THREE MAJOR HELLENIC DIASPORA ORGANIZATIONS SAY NO ‘OXI’ TO ANTI-HELLENIC HATE
28 Οκτωβρίου 2009
Three Major Hellenic Diaspora Organizations Voice Concern in Letters to University of Utah President Michael K. Young
The Hellenic League of America (HLA) joins together with the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, the American Hellenic Institute AHI, and the Pan Macedonian Association USA in confronting false historical revisionism, Anti-Hellenism and Hate Speech propagated by the government in Skopje and its allies and lobbies worldwide in recent days. In a commendable show of unity three of the most preeminent Hellenic organizations in America have sent letters of concern to University of Utah President Michael K. Young about the upcoming Revisionist “7th ‘Macedonian’- North American Conference” slated to commence on University of Utah grounds on November 5th, 2009.
We at HLA encourage the Hellenic Youth in America, the hope of a new generation, to pursue involvement either with the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, or the Pan Macedonian Association USA because we truly believe that the birthplace of our heroic ancestors HELLAS deserves a Diaspora that is patriotic, community oriented, empowered through ties to our historic legacy and homelands and MOST IMPORTANTLY UNITED.
On the eve of the anniversary morning (October 28th 1940) when THE LEADER OF THE HELLENIC NATION IOANNIS METAXAS said a resounding NO ‘OXI’ to the surrender of HELLAS in the tradition of the long line of epic hero leaders of our people, we salute the patriots in the Diaspora who today say NO ’OXI’ to false historical revisionism, Anti-Hellenic Hate and Surrender.
The Official Letters With Links from the (1) the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, (2) the American Hellenic Institute AHI, and the (3) Pan Macedonian Association USA follow below:
(1) THE FEDERATION OF HELLENIC SOCIETIES OF GREATER NEW YORK VOICES CONCERN IN LETTER TO UNIVERSITY OF UTAH PRESIDENT MICHAEL K. YOUNG
The Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York is a preeminent organization for over 70 years. Historically speaking, it is known as the largest community organization in the Diaspora with a membership of over 150 active and energetic societies, of which 100 are regional Greek societies with a proud record of achievements.
October 25, 2009
University of Utah
Michael K. Young, President
201 South Presidents Circle, Room 203
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Dear President Young,
It has recently come to our attention that your University, the oldest institution of higher education west of the Mississippi, will be holding the “7th ‘Macedonian’- North American Conference” on November 5th. Based on historically verifiable facts, we contend that your institution’s academic creditability is jeopardized by permitting such a conference that propagates revisionism, propaganda and hate speech. Upon our review of the conference’s program, as noted on your web site, beyond any academic discourse regarding a Slavic linguistic idiom, there will be presentations by apologists of communist human rights abuses, including but not limited to, the abduction of 28,000 Greek children during and after the Second World War.
To date, over 332 academic scholars have co-signed a letter to President Barack Obama in opposition to such historical revisionism your institution is now facilitating. As a former Professor and Director at Columbia University, you might be interested in noting that two current Columbia faculty members, Professors Mylonopoulos and Lougovaya, are signatories of this letter.
At the conference, a scheduled presentation will apparently question recognized human rights abuses directed against defenseless Greek children by communist guerillas. The recognized facts of these events have been recorded by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies, and has been condemned by the United Nations General Assembly with resolutions recorded in 1948 (193), 1949 (288), 1950 (382), 1951 (517), and 1952 (618).
As adopted by the UN General Assembly, the truth is that “the Greek children have not as yet been returned to their homes in accordance with the resolution of the General Assembly” and that all “States harbouring the Greek children to make all necessary arrangements… for the early return to their homes.” More that 28,000 Greek children were forcibly torn from their families and abducted by communists and thereafter brainwashed to reject their national identity and homeland.
Where would be the academic responsibility of your institution if it permitted blatant historical revisionism that seeks to dispute these facts? The human tragedy of these contemptuous acts affected thousands of Hellenic families for many years and decades. While only some 4,000 children were returned by 1963, the vast majority were confined to camps in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Albania until the collapse of the Communist Bloc.
