By Arben P. Llalla
Part Eight
-Greek Collaborators, the Planners and Leaders of the Genocide in Chameria (1944-1945) the truth about the collaboration of the Chams with the Germans-
PREFACE
Memorie.al / I began writing this book between 2008 and 2016, gathering materials little by little. It was extremely difficult to find original photographs and some Greek-language newspapers from the years in question. For about 70 years, the Greek state and its governmental structures have been feeding both domestic and foreign public opinion with false books and writings about what truly happened from 1936 to 1945, concerning the Albanian minority in Chameria-Southern Epirus.
Continued from the previous issue
The Massacres in Chameria by EDES
After the phase-by-phase occupation of Southern Epirus-Chameria by the Greeks, which started in the 1880s and continued until early 1913 when Ioannina was captured, Albanians were under continuous pressure from the Greek state to abandon their lands. As we have stated above, over the years, Greece forcibly removed thousands of Albanian families from Chameria to Turkey, Albania, and elsewhere, never to return. But the most brutal and fatal genocide was that of 1944-1945, where military forces of EDES (National Republican Greek League), led by Greek Orthodox clerics in military uniforms, carried out inhuman massacres against the unprotected Cham population.
It was Tuesday, June 27, 1944, when about 2,500 EDES military troops, led by Napoleon Zervas and accompanied by the Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos-who was wearing an EDES military uniform-entered the city of Paramithia quietly. Meeting no armed resistance from the Albanian population, Metropolitan Dorotheos began talks with the Albanian leaders, including the Mufti Sali Hafizi, promising them that no harm would come to them.
After lunch, following a good meal, the massacres began everywhere they found Chams. The massacres were carried out in homes against women and children. Men were brutally killed in the streets and thrown into ditches. The total number of killed was 165. In the Paramithia district, in the villages called Gardiq, Dragoni, Amini, and Karkunar, the following day, 600 workers and farmers and 150 elderly women, women, and girls were horribly massacred.
On August 28, 1944, in Parga, Zerva’s gangs killed 49 men and 8 women. On September 14, the Zervist military authorities in Filiates gathered all the remaining men in the town, most of whom were elderly. After a formal “trial,” they were all sentenced to death, with the exception of 7 individuals. Three or four days later, 51 more people were executed near the Filiates hospital and at Shejla Stream. Thus, the number of dead and missing in the town of Filiates reached 259 people.
In Filiates, during the period from June 1944 to March 1945, 1,286 people were massacred and killed; in Gumenica, 192 were killed; in Margelliç and Parga, 626 people, etc. 68 villages were destroyed, 5,800 houses were burned and ruined, all religious buildings were destroyed, and the properties of these cults were plundered (over 80 mosques). According to a list that registered the names of the victims and their places of origin, more than 1,200 civilian victims were identified for the 1944-1945 period.
The outcome of the Greek genocide against the Albanian population in Southern Epirus-Chameria was tragic. Chameria was almost entirely cleansed of its Albanian ethnicity, which belonged to the Muslim faith. In the villages where Muslim Albanians resided, Greek refugees, who had arrived from Asia Minor and other parts of Greece, were settled.
The names of many villages were changed, and the toponyms of many places were altered to erase every Albanian trace in Southern Epirus. From a pre-war population of 35,000, only a few dozen families remained. The number of dead and missing reached 2,300 people. Those who died during emigration due to lack of food and various diseases amounted to 2,400 people.
According to recently published data, 2,877 Albanians were massacred in the Greek genocide against the Cham population, categorized by town. In Filiates and the surrounding area, the number of those massacred is 1,286; in Igoumenitsa and the surrounding area, 292; in Paramithia and the surrounding area, 673; and in Margelliç and Parga, 626.
In addition to military participants who had served in the fascist government of Metaxas, dozens of priests also participated in the massacres against the Chams, such as the Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos; the priest Serafim, who came from Athens on orders from the Archbishop of Greece, Damaskinos. Serafim would later become the Metropolitan of Ioannina and then the Archbishop of Greece. Napoleon Zervas’s brother, Aleko Zerva, who was a priest, also participated.
