Ohrana

Ohrana (Bulgarian: Охрана with meaning: "Protection"); (Greek: Οχράνα) were armed collaborationist detachments organized by the former Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) structures, composed of Bulgarians (i.e. pro-Bulgarian oriented parts of the Slavophone population) in Nazi-occupied Greek Macedonia during World War II and led by officers of the Bulgarian Army. Bulgaria was interested in acquiring Thessalonica and Western Macedonia, under Italian and German occupation and hoped to sway the allegiance of the 80,000 Slavs who lived there at the time. The appearance of Greek partisans in those areas persuaded the Axis to allow the formation of these collaborationst detachments. However, during late 1944, when the Axis appeared to be losing the war, many Slavophone Nazi collaborators, Ohrana members and VMRO regiment volunteers fled to the opposite camp by joining the newly founded communist SNOF. The organization managed to recruit initially 1,000 up to 3,000 armed men from the Slavophone community that lived in the western part of Greek Macedonia.

The “Macedonian Question,” became especially prominent after the Balkan wars in 1912-1913, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent division of the Region of Macedonia between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Bulgarian communities inhabited parts of southern Macedonia from the Middle Ages. This continued also during 16th and 17th centuries by Ottoman historians and travellers like Hoca Sadeddin Efendi, Mustafa Selaniki, Hadji Khalfa and Evliya Celebi. The majority of Slav—speakers after 1870 were under the influence of the Bulgarian Exarchate and its education system, thus considered themselves as Bulgarians. Part of them were influenced by the Greek Patriarchate, which resulted in the formation of Greek consciousness. Greece, like all other Balkan states, adopted restrictive policies towards its minorities, namely towards its Slavic population in its northern regions, as a result of the aftermath of Second Balkan war and the potential threat that Bulgaria could pose in the fear of using the pro-Bulgarian oriented minority in Greece as a subversive Fifth Column. After the Balkan Wars and especially after the First World War more than 100,000 Bulgarians from Greek Macedonia moved to Bulgaria, as part of the population exchange policy between the two countries.

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