Sarbinov Mihal (Goce)

Mihal Sarbinov (Goce) was born in the village, Sv. Petka, Lerin region in 1920. His father Pavle was a poor farm worker and because he could not ensure his family had enough to eat he was compelled from a young age to roam around America. "As a young boy," Pavle's mother baba Velika would tell, "he could not bear enslavement. All of the children of his age escaped from the Turks to Dautovci while little Pavle made them go a long way around our house." Pavle gave this revolutionary spirit to his son Mihal. Mihal spent his early years in his village. Later on he was a student in the Lerin high school, which he completed with great success and after that continued in the Lerin teachers' college. In his student years the young Mihal lived through all the hardships and sufferings of the people. His character grafted boundless love for the exploited enslaved people with hatred of the fascist regime of the Metaxas dictatorship. Mihal quickly matured politically and got ready for the future battles.

The German occupiers found him in the ranks of OKNE. He worked actively in the academy, in the centre of Lerin, in his own village, against the occupiers. He took part in the heroic act on 21 March 1943 when a group of armed patriots stopped the train at the Banica station and freed the national peoples' fighters.

The Nazis went wild - they shot and hanged patriots, they set fire to villages and they turned the whole home land into a cemetery. Mihal, even though he needed to spend only a few more months at the academy to complete his studies and achieve his degree, could no longer bear to wait. He left the academy in 1942 and dedicated himself completely to the activity of OKNE, to the national liberation movement. In this period he was an instructor in the Lerin regional committee of the CPG in Surovichko under the pseudonym Goce. Goce developed a serious revolutionary record of activism. He worked tirelessly with enthusiasm and self sacrifice but also with great intelligence. Together with his comrades they criss-crossed the villages from Patele to Prekopana and established party and EAM organizations in all the villages, Greek and Macedonian. As a result of his activism the Surovichko region stood out. Young Goce became a mature and capable party leader. In this period and to the end of his life he was strict in the fulfillment of the party line. He was a passionate defender of unity in the struggle between the Macedonians and the Greeks, as the one path and the correct path for achieving the aims of the CPG for the Macedonians to achieve equal rights. He was tireless in the battle against chauvinism and the movements that were pushing for division on the basis of ethnicity. As a result of Goce's fighting record he gained great respect among the population in Surovichko. And not only among the Macedonians but among the Greeks as well.

After the Varkiza agreement, he was elected a member of the Lerin town committee of the CPG. In the new and difficult conditions of the brutal terror, he again worked with courage for the party agenda to be met.

In 1946 Goce was arrested by the reactionary forces and imprisoned in the Lerin prison and from there he was taken to the Kasandra prisons. In the month of May 1947 along with four other Greeks, cadres of the CPG, he was put before a military court in Solun. In the military court proceedings Goce and his comrades bravely defended the the CPG policies for equal rights for the Macedonians, and accused the politics of the reactionary rulers toward the Macedonians and sought recognition of their right to live free in their homeland and own country, enjoying equal rights with the Greek people. Goce and his comrades courageously defended the party line. Addressing the judges, Goce said:

"You are telling us to resign from the CPG. But if we did, what would we believe in? Which party in the hard years of the Nazi occupation stood with the people and fought until the end against the occupier, for the liberation of the homeland? The CPG was first to raise the battle flag and carried the heaviest burden of the struggle and made thousands of sacrifices for liberation of the homeland, of the people."

The court determination was death for Goce and his four comrades. All five communists were cool headed when they received the death sentence and stood bravely before the execution squad.

In the last moments of his short life his old parents visited him in jail. And in these moving moments, Mihal was at peace, unemotional. His last words were the following:

"Mother and father, do not grieve for me. When you return to the village tell all my comrades that only one path remains, and that they should take it - the path of the struggle until eventual victory."

P Popovski

From: For Sacred National Freedom: Portraits Of Fallen Freedom Fighters

© 2009

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