Captain Kristos Stavropulos, acting as a judge for the EDES army, signed the extrajudicial executions of hundreds of Albanians during the genocide of 1944-1945 in Chameria. In 1953, the military officer Kristos Stavropulos was elected President of the Supreme Court of Greece.
The plan for the 1944-1945 genocide by EDES was not spontaneous. The plan to expel Albanians from Chameria through massacres, rapes, looting, etc., had been planned many years prior, ever since the Greeks occupied Southern Epirus in 1912-1913. During the Metaxas government, 2,300 people had been killed and 450 had died under torture. This is a number approximate to the massacres carried out a few years later by Napoleon Zervas and Metaxas’s military officers, who were grouped in EDES.
The Greek state illegally confiscated houses and lands with fabricated laws and trials. Thousands of livestock were stolen, died, and were damaged. But the Cham tragedy did not end with their departure from Greece and arrival in Albania. The Albanians from Chameria were persecuted by the communist regime, treated with contempt as second-class citizens. Most of them were settled in the suburbs of cities in barracks and lived in ghetto-like conditions. This was an even more painful persecution when one considers that they were mistreated by their mother state, the state for which they had sacrificed everything for its survival.
After 1945, the entire state apparatus of Greece was mobilized to create false narratives about the Cham population’s collaboration with the Germans, to cover up the massacres and genocide of the Greek Church, which participated with the military troops of EDES. The role of the clerics of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece in the massacres against the Muslim Albanian population in Chameria was significant. This is also evident in the letter-requests from the Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos, sent on May 18, 1944, to the Council led by Mazar Dinos.
The Role of Greek Orthodox Clerics in the 1944-1945 Genocide against the Albanian Population in Chameria
The Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Fanari, have always sought to prevent the existence of the Albanian language, the Albanian nation, and traditional Albanian Orthodoxy. Orthodox and Muslim Albanians have been under pressure from the Fanari of Constantinople for their assimilation.
As early as the 18th-19th centuries, missionaries in Orthodox clerical attire preached against the existence of the Albanian language. One of these was Kozma Etolos, born between 1700-1714 (the exact year and date are not known) in the Aetolia region, in the village of Mega Dhendron, near the town of Thermo. He was ordained a monk on Mount Agios Oros, where he completed his theological studies. His real name was Konsta Anifanti, and his parents were from Southern Epirus-Chameria.
Kozma’s family was very poor; his father carried bags for villagers from the fields to their homes to earn a living. Saint Kozma, in the areas of Epirus inhabited by Albanians, campaigned against the Albanian language: “Send your children to learn Greek, because our church is Greek. And you, my brother, if you do not learn Greek, you cannot understand what our church says.
It is better, my brother, to have a Greek school in your land than to have springs and rivers. Any Christian, man or woman, who promises me that they will not speak Albanian inside their house, let them stand up and tell me here. I will take all their sins upon my neck, from the day of their birth until today, I will order all Christians to speak to them, and I will erase all their sins. They would not find this opportunity even if they gave thousands of money.” (Seventh Sermon, addressed to the Albanians of Epirus).
With this theory, Saint Kozma wanted to uproot the Albanian language from Albanians. This explanation is stated by all Greek scholars of his biography. But he was not only against the Albanian language. In 1777, Saint Kozma Etolos stayed in the village of Baieasa or Vovousa, which was inhabited by Vlachs near Ioannina, and he told the residents: “The Greek language is the language of God, while the Vlach language is the language of the Devil.” Kozma Etolos was arrested in a village near Berat by the Turks and was hanged on August 24, 1779.
Another Orthodox cleric who was against the Albanian language was the Metropolitan of Kastoria, Fillaretis, who was originally from Asia Minor. Metropolitan Fillaretis distributed a brochure in 1892 that cursed the Albanian language.
The Metropolitan of Korça, Foti Kallpidhis, of Asia Minor descent, propagated against the Albanian language. Albanian patriots killed him on September 9, 1906, in revenge for the massacre of two brothers, Theodhos and Kristo Harallamo-Negovani, who were teachers in Albanian schools and were killed by Greeks on February 12, 1905.
