MACEDONIANS WERE FORCED TO DRINK CASTOR OIL IF THEY SPOKE THE MACEDONIAN LANGU

MACEDONIANS WERE FORCED TO DRINK CASTOR OIL IF THEY SPOKE THE MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE

Macedonians were beaten and sentenced to ten years in prison because they were singing Macedonian songs

“It was mandatory for Macedonian children to go to school to learn the Greek language but they were forbidden from speaking Macedonian, their mother tongue. If a teacher caught a child speaking Macedonian in the school the teacher locked the child in the school basement for the rest of the school day. Sometimes the punishment was extended to more than one day. If a policeman caught a child speaking Macedonian that child was beaten…”

The above extract was taken from a report published by the Greek communist newspaper “Rizospastis”. The report was compiled during a visit to Kostur and Lerin at the end of 1932. This is only a small indication of the kind of terror the Greek authorities applied to assimilate the Macedonians.

According to Ivan Katardziev, “The main purpose of these Greek denationalization policies applied in the Aegean part of Macedonia by using force and terror was to stop the Macedonian people from speaking the Macedonian language in public, in school, in church, in the marketplace, etc. In addition to that the Greeks also destroyed everything that was Macedonian that would remind people of their Macedonian culture. This included erasing Cyrillic inscriptions on church icons, chiseling out Cyrillic writing off building walls, breaking gravestones, burning books, newspapers, etc.”

Also, according to Ivan Katardziev, “The Greeks soon discovered that not everyone could easily and expediently be assimilated using existing denationalization and assimilation policies. As a result the Greek authorities began to pay special attention to education. After erasing and destroying everything that could feed people’s individual and collective memory, the Greeks began to focus their effort on introducing draconian measures to stop the use of the Macedonian language everywhere, especially among the younger generations. For that purpose, in the beginning they paid special attention to properly educating the young and stopping them from speaking Macedonian. As a result new restrictions were introduced to eliminate the use of the Macedonian language everywhere inside and outside of the home. People were not allowed to speak Macedonian with their families, in the fields, in the forests, etc. People were not even allowed to speak Macedonian to their livestock; oxen, horses, mules, donkeys, chickens, sheep, goats and even dogs and cats. They had to retrain their dogs and draft animals to obey their commands in Greek… which was not an easy task.”

Anastasia Karakasidou, a Greek professor of anthropology in the USA, came to the same conclusion after conducting eight years of research in Guvezna’s (Arisos in Greek) past and present, a place located near Solun in Aegean Macedonia. Guvezna’s Macedonian inhabitants, according to Karakasidou, were completely assimilated by the Greeks. In her book “Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood” she captured many of the Greek government directives issued to the local authorities in the 1920s and 1930s which deeply impacted social relations and identity changes in the population. The most destructive directive was the restriction of use of other languages, besides Greek. In part this is what Karakasidou wrote about the Macedonian language restriction, “…especially the use of ‘Bulgarian’ (a word that was used in Greece to identify and categorize the spoken Macedonian language) was forbidden to be spoken in all public places; in stores and in the markets…”

According to Karakasidou, during the period between the wars (WW I and WW II), policemen were constantly scrutinizing the local population and punishing all those who spoke ‘Bulgarian’ (meaning Macedonian) in public places or any other language

besides Greek. This is what Karakasidou wrote, “The use of the Slavic language was successfully restricted; mainly the women who spoke that language among themselves. After children entered the schoolyard, where it was strictly forbidden to speak any other language besides Greek, a mandatory language in the whole of Greek Macedonia, the cultural and linguistic balance was destroyed. Night schools were opened in order to teach adult men and women the Greek language. This measure was probably the most successful tool for cultural assimilation. Only a small number of old women in Arisos in the 1940s still spoke the Slavic language, and according to my research from my field work, I found only one woman who still spoke the Slavic language. Some of the people from the village said that the kind of Greek she spoke sounded more like ‘Bulgarian’ than Greek. But there were words from the past that the locals used in their current vocabulary, especially expressions for family relations, that were Slavic. There was evidence of that…”

According to Karakasidou, at least in Arisos and other places where she conducted research, building Greek linguistic hegemony was relatively peaceful but the process in other places was violent. She also mentioned that inhabitants of Sohos, located east of Langadas, were forced to drink castor oil and sent to prison for speaking other languages besides Greek. In part, this is what she wrote, “In the western part of Greek Macedonia, where Slavic authority over the local inhabitants was strong, the impact of the Greek language historically was weaker than in the communities in the central part of Greek Macedonia, like in Arisos. In Sohos the assimilation campaign was more aggressive because there was a greater resistance against it. Young students in Sohos were beaten if they spoke the Slavic language…”

The following is another example that Karakasidou gave regarding the kind of measures the Greek authorities took to force the Macedonian people not to speak the Macedonian language. “A man from the village Neret was summoned to court where he was accused of being caught by the police for speaking ‘an unidentified language’ (Macedonian) with other people from the village. He was also accused of singing in that language…”

Educating young people in the ‘Greek spirit’ was the easiest way for the Greeks to achieve their goal. In pursuit of that the Greek government approved 14 million drachmas to build schools and boost the educational system in the areas where Macedonians lived. In Lerin Region alone the Greeks were planning to build 80 schools, prompting the Royal Yugoslav ambassador in London to accuse Greece of intending to erase the Slavic speaking minority.

One reporter from the newspaper “Rizospastis” described the situation of the Macedonian minority in Greece as dire. He wrote, “I will not speak of the economic tyranny, which is more terrifying than in the other areas. I will only speak of the spiritual and the political oppression perpetrated against the workers in Greece and the torture endured by the Macedonian people…” The reporter also gave examples of how students were interrogated on a daily basis and forced to ‘inform’ on their parents. To ‘confess’ to their teachers that their parents ‘entertained’ armed people (partisans) in their homes and that they spoke the Slavic language… Here is what he wrote, “They obliged all people to speak Greek even in their own houses in order to assimilate them. Remarkable is that not a single woman spoke Greek. Bakos, the area manager, one of the most cruel people in the region, previously serving as a captain in the Greek army, regularly called on the teachers to find out about the ‘movement’ in the village and gave them advice on how to carry out the ‘national mission’. In other words he instructed the teachers on how they could oppress the Macedonian people with greater cruelty.”

The same journalist also underlined that the Macedonian people were more afraid of the nationalist organizations EEE and “Pavlos Melas” than they were of the Greek police. He gave an example of how a member of the EEE beat a farmer in the presence of the police because he spoke Macedonian. Macedonians in V’mbel, a village near Kostur, were beaten and sent to 10 years in prison simply because they sang Macedonian songs in the Macedonian language.

According to Katardziev the cruelty with which the Macedonian people were persecuted because they spoke the Macedonian language could not persist without consequences. As a result the Macedonian language practically became a dubious language. This

is what Katardziev wrote about that, “The Macedonian people could only speak secretly and silently. They avoided speaking in front of strangers and undesirable people. This reduced the persecutions against them but, at the same time, it fulfilled the Greek objective of silencing the Macedonian people. In other words, in the long term, it gave the Greeks an advantage in assimilating the Macedonian people.”