AEGEAN CHILDREN USED FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES DURING THE COLD WAR

AEGEAN CHILDREN USED FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES DURING THE COLD WAR

The Greek Government blamed the communists saying that they ‘kidnapped’ the children and educated them to be Macedonians

The children who were evacuated from Aegean Macedonia in the spring of 1948 by the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) and by the National Liberation Front (NOF) were used as evidence of “kidnapping”. The Greek government and its supporters used this act in their dirty propaganda in an attempt to convince the world that the children had actually been kidnapped. This is what historian Risto Kirjazovski, PhD, wrote, “The problem with the refugee children from Aegean Macedonia appeared in international organizations and in public at the beginning of the Cold War and became a segment in the ideological, political and propaganda war between the Greek Royalist Government and its neighbours. That issue was used in a wider context during the increased tension between East and West…”

According to Katerina Mirchevska, PhD, the Greek government press was a powerful propaganda weapon that gave two totally different dimensions to this event. The CPG was accused of taking the children in order to educate them as Slavs and Communists to destroy the Greek nation. This is what Mirchevska wrote, “The articles published in many newspapers around Europe, America and Australia caused a storm of emotions and reactions among charity organizations, churches, governments as well as among common citizens. Even the British Archbishop of Canterbury made a comment in which he asked everyone to pray for the Greek children ‘taken away from their homes, villages and country by force to unknown destinations’…”

On December 28, 1949 a number of Greek women’s organizations met in Athens and proclaimed this day a “Day of Sorrow” for the kidnapped children. The Greek Government put the issue into question in the United Nations asking that the children be returned. A special Balkan UN Commission was created to investigate the situation and, at the suggestion of the Commission, the UN General Assembly brought a special resolution which called for the “children to be returned to their parents and in the absence of parents they should be returned to their closest relatives…” The repatriation was to be carried out through the International Red Cross but Albania, Hungary, Poland and Romania refused to cooperate. In its explanation the Romanian Government said that the lists it was provided with were falsified. Parents who were soldiers in the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG) who had children in Romania were no longer living in Greece. The vast majority of these parents were refugees in the socialist countries…

The refugee children were discussed several times in the UN General Assembly and after those discussions took place a Permanent Commission for the repatriation was created. Many suggestions came out of these discussions. One came from the Swedish foundation “Rada Barnen” (Help for Europe), which offered to build barracks on the Greek islands with its own funds to accommodate the children being repatriated.

The Americans also joined in on the aggressive Greek propaganda. Historian Lorens S. Votner evaluated the evacuation as “one of the most horrible actions in the physiological war in the Greek conflict…” Something similar was said by the American diplomat Rankin, who judged the act as “a great physiological mistake’, which was used in the USA and abroad as “useful anti-communist propaganda”. This is what Kiriazovski wrote, “As a result of the American and Greek propaganda disseminated around the world, an assumption was created that the children were kidnapped…”

In December 1948 the “Wall Street Telegraph”, a New York based newspaper, wrote, “Children are dying because they don’t have a roof over their heads and because they lack food and clothing. Twenty five thousand of them are left without care. For God’s sake

send help immediately, send everything that you have because many die with every passing day…”

The truth however was different. All the children, regardless of which country they were sent to, were well looked after. Some were accommodated in hotels and summer resorts and others in children’s home and there was plenty of food for them and everyone was enrolled in school. As a result of the incessant American and Greek propaganda, western journalists visited the children’s homes in Vojvodina where they were told the actual situation. This is what the “New York Times” wrote, “The girls we spoke to denied that they had been kidnapped by the Greek Partisans and that they were forced out of their country. They said they ran away from the airplane attacks. The Yugoslav Red Cross provided food and clothing for them. Every child had a pair of good shoes, although some of the shoes were too big. The dresses, the pants, the blouses and the scarves they were given were new or in good condition…” The “New York Times” also emphasized that it was the Greek government air force that bombed the villages where the children lived and it was the same Greeks who drove them out that now wanted them back. Most of those villages had been totally ruined.

Journalists also reported that it was the Greek government’s brutal treatment that caused the evacuations and the many war casualties which forced the Partisans to evacuate the children out of Greece.

Associated Press journalists also came to the conclusion that it was the daily Greek government bombings of their villages that forced the children to leave their homes. According to the Associated Press, “Many of the children’s brothers and sisters died from Greek bombs, hunger and the winter cold. Many of their parents were murdered because they fought for the resistance…” The Associated Press journalists also mentioned that they observed children cower when they heard the sound of airplanes. “It was surprising to see these children run into ditches and scream when they heard an airplane fly overhead. They even had the same reaction when an eagle flew over them in the sky. These children were so exhausted they fell asleep while playing but are now slowly recovering in the Serbian village near the border with Romania, where they are accommodated in a

clean school building. For many of them this is the first quiet home that they have ever had…”

A reporter from the “New York Herald” wrote, “Yugoslavia is taking good care of the refugee children from Greece…” The same reporter visited the children’s homes in the villages near the Romanian border where he was told by the people that it was wrong of Athens to accuse the Partisans of kidnapping their own children. The same reporter saw with his own eyes how the children were treated. This is what he wrote, “The western press claims that the children who left their homeland in Greece were taken from their parents by force and that they live in prisons and in bad conditions, but that is not true. The children are well taken care of…”