In February 1914, the Greek army along with Adartes-paramilitary forces-entered Albania, committing massacres and declaring the Autonomy of Northern Epirus. These forces were led by two Metropolitans who were later part of the cabinet of the Government of the Autonomy of Northern Epirus led by Zografos. One was the Metropolitan of Konitsa, Spiridon Vllahu, born in 1873, originally from Pogoni.
The Metropolitan of Vellas and Konitsa, Spiridon Vllahu, along with the Metropolitan of Drinopolis and Pogonias, Vasileos, were at the head of the Greek army when it entered Ioannina on February 21, 1913. These were the same two high clerics of the Autocephalous Church of Greece, Metropolitan Spiridon and Metropolitan Vasileos, who were part of the governmental cabinet of Georgio Kristaq Zografos. According to data, Metropolitan Spiridon Vllahu also wrote the act of proclamation of the annexation of Southern Albania, the Autonomy of Vorio Epirus.
Another Metropolitan who took part in the signing of the annexation of Southern Albania was the infamous former Metropolitan of Kastoria, Germanos Karavangjelis, who was transferred to Korça in 1914. In a photograph taken on February 21, 1914, in Gjirokastër, the two Metropolitans, Spiridon Vllahu and Vasileos, are seen among the Greek soldiers and Adartes who had committed massacres against the Albanian population. When he served as Metropolitan of Kastoria, Metropolitan Germanos Karavangjelis took a direct part in the massacres of the Greek army against the Albanian population in Kastoria, Florina, and the surrounding villages.
When the Greek army occupied Albania during the Italo-Greek war from November 1940 to April 1941, the Metropolitan of Ioannina, Spiridon, visited the Greek military troops in Gjirokastër and pressured them to surrender unconditionally to the Germans. On Saturday, April 19, 1941, the Metropolitan of Ioannina, Spiridonis, spoke with the high-ranking Greek military officers, Tsolakoglou, Demestichas, Bakos, and they decided to seek a direct armistice from Adolf Hitler.
They also decided to form a provisional government with Metropolitan Spiridon as prime minister, and that the negotiations with the German representatives would be handled by General Tsolakoglou, who would hand over a letter on April 20 to the commander of Hitler’s SS troops, Josef Sepp Dietrich, requesting an armistice. However, Georgio Tsolakoglou did not hand over the text written by Metropolitan Spiridonas, in which he was to be the prime minister of the provisional government, but another letter that did not raise the issue of a provisional government.
Perhaps General Tsolakoglou thought that the inclusion of Metropolitan Spiridon in the military negotiations between the Epirus and German armies was excessive, or he himself had claims to the position of prime minister of Greece. A few days later, Georgio Tsolakoglou was sworn in as the prime minister of Greece.
On April 20, 1941, Easter Sunday, the general of the First Corps, Panajot Demestichas, the general of the Second Corps, Georgio Bako, and the former Metropolitan of Vellas and Konitsa, elected as Metropolitan of Ioannina in 1916, Spiridon Vllahu, signed the surrender and cooperation of the Greek army of Epirus with the Germans.
According to the journalist Tasos K. Kondoyanidhis, the military generals chose the Metropolitan of Ioannina, Spiridon, as prime minister of the government of Metsovo. Metsovo is the center of the Vlachs of Southern Epirus. On July 6, 1941, Damaskinos was elected Archbishop of Greece. The inauguration ceremony at the Cathedral of Athens was attended by the Quisling Prime Minister Tsolakoglou, ministers of the Greek government, representatives of German and Italian authorities, as well as the Chief Rabbi Korec.
In April 1943, Dorotheos Naskari was elected Metropolitan of Paramithia, Filiates, Giromeriou, and Parga. Metropolitan Dorotheos was born in 1905, in the village of Lelova-Thesprotiko of Preveza. His name was Dhimitër Naskari; his parents died when he was 4 years old, and he stayed with his aunt for several years. After finishing elementary school, he began to work odd jobs.
