TRAGEDY

TRAGEDY

(In the shadows of persecution)

They traveled barefoot to the parked train cars.

They were under the care of a “Mother”, appointed by the refugee committee, selected from the women who were incapable of fighting in the war.

The order of what children went to which car was not strict. The children boarded a car as they arrived until that car was full and then those who followed boarded the next car. The cars were boarded by both boys and girls of various ages up to age ten. The older ones traveled on a different train and under a different schedule.

The floors of the train cars were covered with straw and in the two opposite corners there were buckets. One set filled with drinking water on one side, and another set of empty buckets for other needs.

The first one to enter the train cars was Parashkeva Dabevski, who the children called “Mother”. They were all told to call her “Mother” because she was responsible for looking after them.

The slots that substituted for windows in these livestock cars were immediately taken over by the stronger and older children. The smaller and weaker ones remained in the centre and could not see outside... And here too the stronger reigned...

There was a lot of sobbing. The train cars were packed and all the slots were taken.

The siblings who entered different cars were separated. No one was told that the various train cars would be going to different destinations. Only the train tracks knew which cars would go in which direction. Small hands waved from the slots… unbeknown to them that they were about to be separated from each other… sibling from sibling… and that they were saying farewell… The smaller and younger children were not aware of what was happening… and

being so young… in time; would they remember who they are… or even their parents?

The cars began to roll. It was night and the children were afraid... They sat expressionless in confusion... Some looked bored. They felt like an iron wall stood between them and the outside world. It was cold inside the train cars...

The people outside watching the many cars rolling by suspected something was happening but had no idea that these livestock cars were full of children. The children were told to remain silent… and they did… so there were no voices to reach the ears of those outside and give the children away.

The trip lasted for days… the lives of those inside the cars were uncertain. The children were hungry and cold, every day stuck between the iron walls awaiting their evil fate… together with their common “Mother”.

It was night. There was great need for the little passengers to know what was going on in the outside world… to remember it… to have it imprinted in their souls… in their genes… which could only be seen through the narrow slots located on the sides of the livestock train cars…

Those who were exhausted lay down on the hard and cold floor, on the straw “beds” especially prepared for them and tried very hard to remember the road that they had traveled… the images as seen from the narrow slots. Still unaware that they were separated… they lay down on the floor with much hope and with one thought in mind: “Maybe after we arrive at our destination our mothers and fathers… our grandmothers and grandfathers… our brothers and sisters… will also be arriving with us…” Thoughts that helped them fall asleep.

They traveled day and night in a daze, being brought back to reality by the hard shaking of the trains pulling in and out of train stations. Those in possession of a slot peeped outside trying to make sense of what was happening. Those inside watched the dots of light filtering through every crack and hole, moving along as the train continued on its journey. They also watched the dust dance in the beams of

light… dust that was shaken off the roof and walls of the cars… dust that had accumulated inside these cars over the many years of service moving animals and garbage.

The “Mother” held the heads of several of the weaker children… while vomiting…of those who had difficulties coping with the train’s motion...

The vomit and other spilled liquids sank under the straw on the car floor and dripped through the floor cracks and fell on the railway tracks below. “We were safe”… they sighed “the car kept us inside… for itself…”

The children were each clutching at a shabby bag full of rye bread crumbs, cooked meat and other foods especially prepared for them by the hands of their own mother, made from the foods grown in their own villages and country. Each child traveling in the cars suffered from something… some from something more serious and others from something less. And there was nothing… nothing… nothing was written down or recorded about all this… about the fate and destiny of each child. There was nothing written about the savagery and their persecution... and nothing was written about those dilapidated livestock train cars that were carrying them…

Without writing things down, could “Mother” Parashkeva Dabevski remember all this… all that was happening to every child… to tell the children’s story to their descendents? To tell them how life was for each one of them traveling on the train… in cars built to carry livestock? How much could one person remember? It seemed as though there was only one life and one “Mother” existing in each car...

* * *

The children kept looking through the cracks, watching the fierce wind blow shaking leaves, raising dust and taking it wherever it wanted. They did not want to look at one another for fear that they might start crying. Their game here was to hide in plain view… to be mute, invisible and distant...

It was night when the cathedral clocks chimed in Krakow...

It was a holiday for three days. The streets were lined with cheerful people.

The children, holding little flags and miniature carousels, were waving them as they followed their common “Mother” passing through the square like an exiled herd of little lambs... looking timid in their coarsely woven garments.

“Oh my God, where did these children come from?” voices in the crowd were heard asking.

“From Kostur Region, Lerin Region, Prespa Region… from Macedonia…” answered “Mother” Paraskeva Dabevski.

It was autumn and the rain seemed to have washed out their footprints…

Their eyes were scattered… looking here and there… as they walked in a tight column, holding hands… not knowing where they were going…

It was Sunday; the children were cold and constantly coughing. Parashkeva Dabevski was resting in the dormitory. Now that she had brought the children here and surrendered them to their educators and caregivers, she was no longer their “Mother”. But it was difficult for them to call her “Aunt” instead of “Mother”. It was hard for her too. She felt useless without them, here in a foreign country. She did not want to leave them because life was telling her to go to a factory and work there. She was not an educator and she could not be a teacher… She had no training in the field of education… her job was to bring them here… yet the children still gathered around her… they remembered how she cared for them when they were in need of their own mother… Parashkeva Dabevski could not do without them either; it seemed like her fate was tied to theirs. Soon afterwards she fell sick and died. All the children wept at her funeral like she was their own mother.