As UN General Assembly resolution 618 (1952) clearly states, it “Condemns the failure of the harbouring States other than Yugoslavia to co-operate in efforts to enable the Greek children to return to their homes.” This statement is absolute with regard to the identity and fate of these Greek victims of communism. The vast majority of the children were sent to camps outside of Yugoslavia, and most of the few thousand that were in Yugoslavia were repatriated following the reproach of Tito with the West.
We therefore condemn any effort by a Slavic fringe group to usurp the identity of these Greek victims of communist aggression. We furthermore urge you to cancel the upcoming revisionism conference, as it reflects poorly on your prestigious learning institution. This is the time to stand up against hate speech and apologists for totalitarian regimes.
Respectfully,
Demetrius Kalamaras, Esq.
President
© Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York. All rights reserved.
(2) THE AMERICAN HELLENIC INSTITUTE AHI VOICES CONCERN IN LETTER TO UNIVERSITY OF UTAH PRESIDENT MICHAEL K. YOUNG
October 22, 2009
President Michael K. Young
University of Utah
201 Presidents Circle Room 201
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Dear President Young:
On behalf of the nationwide membership of the American Hellenic Institute(AHI), I write to strongly urge you to reconsider allowing the forthcoming so-called “7th Macedonian-North American Conference on Macedonian Studies” to take place on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on November 5-9,2009. By allowing this conference to take place on such a prestigious and publicly funded campus of the University of Utah, you are running the risk of being scrutinized for endorsing a conference whose sole purpose is to promote historical revisionism and distortions with regards to the Greek history of Macedonia.
This can be illustrated by reviewing some of the conference topics and speakers which include such topics as “Alexander the Great and Mythic Homelands” and presenters such as revisionist academics, Professor Emilija Crvenkovska, of the University of Skopje and who is funded by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and professor Loring Danforth who has written a number of revisionist history books that questions Greek historical facts relating to Macedonia from ancient to modern and who adheres to Marshal Tito’s falsehoods and revisionist claims. While I understand the concept of academic freedom, please be advised that the only speakers included on the panels are those who are promoting the propaganda emanating from FYROM. Under the guise of a university, controversial presentations such as this would be best served to include diverse points of view. Further, I would appreciate knowing who is funding this conference at the University of Utah.
Since antiquity, the name Macedonia has referred to a geographical region, not to a nationality. Macedonia was part of the ancient Hellenic world much like Sparta and Athens. Its population worshipped the same Hellenic Gods, spoke the same Hellenic language and participated in the Olympic Games which, at the time, were open to Greeks only.
When Marshal Tito fashioned the puppet “Socialist Republic of Macedonia” from the southern Yugoslav province of Varsdarska-Banovina in December 1944, he did so to foment disorder in northern Greece in furtherance of his plan to communize the Balkan Peninsula and gain control of the key port city of Thessaloniki. “Macedonian” nationalism was a product of Tito’s fabrications.
In December 1944, the United States vigorously opposed the use of the name “Macedonia” by Tito. Secretary of State Edward R. Sttetinius, Jr., in a Circular Airgram(Dec. 26, 1944) stated:
“This Government considers talk of Macedonian ‘nation’, Macedonian ‘Fatherland’, or Macedonian ‘national
consciousness’ to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic or 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 issues as related to Greece.”
Today, FYROM continues to provoke Greece, usurping history which has been Hellenic for thousands of years. Actions over the years such as distortion of geographic maps, naming its airport “Alexander the Great,” revisionist textbooks in schools, and inflammatory comments by top government officials, and generalhostile propaganda, encourages new generations in FYROM to cultivate hostile sentiments against Greece.
There is no separate “Macedonian” ethnic group. The ancient Macedonians were Greeks, as all historical and archaeological evidence demonstrates. Today, the breakdown of population estimates in the FYROM region vary between 25-40 percent Albanian, up to 10 percent Greek, 10 percent others, and the remainder 40-55 percent are Slavs.
