SISTER FOUND BROTHER 54 YEARS LATER

SISTER FOUND BROTHER 54 YEARS LATER

Sandra Tsvetanoska found her brother Giorgi after she grew up in the refugee children’s homes in Poland

Sandra Tsvetanoska from Skopje found her brother Giorgi in Australia 54 years later; after they were separated and she ended up in the children’s homes in Poland. She had a photograph of him. Her brother Giorgi recognized himself when he saw the photograph. Sandra Tsvetanoska’s daughter had given the photograph to the Macedonian newspaper “Today” to publish it. Giorgi immediately made inquiries and found out that Sandra was living in Skopje. He immediately contacted her to let her know that he was still alive and well, living in Australia and was eager to see her again.

Little Sandra was only 2.5 years old when she was evacuated with the refugee children from her village Shtrkovo, located near Lerin, and taken to Poland and placed in the refugee children’s home in Scecin where she remained until she was 19 years old. When she left the children’s home she started working as a hair dresser. When families from the Aegean part of Macedonia began to reunite, mothers and fathers started looking for their children everywhere. Unfortunately no one was looking for Sandra. The only relative that she knew she had that was alive was her uncle. He asked her to come to Skopje and live with him and his five children.

This is what Sandra said when she heard from her brother, “My heart hurt. I grew up in children’s homes without a mother’s love. And now after all those years when I heard my brother’s voice I felt real love.” Sandra told her story on the Macedonian radio program “Three Times Son-in-Law” in Melbourne when she went to visit her brother.

Sandra continued, “My psychological wounds that pained me all those years while I was living alone began to heal a little when I got married and had my own family, when my son and daughter were born. But those wounds could never heal completely, because I did

not know the fate of my mother and brother. When I left Poland and went to Skopje, I stopped looking for them because I was afraid that this would open new wounds and I would not be able to bear them. At the same time I was angry and disappointed because my parents had left me alone. I was in Poland and the entire time they never looked for me, or asked if I was even alive. But my daughter Lidia didn’t think like me. She said to me, ‘You certainly have not fallen from Mars and have no one; you have a family and you should be able to find out more about it’…” This is what Sandra told us when we were speaking with her three years after she met her brother, which obviously very much touched her delicate soul. The main factor which led Sandra to her brother in Melbourne was his photograph taken in Skopje when he was a small boy. She got the photograph from a cousin of hers from her mother’s brother’s side. Many years ago her uncle had mentioned that they had a photograph of her brother Giorgi, but did not give it to her until much later.

This is what Sandra’s daughter Lidia said about that, “The first thing that I thought of was sending the photograph to Australia. I told myself most of the people from the Aegean part of Macedonia went to Australia. I turned to the Agency for Emigration and they helped me get in touch with Ico Naidovski, editor of the Macedonian radio-program. I sent him the photograph and he had it published in the Macedonian newspapers with an explanation that ‘a sister is looking for her brother’, and ‘their mother’s name was Tsveta’…”

While Giorgi was getting his hair cut, Boris his barber told him about the story he was reading in the newspaper where ‘a sister from Macedonia was looking for her brother’ and at the same time Boris showed him the photograph. When Giorgi saw the photograph he recognized himself and yelled, “That’s me!” “I was certain of that,” Giorgi said, “because my mother gave me the same photograph a year ago. I ran home and brought it back to the barber shop and compared the two. I had no doubt that the little boy was me…”

Giorgi cried when he found out that he had a sister in Skopje. He said that his mother never told him he had a sister. He couldn’t understand why his mother kept that a secret from him. When he pressed her, his mother began to cry and told him he had not one but two sisters. She told him that during the Greek Civil War the

Partisans took his oldest sister Sandra and told her that they would bring her back in a couple of weeks. But she was never brought back… His mother told him that his father took Slobodanka, his other sister, with him and fled to Yugoslavia sometime after the war ended. She also told him that she too fled Greece and went to Yugoslavia in 1952. She and Giorgi ended up in Trst. Two years later they immigrated to Australia and since then she never had any contact with Macedonia.

This is what Giorgi said on the Macedonian radio in Melbourne when he was telling his story, “When I heard Sandra’s voice I felt a jab in my heart. It was painful for me because for 50 years no one had told me I had sisters. I feel sad that I didn’t grow up with them…”

This is what Sandra’s daughter Lidia said about her uncle Giorgi, “When he called us on the telephone, he was extremely excited; he cried a lot. He explained that no one in his entire life had told him that he had sisters. He insisted that we see each other as soon as possible. We got our visas and I, together with my mother, went to Melbourne Australia where we finally met him and my grandmother…”

This is what Sandra said about the meeting, “I don’t have words to describe our meeting. When I hugged my brother I felt warm all over. At the same time I felt pain in my heart because my mother had abandoned me. How could she forget her own children? I can’t understand how she could not tell her own son that he had sisters and that he was born in Macedonia. I still have a big lump about that in my chest. Even today I still feel the exhaustion from meeting my brother and mother. When I came back from Australia I was admitted to the hospital where I spent 20 days recovering…”

Sandra continued, “I have a wonderful brother, but I can’t say the same about my mother. I didn’t speak to her while we were visiting because she forgot about me and my sister Slobodanka. She had no explanation as to why she had left her children. When I asked her about it, she looked down at the ground and never looked me in the eyes. She was probably ashamed of what she had done. She cried and swore that she was looking for us, and that she was missing us;

that she was ashamed of her decision, but I didn’t trust her tears because, if she wanted to, she could have found us. Over the years I aged. I am now 63 years old, and there is the question if I will ever see Gorgi again; if we will have a chance to live together as brother and sister, like a normal family…”

The story Sandra told us about herself and her family is a typical tragic Aegean story. This is what we found out after doing our own research. After the Greek Civil War ended Sandra’s mother Tsveta fled to Bitola. Sandra’s father Vasil and her sister Slobodanka ended up in Belgrade. By that time Sandra had already been evacuated with the refugee children and was living in a children’s home in Poland. Sometime later, Sandra’s mother and father found each other and continued to live together in Yugoslavia. Then their son Giorgi was born and baptized in a church in Skopje. Later Sandra’s mother left her father and married another man, a Macedonian from the Pirin part of Macedonia. She left Yugoslavia with this man and first went to Italy and from there to Australia. Sandra’s father and sister also immigrated to Australia and ended up in Perth. Her father did not know that Giorgi was in Melbourne, Australia.

Sandra continued, “From the earliest days my father had told my sister Slobodanka that she had a brother and sister. I saw her about thirty years later. She came to my place in Skopje on vacation. Before his death, my father had told her that we had to find Giorgi…”

We don’t know why Tsveta, Sandra’s mother, left her husband during that difficult period. She never told anyone the truth nor did Vasil, Sandra’s father. We have no explanation why they separated. We also don’t know why Tsveta abandoned her daughters and never asked for them again. There are several different explanations but they are only speculation. Lidia, Sandra’s daughter, believes that the most plausible explanation is the one she heard in Australia. Tsveta’s second husband abandoned his four children. It is most likely they both decided to forget about their previous children and not talk about them to anyone.

Sandra and Giorgi’s touching story about meeting each other after being separated for 54 years was broadcast on the Macedonian

radio-program in Melbourne and heard all over Australia, Macedonia and the world. Their story was also broadcast on the Australian national television Channel 7. According to Lidia, her uncle and journalist Ico Naidovski were most instrumental in finding Sandra’s brother Giorgi. Ico Naidovski also provided guarantees for Sandra and Lidia to get the Australian visas for their visit.