vergina, Philippi, and Thassos). It is a well-known fact that only the ancient Greeks had theaters. The theater of Dion hosted the first performance (before an audience of Greek-speaking Macedonians, of course) of Euripides world-famous tragedy Bacchae, which he wrote at Pella of Macedonia. Euripides died and was buried in Macedonia
"Euripides himself went t' King Aschelausaus and lies buried in Macedonia" Pausanias, Attica II, 2 (Loeb, W. Jones);
g) as shown on a map published in the December 1 949 issue of the National Geographic Magazine, the Romans, who conquered Macedonia, considered it a Greek province. Indeed, in Roman times coins minted in Macedonia depicted ancient Macedonian symbols with Greek inscriptions. (See Document No 8)
h) A study by the German writer Sigrid Dull, concerning the gods that were worshipped during Roman times in ancient Macedonia which was occupied by the Serbs and the Bulgarians in 1913, reveals that the gods that were worshipped were gods of Olympus. The German author writes further that all the inscriptions are Greek and that seldom does one encounter idioms that are not encountered in the rest are no inscriptions in any other language except in Greek and Latin in ancient Macedonia which was occupied in 1913 by Serbia and Bulgaria.


The Greek Macedonians played a major part in the history of Greece, of Europe, and of the whole world during the Hellenistic period (336-30 BC).

Alexander, the King and commander-in-chief of all the Greeks, crushed the despotic Persian Empire. He propagated Hellenic culture (as Plutarch tells us) and, assisted by his successors, the diadochi, established Greek as the universal language, thus changing the whole course of history.

It is deliberately deceitful to use the term "Slav", for the word "Slav" means "race". For centuries, the only Slavs known in the Balkans were the Croats, the Slovenes, the Serbs, and the Bulgarians. Until 1944, the only Slavs living in the territory of the FYROM were either Serbs or Bulgarians, as historical references and statistics attest (see Document No 9) Since they could not, in 1944, transform Serbs and Bulgarians into "Macedonians", Skopje's historians resorted to the term "Slav".

Historical accounts, statistics and wartime events also, confirm that the only Slavs in the region were Serbs and Bulgarians. The Macedonian Struggle (1903-1908) was waged by Greeks and Bulgarians; the first Balkan War (1912) was fought by Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks against the Turks; the second Balkan War (1913) was fought by Serbs, Greeks, Rumanians, and Montenegrins against the Bulgarians; and during the First World War British, French, Serbian, and Greek troops clashed in this region with Germans, Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians. There were no "Macedonians" fighting on either side.

The deliberately misleading use of the terms "Macedonians" and "Slavs" is exposed by two irrefutable Turkish documents. One is a population census of 1905, published by an Italian firm and the other is an election announcement of 1912 from Monastir (now Bitolj), which describes the candidates as Turks, Greeks, and Bulgarians. There was no such thing as "Macedonian" nationality during the Turkish period either. The referred Slavs were only "Serbian" and "Bulgarian" (See Document No 10).

For the people of FYROM to call themselves "Macedonians" constitutes an assault on fundamental principles and on the proclamations of international organizations, states, and world leaders. We underline the following three reasons:

First: Everyone talks about democracy, but no-one bothers to mention that this "sad farce" (as the French Byzantinist Raine Gerdan has described it) is the brainchild of the world's most undemocratic system, Communism (See Document No 11)

In order to gain control of the Balkans and the northern Aegean, Stalin imitated Hitler (who invented the "Arian race") and created the Macedonian nation". A statement he made in 1946 is eloquent in this respect; "They do not have Macedonian consciousness at the moment, but they shall acquire it': The Communist propaganda machinery, efficient as always, bore out the truth of Stalin's words. (See Document No 12)

To recognize the people of FYROM as "Macedonians" is to support not only an undemocratic edifice but also an evil plot conceived by the Communists to take over Greek Macedonia.

In 1948, the Communist Guerrillas abducted 28,000 Greek children from Macedonia and took them to various Eastern Block countries. The United Nations archives contain documented evidence of this, and a description may be found in Nicholas Gage's book Eleni. Those children were brainwashed about "Macedonia" for years, the guerrillas intention being to liberate one day Macedonia from the Greeks. In 1988, a few thousands of them, now adults, gathered in Skopje. Many came from Canada, Australia, the United States of America and Europe. In the presence and with the support of the political leadership of Skopje', they decided to raise once again the Macedonian Question. A special international committee was set up and, since then, it has been engaged in coordinating a worldwide propaganda against Greece.