Several children stood at the window. They constantly wished for many things, great and small, and all kinds of thoughts filled their little heads.

They were watching the doves on the opposite side of the building constantly moving their little blue legs... The curious birds, with blurred vision from the splashing rain, were looking back… watching the windows on the other side of the building… they watched the rain drops splash against the glass in the outside… and the tears of the strange children, whose noses were pressed against the glass, splashing in the inside. One of the children then said: “My grandfather used to say; if you take the cubs from an animal, that animal will never return to the same den...” Perhaps it’s the same with people?! Who knows...?

From the windows the children watched the locomotives passing by, breathing hard as they pulled all those cars, leaving behind their foggy breath in the form of white smoke.

Some of the children argued with one another as they watched the trains pass by. Some saying: “That was our train… The train that brought us here…” and wished that the same train would bring their mothers, fathers, grandmothers... While others were saying: “No it was not the same train…” for reasons of their own.

Travelers were getting off the trains. Some were coming from far away, from other cities. Some were returning to their homes to be with their relatives and to celebrate with them.

And each child watching was asking: “And where am I in all this…?”

* Tragedy (In the shadows of persecution): I had three important reasons for writing this short story. However, I will let you, the reader, be the judge about the things that happened to us in the Greek Civil War (1945 – 1949). I would also like to ask you this: “What we did… did we do it as a result of our own accord or… were we led to do this by foreign ideological propaganda? In other words, what really compelled us to leave our Macedonian homes so that our wives and mothers would be freed to join DAG, fight at the

fronts, become casualties and victims of war… and experience a catastrophic national defeat…?”

What happened to us and what was done to us was confirmed after DAG’s defeat, when we were forced to abandon our homes and lands and, as Greeks and Macedonians, flee to European countries and become permanent refugees… adults and children, deprived of our homes and lands… with one exception… years later, those of us who were “Greeks by birth” were allowed to return… the rest were left adrift… on foreign shores!

AFZH Attitude regarding the child exodus

AFZH newspaper “Nova Makedonka”.

“Today everyone is in tears. We were moving like never before. We sat in the shade under a poplar tree. Some of us were still sleeping. It was getting dark and we had to go to work (they worked at night). And here was comrade Tsveta from AFZH… she just arrived. We rejoiced at her arrival. I don’t know why but we were not afraid when she was with us, not even from the cannons.

This time she brought letters from our children who were in the people’s republics. We read the letters and shook our hands in the air. Our hearts were beating hard but our dear ones were away. Oh, how nice it would have been to kiss them a bit!

But the airplanes come here. Our villages are being bombed by artillery shells, how nice that our government sent our children to be saved.

Now our eyes are filled with tears. They are writing to tell us that they live well. They say: ‘We think of you, our mothers, in the war...’

Our poor children. When will we see them again?

We will see them again when we free ourselves. How nice that would be... But in order for that to happen we must defeat fascism.

And to make this happen sooner we need to fight harder, and fight we will...

Last night we built three bunkers, more than usual.

We do this so that our children can return home sooner… So that we and our husbands can return home sooner...”

“… No, not me! I will not leave my husband, my sister and my brother alone to fight here… I can’t go with the children. I know they will be safe; I have full confidence in the caregivers and teachers you selected… I will stay here and contribute to the struggle.”

CPG Attitude regarding the child exodus

Written by Vasilis Bardzhiotas, DAG Chief Commissar.

“... The Athens government in Greece characterized DAG’s dignified attempt to save the children as a program for ‘collecting children’, of ‘murdering children’ and even for turning children into ‘Janissaries’. But the real collection of children and turning them into Janissaries is done by the Athens government whose forces, in addition to committing unprecedented terror against the civilian population, have also forcibly taken children of partisan parents. Whoever fell into its hands the Athens government jailed in the various camps, or so-called ‘Frederica’s schools’ on the island Leros, where children were truly turned into Janissaries. They were brainwashed to believe that their parents were traitors and that they should be condemned...”

Attitude of the government in Athens regarding the child exodus

On February 27, 1948 the Greek government submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans (UNSCOB) claiming that:

“Greek children under partisan pressure were being forced to flee over the Albanian, Bulgarian and Yugoslav borders and from there

to be sent to other Eastern European countries and to remain in these countries…”

There were similar claims that “Traitors belonging to General Markos have begun to take inventory of about 28,000 children ages 3 to 14 in Northern Greece.”

The purpose of this action can be explained as follows:

1. To intimidate Greek families to help the partisans.

2. To brainwash the Greek children with communist ideology.

3. To destroy the Greek national sentiment and separate the children from their nation.

4. To force the families to leave their lands in order to care for their children.