A WELL-PLANNED AND EVEN BETTER EXECUTED CAMPAIGN

A WELL-PLANNED AND EVEN BETTER EXECUTED CAMPAIGN

In his articles Dr. Kiriazovski cited the following:

Markos Vafiandis, President of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, by telegram, on February 20, 1948 notified Vice President Yiannis Ioannidis in Belgrade that preparations for the evacuation of children were going well and that 2,500 children were to be evacuated from Lerin Region and 3,500 were to be evacauated from Kostur Region, while he still had no data for Koniatsa, Zagoria and Epirus Regions.

The evacuation campaign was well-planned and organized. Several political and other organizations, including NOF, AFZH, the National militia, the People’s Councils and DAG units, were to

participate in its implementation. Special committees and collection centres were formed and food drives were organized. A care giver was assigned to each group of 20 to 25 children, whose task was to take care of the children. The care givers were called “mothers” and played a big role in the care of the children as well as in minimizing their trauma.

The child evacuation program began in late February and early March 1948 and lasted until June 1948.

The children from Epirus and from parts of Kostur Region were to be evacuated to Albania. The children from Western and Central Aegean Macedonia were to be evacuated to Yugoslavia and the children from Eastern Aegean Macedonia and Thrace were to be evacuated to Bulgaria.

Yugoslavia took responsibility for transporting the children from Western and Central Aegean Macedonia to Albania and to the other so-called People’s Democracies.

About this Dr. Kirazovski said:

“In connection with the decision to evacuate the children and the existing agreement for their acceptance, the Yugoslav Red Cross Executive Board on March 16, 1948 issued a statement which, among other things, said that recent actions and terror acts committed by the Monarcho-Fascist military against the democratic population in Greece, such as burning of villages, arrests, killings and other violence, have caused refugee flows over the Yugoslav border. Among the refugees there were many children who were fleeing naked, barefoot, hungry and completely exhausted, needing urgent assistance. Because of this the Yugoslav Red Cross immediately took steps to arrange assistance and care for the refugee children. In order to positively solve these kinds of problems, the CPG Central Committee has appealed to the various national Red Cross organizations to assist in the care of the children who were forced to leave their native soil and seek salvation outside of their homeland.”

From the statement made by the Yugoslav Red Cross we can see that the Yugoslav government’s intention to allow passage for the refugee children into Yugoslavia was a result of terror and not of a planned action as was the case.

On March 23, 1948 the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece announced its official position regarding the refugee children. Its position was designed to target the Balkan public and the people’s republics. It said: “In areas under their control, the Monarcho-Fascists are snatching children and taking them away. The population is persistently struggling to avoid this by sending their children towards the borders of neighbouring democracies and pleading with these countries: ‘Save our chidren. Save our children along with our population from the free territories which we are sending towards your borders. Our forces are determined to ease their transition. Please speed up the admission of our children’.”

Reception points were organized in the territory of Yugoslavia. These points were in Bitola, Matka, Skopje and Belgrade.

The first group of refugee children from Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia arrived in Belgrade on March 30, 1948.

According to incomplete data, some 14,028 children were transported out of Greece and into the people’s democratic countries from March 30, 1948 to September 1949. Yugoslavia took about 11,000 children, of which 2,000 were placed in special homes especially prepared for those children. Of the ten special homes, most were located on Serbian territory (primarily in Voivodina), in Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia. Their care was primarily led by the Yugoslav Red Cross, which struggled with enormous difficulties to provide space for accommodation, food, clothing, medical treatment, health care, education and so on. It was especially difficult and a complex task during the first post-war years.

The issue of the Refugee Children from Aegean Macedonia also appeared before International organizations and became public at the beginning of the Cold War and even became one of the segments in the ideological, political and propaganda war between the Greek royal government and its neighbours. This issue was also an

instrument used in a wider context in the tense relations between East and West.

The conflict between Yugoslavia on one side and the the Soviet Union and people’s democracies on the other, that broke out in the summer of 1948, soon led to the termination of relations between the Yugoslav and Greek communists. Because of this, the refugee children from Greece were caught in the middle of this so-called conflict, which at first seemed like it was a “family dispute”. Some were moved to other countries.

After DAG’s defeat in Greece, Yugoslavia accepted the United Nations Resolution and began to repatriate the children with their parents in Greece and with those who in the meantime had emigrated to Australia, Canada and the USA. For doing this the Greeks and Eastern bloc countries started a wave of accusations against the Yugoslav regime claiming that the children were used for “political trade with the Monarcho-Fascists” and for “courting the West”. Later, however, the successful repatriation of several hundred children in Greece, in the early fifties, helped normalize relations between Athens and Belgrade.

The waves of uprisings in the children’s homes, which were operated by groups of dissatisfied residents, motivated by the dismissal of teachers and poor living conditions, created desire in the children to want to be transferred to Eastern European countries. The restlessness of the Yugoslav authorities towards these outbursts of anger, frustration and disappointment on the part of the refugee children, also had their own political and ideological dimensions. It took a long time for reconciliation to take place, which was primarily achieved by the Yugoslav Red Cross leadership that had to endure numerous moral dilemmas which led to having to address the highest representatives of the Yugoslav authorities, in an attempt to find the flaws that were causing discontent in the refugee children.

The refugee children from Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia, who remained in Yugoslavia, were given the same opportunity as the Yugoslav children who lived under the same conditions, to obtain an education, to find a job and a place in Yugoslav society.

The children and main actors in these scenes were real and symbolic victims of internal Greek contradictions as well as of the entire complex postwar international relations. This had a big impact on their lives. They were exposed to numerous traumatic experiences that left lasting traces of neglect in them. This was also due to separation, loss of emotional protection from the family and not growing up in a normal family environment.

There is a variation in the data on the numbers of evacuated children. According to UN and Greek government statistics, the number of children evacuated was around 28,000, and according to CPG data that number was about 25,000.