Enclosed, please find a copy of letter to President Barack Obama dated May 18, 2009 and signed by 200 classical scholars, supporting historical truths relating to Macedonia. Please be aware the on-line support for this letter has now grown to 350 scholars.
Does the University of Utah at Salt Lake City wish to be a willing accomplice to distortion of history?
By allowing this conference to occur on your campus, the University of Utah will be aiding and abetting FYROM’s irredentist propaganda against Greece and distorting historical truths.
Thank you for your consideration regarding this matter.
Sincerely,
Nick Larigakis
Enclosure
(3) PAN MACEDONIAN ASSOCIATION USA SEND LETTER TO PRESIDENT OF UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
The Pan Macedonia Association USA is the largest and most important Macedonian Association in the world, and is the greatest Diaspora organization covering Macedonian history and current affairs.
October 26, 2009
President Michael K. Young
University of Utah
201 Presidents Circle
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Dear President Young,
On behalf of our multi-thousand membership of our organization and indeed of all U.S. citizens of Hellenic descent, we want to protest in the strongest possible terms the presentation of distorted facts pertaining to the history of Greece. Some of the presenters of the “7th Macedonian-North American Conference on Macedonian Studies” which will take place at the grounds of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 5-8, 2009 are promoting anti-Hellenic hate speech and disparagement: http://www.hum.utah.edu/languages/?pageId=4549.
Although a number of presenters strictly deal with issues of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), there are politically motivated lectures that attack and disparage the people of Greece as they twist historical facts through their disturbing presentation. We acknowledge the concept of academic freedom, but we are greatly concerned that your University is being used to promote a political agenda based on historical untruths and falsehoods. Anti-Hellenism is equal to anti-Semitism and the United Nations has enacted severe measures for such racism. Nationalists from the FYROM and its Diaspora (both at an official and unofficial level) have expressed hatred directed at Greeks and the Hellenic nation based on their impression of racial superiority and obsession with genetic purity. Official television advertisements in the FYROM have even informed the masses through God’s voice that they are “Macedonoids, progenitors of the white race” whereas others are “Mongoloids”, “Negroids”, and “Mullatoes” (see, especially from 4 minutes, 28 seconds on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITEdiSBl3Y&feature=related). Official government and academic sources in the FYROM refuse to recognize Greece’s sovereignty over her lands referring to Greece’s northern region as “Aegean Macedonia”, or “the Macedonian region under Greek jurisdiction”. This is evident in Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s recent speech to his country’s Diaspora in Australia (http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/8657/45/) and throughout the newly written “Macedonian Encyclopedia” promoted by the “Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences (MANU)” in Skopje.
We have heard some of the presenters of the”7th Macedonian-North American Conference on Macedonian Studies” in other forums, regarding the following topics and we would kindly ask the organizing committee of this symposium to provide us with a copy of their presentations:
Alexander the Great and mythic homelands
Tasos Kostopoulos on Macedonia and the Slavs in Greece: When a forbidden language speaks truth to power;
Between nationalism and solidarity: Assessing the KKE’s post-war positioning of the Macedonian national liberation struggle;
Macedonian refugee children from the Greek Civil War;
From Trnaa to Toronto: The life story of a dete begalec;
A Macedonian child in a Greek technical school during the Greek Civil War;
Cleansing the national, polluting the natural: The politics of development and cultural homogeneity in the Florina region;
It is true that we don’t know the content of the presentations. However referring to the title Alexander the Great and mythic homelands, we would like to call your attention to a letter to President Barack Obama, endorsed by 350 (and still growing) archaeologists and academics from worldwide universities and institutions of higher learning. This attests to the falsification and revision of history propagated by the FYROM and its supporters (please visit the web site: http://macedonia-evidence.org/). The letter to President Obama by the archeologists, the historians, and researchers was written to curtail the attempts of historical revision/distortion, and to protect the integrity of historic truth in their academic specialties. The decision of the 350 scholars who cosigned the letter to President Obama was made so that “the scholarly community has a duty to preserve historic truth.”