Second: To recognize the people of FYROM as "Macedonians" will create a permanent source of friction that will endanger peace in the region. The name of "Macedonia", imposed on the republic by the Yugoslav Communist Party, at the conclusion of World War II, bears the seeds of aggression on regions of neighboring countries.

Successive Greek Governments have declared, on many occasions, that they are not opposing the independence and territorial integrity of the new Republic. But no Greek would consent to this state's appropriation of the Greek name of "Macedonia". It is only with a new name (after the example of America and Australia, for instance) that the new Republic, with its multi-ethnic population, will be able to live in peace in a turbulent region.

Third: As any country, Greece is not represented only by its geographical territory, but also by its history and its cultural heritage. International organizations such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, governments and prominent world figures, have stated that the history and the cultural heritage constitute fundamental elements of a peoples' identity and should be safeguarded and respected.

When Slovenia declared its independence in 1991, it issued a banknote depicting an Austrian throne of the fourteenth century. Austria immediately accused Slovenia of an infringement upon its history and its symbols and demanded that the banknote be withdrawn. The Slovenians complied.

Under the circumstances, how should Greece react, given the fact that FYROM - as attested by its new school textbooks for 1992-3 - appropriate the whole of Macedonian history which is a cherished element of the Greek national and cultural identity?

The Hellenistic period (335-30 BC) was created by Alexander the Great and his Greek Macedonian diadochi, and was so named because it was, during that period, that the Hellenic culture was diffused throughout the world. It brought new scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas that dominated the world for centuries and influenced the development of all cultures. Can these achievements, by any stress of imagination, be attributed to the... ancestors of FYROM? Their ancestors came into the area centuries after that period.

The Russian historian Avraam B. Rankovitch (of the Soviet Academy of Sciences), in his book, Hellenistic Period, p. 285, writes: "The culture that was fostered in the Hellenistic period also burst the bounds of the Hellenistic world. This culture, which was later inherited 6y the Roman Empire, Byzantium, and the peoples of the East, exercised a significant influence on the culture of the modern era".

Consequently, the falsification of Macedonian history is not an affront to the Greeks alone, but to the world civilization, as a whole.

In June 1992, Dr. Henry Kissinger, as a self-respecting historian, made a statement in Paris in which he described the history of Macedonia as the strong weapon that justifies Greece's inalienable right to the name of "Macedonia".

My book The Falsification of Macedonian History, reveals the extent to which Skopje has falsified Macedonian history. I believe that there is irrefutable evidence from the works of ancient Greek writers, the Old and the New Testament, Jewish writers and thousands of Greek inscriptions found on Macedonian territory. They all attest to the Hellenic identity of the ancient Macedonians. This was very well known in the ancient world, as shown by the fact that the Macedonians participated in the Amphictyonies and in the Olympic Games.

Among other acknowledgments regarding the value and validity of my book, I was honored by the former Chancellor of Germany, Mr. Helmut Schmidt and the former President of France Mr. Valery Giscard d'Estaing. (See Document No 13)

As I pointed out in a letter to President Clinton on November 20, 1993 the creation of the "Republic of Macedonia" is an act of hostility against Greece for the following reasons:
i) it constitutes an illicit usurpation of the name, the history and the cultural heritage of Greek Macedonia;
ii) it denies the "Greek character" of Greek Macedonia and, thus, encourages the aggressive pretensions against Greek territories;
iii) it interrupts the continuity of Greek history, given that, from 337 BC the Greeks at Corinth (See Document No 14) made first Philip and later his son Alexander (not, certainly, Mr. Gligorov's ancestors) their King and Commander-in-Chief in the war against the Persians.

It is everybody's duty to research and confirm the truth of these assertions. Ancient Macedonia, as a constituent element of Hellenism, is the very cornerstone of modern Western civilization, an arena of desperate battles for freedom and democracy; in particular the international centers of science and learning, have an obligation towards the free people to present the truth, the fundamental prerequisite of democracy .

