FOREWORD

Reading the memoirs and autobiography of my father Tane Lazar Naumov, who was the regional secretary for NOF for the Lerin region and was a direct participant in the battles which took place in the period 1943 to 1949 until the end of the Civil War in Greece, I found a number of genuine historical details about the battles and the events that occurred which have not yet been published.

In the following I will restrict myself to the Lerin region.

The Lerin region is one of the 28 regions that are a part of Aegean Macedonia, which is today under the occupation of Greece. It is in the western part of Aegean Macedonia near the borders with Republic of Macedonia and Republic of Albania.

It is comprised of: Prespa, the southern part of the Pelagonian plain and the Sorovichkiot plain. It occupies the land from 20 degrees 59' to 21 degrees 40' geographic longitude and from 40 degrees 31' to 40 degrees 56' geographic latitude, according to Greenwich.

The Lerin region is bordered by the following regions: to the north Republic Macedonia (Bitola and Prespa), the northeast, Meglen region, to the east with Voden, to the southeast with Kaljarska and to the southwest with Kostur and to the west, Republic of Albania.

In 1945, before the start of the Civil War in Greece, in Lerin, there were about 96 villages with about 85,000 residents and the majority of them were: Macedonians, Greek Prosfigi (settled from Asia Minor), Albanians, Vlachs and other ethnic groups.

The biggest city is Lerin, with 12,355 inhabitants according to the official census taken in Greece in 1991.

In writing this memorial album, I would like leave an irremovable record of all of those participants in the events which occurred at the time of the People's National Liberation Army (ELAS) from 1941-1945, especially for the reasons which led to the most bloody Civil War in Greece in the period 1946 to 1949.

With a few words I will mention the formation of NOF and its difficulties, which it experienced with the leadership of the Central Committee (CK) of the Communist Party of Greece and the way in which KPG took advantage of the weakness in the main leadership of the NOF organization.

I will mention a few of the greater, successful but also more unsuccessful actions of the fighting formations of DAG led by KPG to take a few villages and cities and for the defence of the entrenched strategic places from the forceful attacks by the monarcho-facsist Greek army. The bigger battles will be mentioned so that the reader can know why and at whose fault the people of Greece died, especially the Macedonian people.

I will look at almost all the villages from the Lerin region with a brief description and with the names of the lost fighters in the time of NOF and DAG.

For those villages for which we have no details, neither I nor my father is at fault; the blame is with the residents who did not want to give the details.

With this album I want to record their names forever so that their descendants and the descendants of the Macedonian people can be proud because they wrote the history of Macedonia in every battle with their blood.

I hope the names of the known and unknown heroes of the Lerin region will be honoured as they gave their lives for the national and social freedom of Aegean Macedonia. I hope their souls rest in peace.

HONOUR THEM