Markos Vafeiadis (also spelled as Vafiadis and Vafiades; ; Tosya, – Athens, ) was a leading figure of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) during the Greek Resistance and the Greek Civil War. Pre-war life Vafiedis was born in Tosya, Ottoman Empire in 1906 although some sources claim he was born in Şenkaya, Erzurum in present-day Turkey. At the age of 17, after the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey of 1923, Vafeiadis went to Thessaloniki and Kavala as a refugee. From 1928, he worked in Thessaloniki as a member of the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). In 1932, he was imprisoned and sent to internal exile for his political action. After his release in October 1933, he worked as party instructor in many areas of Greece. At the beginning of Ioannis Metaxas' dictatorship (the "4th of August Regime") he was exiled again to the island of Ai Stratis, but managed to escape in less than a month. Subsequently, he worked in the party's underground organization in Crete and was one of the leaders of the Chania uprising against the dictatorial regime (July 28, 1938). After the suppression of the uprising, he went to Athens where he was arrested. He was jailed in Akronafplia and was exiled to the island of Gavdos. Resistance and Civil War In May 1941, at the beginning of the Nazi German occupation of Greece, he, along with other Greek military prisoners, escaped from the island of Gavdos and began what was to become the original underground work against the German occupation, initially in Crete, later in Athens, Thessaloniki and eventually all of Macedonia. In 1942, he was elected into the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece and was named supervisor of the Macedonia wing of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS). In May 1944, he was elected as a representative of Thessaloniki to the national congress that took place at the village of Koryschades in Evrytania, but was unable to attend. On 30 October 1944, after the withdrawal of the German army, and following battles against the Security Battalions, he entered as liberator in Thessaloniki with his men of ELAS. In November 1944, his forces liberated Central Macedonia and helped save thousands of Greek Jews from imminent peril from the exiting Nazi regime. In February 1946, Markos Vafeiadis disagreed with Nikos Zachariadis, the general secretary of KKE, who wanted to create a