The forgotten cemetery near Pchinja
Does Samaras know about the secret tomb of 256 Macedonians and Greeks burried together in Katlanovo?
Around 6500 wounded soldiers of the Democratic army of Greece, both Macedonians and Greeks, in the period 1946-1949, during the fiercest fights in Aegean Macedonia, were secretly transported through illegal crossings at night to Katlanovo spa, in the illegal military hospital formed according to the deal between Tito and Nikos Zachariadis for the help of the Greek Communist party in the fight against the monarch fascists.
Many of the wounded were save thanks to the tremendous efforts made by the team of Dr. Veljko Majstorovik, a military surgeon from Belgrade, who managed in such conditions at the time, to operate on, and save 2500 soldiers from a certain death. Many of them were Greeks who were fighting for the democratization of monarchic Greece, together with the Macedonians. Unfortunately, 256 soldiers died during their treatment and remained forever in the common tomb around the Katlanovo spa at the time.
Surgeries without anesthesia
According to the witnessing of one of the organizers of the building of the partisan hospital in Katlanovo spa, Rade Gogov, many difficult and complex surgeries had to be done in bad hospital conditions every day, with no surgical instruments, medicine, anesthesia, bandages and other things, so very often these procedures ended tragically, even though the doctors put in tremendous efforts to save the soldiers who were brought in the secret convoys of military trucks which crossed the border with their lights out.
The soldiers who were saved thanks to the care by the staff will never forget the surgeon, Dr. Veljko Majstorovik and his associates, who often stayed in the improvised operation hall for hours, non-stop, to save as much of the wounded as possible. The wounded, mostly Macedonians, young people aged 18-20, immediately returned on the front in Aegean Macedonia after recuperating to fight, together with the Greeks, for a better future and a new, democratic Greece.
Doctors made no difference between Macedonian and Greek in their interventions
According to the memoirs of Dr. Veljko Majstorovik, head of the secret military hospital in Katlanovo spa, most of the wounded were literally riddled or crippled from the numerous mines that the monarch fascist Greek army set everywhere. Among the most heavily wounded soldiers were those hurt by artillery grenades and from the bombs dropped by the British planes over the mountains in Aegean Macedonia. Horrible screams from pain could be heard in the hospital but no one at the time, neither Dr. Majstorovik nor anyone from the hospital staff, made a difference whether the scream came from a wounded Macedonian or Greek, because pain, tear and sorrow, as he says, are always experienced the same way by all human creatures. To him, the pain inflicted by the Greek civil war wasn’t divided by nationality, and the young Greek and Macedonian soldiers, fought and died together, on the front and in the hospital in Katlanovo.
Forgotten by Greece, and Macedonia, too?
The Macedonian painter Kole Manev noted a stirring witnessing about this secret hospital; about the forgotten wounded boys that died in it; about the Macedonian and Greek soldiers from the Greek civil war. He concludes that in the Balkans, in Europe and the world, there have been many events and conflicts that took much more casualties than the Greek civil war, but that after the ending of all that madness, each side laid flowers at the graves of the deceased to remember and honor them. According to him, unfortunately, in the case of the civil war in Greece from sixty years ago, what happened with the tombs in Katlanovo spa was something out of every norm of human behavior. Namely, those who died in the hospital have been forgotten for 60 years and nobody even thinks about mentioning them, as if they never existed. And those were boys, barely adults, who left their parents and relatives behind, as well as memories that can never be erased. There is no monument for them, no memory, no state honors. They cannot return to the history of the homeland they fought for, just as those who survived lost the right to return to their homes in Aegean Macedonia voluntarily.
Gratitude to Dr. Majstorovik
In order to confirm the historical facts, noted in Dr. Majstorovik’s notebook, a few years ago we talked to Stojan Trpchevski from the village of Setina in Aegean Macedonia. He is one of the 6500 soldiers of the Greek Democratic army and in the period 1946-1949, during the fiercest battles was wounded and transported with a secret convoy along with other fellow soldiers to the secret hospital. That happened three times. He lost the sight in one eye on one occasion, but even with one eye, he returned on the front to fight for the liberation of the Macedonian and Greek people from the monarch fascist regime. Sixty years later, we took him to the place where he was brought with other wounded soldiers. At first, he just kept quiet, recognizing the places around with his look, and then with a sorrow in his voice, showed us the graves of the forgotten comrades, remembering the shouts of the wounded, and the rooms where Dr. Majstorovik performed the surgeries, mostly without the basic things, even anesthesia.
The places where the deceased from Katlanovo spa were buried are located
According to Trpchevski, without the hospital in Katlanovo spa, many of the wounded Greeks and Macedonians wouldn’t have survived because Macedonia, or Yugoslavia, under the pressure from England, couldn’t publicly take them for treatment. In our last conversation with him, we also noted this:
“I remember all of the objects in the spa being turned into an improvised hospital, which was organized by departments, led by doctors from the Military hospital in Belgrade. Nobody knew that they worked in this hospital and we were all aware that the whole space was under strict military control with watch towers set on all sides, with guards at all times that didn’t allow any approach to the objects. Movement was limited only to the space around the objects, and the funerals of those who died in the hospital were held on three locations which I can locate right now according to the surrounding hills. The tomb where 13 soldiers were buried is at the spot where a sort of stable is located today, left from a bridge leading to the church opposite the spa. That church didn’t exist at the time, nor was there a bridge over the river. The second tomb was across the river, under the great rock right from the spa entry gate. Right under that rock is where a great number of people were buried, because there was a bigger space there and the tomb could be dug easier. The largest common tomb was on this side of the river, 50 meters away from the hospital reception department, now the first little building at the entrance, right from the gate of the spa. Down there, by the river, at the wall which was later built to prevent a flood of the spa, there were several pits were the deceased were buried. According to what I know, 256 soldiers, Macedonians and Greeks, were buried in the three tombs in Katlanovo spa, although the most precise number is probably saved in the hospital archive. Maybe Dr. Majstorovik has the list of the deceased in his notebook because he kept record of everyone that was treated in the hospital.
In order to preserve the memory of those who went through the secret military hospital in Katlanovo spa, and particularly those who remained in the three common tombs forever, a tombstone was set 17 years ago, in 1995, but it was broken and destroyed later. Even prior to 1995, somewhere in the mid-1980s, an effort was made to make a monument with the names of the wounded soldiers who died in the hospital, but that initiative also fell through, probably not to “provoke” Greece, even though tens of soldiers on the list of deceased were Greeks from Peloponnese and the islands, soldiers who joined the Macedonians as part of GDA. There is an impression that all the mystery around the hospital in Katlanovo spa and that nearly 300 soldiers were buried there, was deliberately created in Yugoslavia.
“I can’t remember the precise year, could be 1985, when we were celebrating 40 years from the victory over fascism, funds were allocated to build a monument for the GDA soldiers who died in the secret military hospital in Katlanovo spa. Around 75 million dinars were approved, and at the time, you could make a very good, worthy monument in the honor of those boys who weren’t older than 22-23 for that amount. Unfortunately, the money disappeared somewhere, and the monument was never built. Ten years later, a plate was set in the memory of the hospital, of those who survived and those who didn’t, but the plate is now gone, too. Someone took it out and broke it. Now, there is no mark that a history, a fight with death was happening there. We are not talking about one or two, but over 6000 boys who went through the hospital” – Stojan Trpchevski, one of 6500 GDA soldiers who was wounded three times from 1947-1949 and three times saved by the doctors in the secret hospital in Katlanovo spa, finished his witnessing.