In 1929, he was ordained a Deacon by the Metropolitan of Corinth, Damaskinos, who was elected Archbishop of Greece in 1941. After 1931, he served as a priest in one of the Greek churches in Istanbul. In 1942, he worked in the secretariat of the Synod of the Autocephalous Church of Greece.
In the summer of 1943, the Archbishop of Greece, Damaskinos, sent the secretary of the Synod of Athens, the priest Serafim, to deliver a personal letter to Napoleon Zervas. After this, the 30-year-old Serafim donned the military uniform of EDES under the command of Zervas.
The priest Serafim (Visarion Tika), born in 1913 in the village of Artesiano of Karditsa, was a soldier of Napoleon Zerva’s EDES, which committed massacres against the Albanian population of Chameria. He would become the Metropolitan of Arta in 1949 and the Metropolitan of Ioannina in 1958. From 1974 to 1998, he would be the Archbishop of Greece.
In September 1943, after discussions with the leaders of the German army in Southern Epirus-Chameria, the Metropolitan of Ioannina, Spiridon Vllahu, made a public appeal to Christians not to support the guerrillas (referring to the resistance groups), but to remain calm and cooperate with the German occupiers, because they had undertaken to protect the faithful and calm population. This appeal by the Metropolitan of Ioannina, Spiridon Vllahu, bears his signature and the seal of the Metropolitanate of Ioannina, dated September 10, 1943.
The leader of EDES, Napoleon Zervas, had met with the German Commander-in-Chief for Greece, Hubert Lanz, at the beginning of September 1943, who had come for operations against the Greek ELAS partisans. After this meeting, it was agreed that the Germans and EDES would have a 10-day armistice. Zervas then attacked the ELAS partisan forces and freed the German prisoners to ensure an armistice and negotiations with the Germans. On September 24 in Skala of Paramithia, 6 German soldiers were killed by resistance forces.
At the German offices in Paramithi, the order from the German command had been issued days before the killing of the 6 soldiers: for one German, ten Greeks must be executed. The Germans arrested 52 residents of Paramithia to execute them in revenge, and on September 29, they executed 49 Greek citizens.
After the killing of the 49 Greeks of Paramithia, their relatives raised the question of whether, if the Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos, had been in Paramithi on those days and not in Ioannina, the arrested people might have escaped execution.
Whatever the truth may have been, there is a dark part about the role of Metropolitan Dorotheos in the event of the execution of the 49 Greeks in Paramithi. The file of notes on the movements of Metropolitan Dorotheos does not exist for the public. The non-presence of Metropolitan Dorotheos with his believers during their difficult days leads us to understand his multiple roles.
In early November 1943, Metropolitan Dorotheos was at the German offices in Paramithi and then abandoned the Metropolitanate of Paramithia and joined the guerrilla forces of Napoleon Zervas, EDES, by wearing the military uniform of this group. Metropolitan Dorotheos became Zervas’s right-hand man and was involved in the EDES negotiations with the Germans during the period from December 1943 to October 1944.
On Friday, June 27, 1944, about 2,500 EDES forces, led by Zervas and guided that day by the Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos, dressed in military clothes, carried out massacres against the Albanians, sparing no one. After they burned the houses of the Albanians, killed and expelled those who had survived, through the cobbled streets of Paramithi, Metropolitan Dorotheos, now Napoleon Zervas’s right-hand man, marched with the EDES army through Paramithi.
In October 1944, Metropolitan Dorotheos represented the EDES delegation in the agreement with the Germans for the withdrawal from the island of Corfu. That day, the Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos, gave a speech alongside Napoleon Zervas.
After the war and the cleansing of Chameria of Albanians ended, the two Metropolitans who had collaborated with the Germans now sought their part as saviors of the Greeks in Southern Epirus-Chameria from the Muslim Chams. The Metropolitan of Paramithia, Dorotheos, remained in this position until 1952 and was then sent as the Metropolitan of Trikki and Stagon until he died in 1959. / Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue.
