Trifon Grekov

Trifon, also known as Trpche Grkov (Bulgarian: Тръпче Гърков),[1] was born in the Ottoman town of Yenice Vardar, today Giannitsa, Greece.

[9] In 1936, the young doctor Dimitar Micev began his career in Gevgelija and helped Grekov in covering the entire population of the city, as well as the towns and villages in the vicinity, including Valandovo, Bogdanci, Dojran and Miravci.

During World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia, Grekov was mobilized as a military doctor in the Bulgarian Army in Bitola and Kumanovo.

[10][11] In mid-August 1944, he deserted and moved to the Partisan-controlled village of Žegljane, located in a hilly area northeast of Kumanovo, where he established a shelter for wounded and sick partisans.

[4] In the first half of the 1920s, Grekov self-identified as a Macedonian Bulgarian,[13] but taking into account that Macedonia was inhabited by people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, and that since 1913 it was divided between Greece and Serbia, which had an aggressive policy of assimilation of the local population, he considered that posing the Macedonian question as a Bulgarian question has already proven to be harmful and instead he thought that the solution is the region of Macedonia becoming a state, independent from the neighboring Balkan states, including from Bulgaria.

[4] He traced continuity of the modern Macedonians with Alexander the Great and Cyril and Methodius, the most important historical figures originating from the region of Macedonia.