The title of the presentation: Tasos Kostopoulos on Macedonia and the Slavs in Greece: When a forbidden language speaks truth to power alludes to the attempt of Skopje’s leadership to inflict a “Macedonian” minority in Greece who speak the “Macedonian” language. This so-called “forbidden language” however, is an idiom (which did not have a written form) and was detected around the 18th century forming a part of various slavophone idioms in northern Greece. Its creation was purely utilitarian and practical, and it was used as an unofficial lingua franca so to speak because the area during the Ottoman Era was a colorful tribal mosaic of linguistic and religious groups: Turkish conquerors, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Turkmen nomads (Yuruks), Gypsies, Bosnians, Armenians, and Jews among others. They needed a way to understand each other regarding the needs of their daily coexistence. The idiom therefore appeared gradually and has served well the purpose for which it was created, or rather, for which it emerged.
Moreover, it should be noted that the idioms spoken in Ottoman Macedonia were in no way reflective of the ethnic affiliation of its inhabitants since the majority of the people espoused Hellenism. In addition, the present “Macedonian” language of the FYROM is a manufactured language with a Bulgarian base, inflicted on the inhabitants of what was roughly Vardarska Banovina by Marshal Josip Broz Tito and a group of linguists throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s so that he can expedite his plans of annexing Greek Macedonia. The language spoken by the citizens of the FYROM and the idioms spoken in northern Greece are not the same. The leadership of Greece’s neighboring country is attempting to connect this idiom with the language spoken in Skopje, to further press Greece about an ethnic “Macedonian” minority in Greece.
During this conference, time will be spent discussing the supposed expulsion of “Macedonian” children from Greece during the Greek Civil War. Not only is this a legitimization of Stalinist demagoguery, it is also a slap in the face to reality. As has been attested by numerous United Nations resolutions (UN Resolutions: 382 (V Section C), 1950; 618 (VII), 1952; 517 (VI), 1952), these children were Greek. Some were the children of those who collaborated with fascist Bulgarian and Italian forces and later with communist guerillas, many were unrelated children abducted by these fleeing communist guerillas, and most were never repatriated leaving them to the mercy of Communist propaganda in Iron Curtain countries. President Harry S. Truman and the United States of America were staunch supporters of these UN resolutions calling for the repatriation of these children having realized the re-education dangers they faced away from Greece as is clear in his April 19, 1950 address to the Speaker of the House of Representatives: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=13766.
Looking at this in the view of the then US Secretary of State’s Stettinius’s 1944 Circular Airgram to US Diplomatic and Consular Offices (868.014/26 Dec. 1944) as “aggressive intentions against Greece”, these children and their offspring have been brought up to believe that they were once not Greek and that they were expelled. Although one must sympathize with their plight because they are truly victims of a dead ideology, perpetuating and sponsoring their ideas is a disservice to them and to history.
Furthermore, a screening of the fictional film “The Secret Book” during this conference is oxymoronic for a meeting that is supposed to be scientific. It is akin to showing “The Da Vinci Code” during a meeting of Catholic bishops. The movie implies a unification of “the whole Macedonian fatherland” erroneously believed by Macedonist nationalists to have been split up in 1912. What is the motivation of showing this fictional film in a scientific conference, other than alluding that neighboring territories should be annexed? Would the University of Utah also open its halls to disgruntled supporters of a confederalist America? It’s time to look at things with facts in mind.
We are sure that you were not aware of the motivated sinister intentions of some of the participants of the conference in their quest to present their views on historical events of the area using hate speech in order to promote their “pseudo-Macedonism;” but please be aware that the fine institution of the University of Utah is being used as an accomplice to promote hate speech towards, and disparagement of the Hellenic nation.
Sincerely,
Nina Gatzoulis Maria Hatzinakou
Supreme President Supreme Secretary
Contact: Ioannis Fidanakis, New Jersey, Tel. 1-973-464-0211
Nikolaos Taneris, New York, Tel. 1-917-699-9935,
http://hellenicleagueofamericahla.org/three_major_hellenic_diaspora_organizations_say_no
http://www.hellenicsocieties.org/pr20091025.html
Letter PDF: http://ahiworld.org/action_alerts/pdfs/102309_letter2.pdf