The following Macedonian Greeks set their seal on the history of Greece, Europe, and the whole world:
1. Philip of Macedon, who established the Macedonian Kingdom as a great political power and urged on by the Athenian Isocrates, was the pioneer of the European idea. "Argos is the land of your fathers". Isocrates, To Philip XII, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin);

2. Aristotle, the scientist and philosopher whose work will always influence research and knowledge;

3. Alexander the Great, the most stupendous historical figure ever, who influenced the course of world history tremendously.

Alexander was the first ever to talk of peace and fraternity between all peoples (Plutarch's On the Fate and Virtue of Alexander and Holzner and Arrian) and the first to speak out against racial discrimination (Arrian and Martis' Logos).

"Alexander gave a general feast, sitting himself there, and all the Macedonians sifting round him; and then next to them Persians, and next any of the other tribes... And Alexander prayed for all sorts of blessings, and especially for harmony and fellowship in the empire between Macedonians and Persians. They say that those who shared the feast were nine thousand, and that they all poured the same libation and there of sang the one song of victory" Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander VII, 11, 8-9 (Loeb, F.C. Babbitt)

He put this latter principle into action by marrying Roxana and Darius' daughter. Stateira, as also by countenancing the marriage of hundreds of his officers with Persians (Plutarch).

Furthermore, he entrusted various sectors of his administration to foreign officers of countries he had conquered. By overthrowing the Persian Empire, transmitting Greek civilization to the East, and establishing Greek as the lingua franca of all peoples, he changed the history of the whole world.
In the cities Alexander liberated, he abolished the oligarchies that ruled them and restored democracy (see Arrian I 18,2). Today, Arabs and other peoples of Asia he conquered, proudly claim descent from Alexander the Great (See Document No 15: A list of 22 of Pakistan's national heroes, the 11th of whom is Alexander.)

The achievement of Alexander and his Macedonian successors in the Helleno-Bactrian kingdom had a profound influence on Buddhism. Before Alexander's time, there were no representations of Buddha; so it is quite amazing to see a statue of Buddha with a bust of Alexander beside it. (See Document No 16)

Alexander is mentioned by the Prophets Isaiah (19:20,23), Daniel (8:21-22), and Maccabees (A, 1) and also in the Talmud. The Romans deified him, and Mohammed includes him in the Koran, as Zul-Carnein, amongst the prophets. (See Document No 17)

4. The Ptolemies: Ptolemy II (285-245 BC) translated the Old Testament into Greek, producing the Septuagint, which is the official version used by both the Eastern and the Western Church. Ptolemy I founded the Museum (Academy) of Alexandria and also its Library, which, thanks to the Greek Ptolemies, contained 700,000 volumes at the time of its destruction.

It was on the Ptolemies' orders that the legacy of the ancient Greek philosophers was preserved in Alexandria, the possession of all humankind today.

It was in Alexandria that science - physics, mathematics, engineering, astronomy (the first observatory was built in 289 BC by Prolemy 111) developed and it was in the same city that Aristarchus of Samos first expounded the theory of the heliocentric universe, anticipating Copernicus by many hundreds of years.

The first surgical operation on a human being was performed in Alexandria, by Herophilus and Erissistratos, and the science of anatomy was developed there.

Not only was the old Testament translated into Greek, but the New Testament was actually written in Greek. St. Paul saw a vision, in which a "man of Macedonia" spoke to him - of course in Greek - (Acts 16:9) and it was in Macedonia that the Apostle began his missionary work in Europe. Paul and Silas met Greek men and women in Thessalonika and Beroea who were converted into Christianity (Acts 17:4,12), and thanks to the Greek Macedonians Christianity was transmitted all over the world in the Greek language.

5. Cyril and Methodius, the two Greek brothers from Thessaloniki, now known as the "Apostles to the Slavs", are the protagonists of the Slavs' Christianisation in the 9th century, an event which came to be the most important historical and cultural incident for Europe and the world by and large.

"Rightly, therefore, Saints Cyril and Methodius were at an early stage, recognized by the family of Slav peoples, as the fathers of both Christianity and their culture" (See Document No 18 from Epistola Enciclica of Pope Giovanni Paolo II.)
His Holiness Pope John Paul, at Methodius' tomb in Czechoslovakia on April 22 1990, declared that these two isapostolic 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' 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:
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:
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, namely the
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
YALE UNIVERSITY
have expressed their interest in examining the Historical facts related to Macedonia. (See Document No 27).

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