Chapter six - One of the sickest stories - Part 02

Greek children from the hands of their mothers and sent them to enemy countries. The Greek soul now had the strength to arm itself and free the young Greeks in our country from these Slavic hordes. Fortunately for us our great Queen, our beloved mother, saved you from the clutches of the enemies of our country and gathered you in these pedopolis’s (Gritzonas 1998, 124- 25).

So, now let us have a look at the ideology of the communists who were just as guilty as Queen Federica for the acts they perpetrated against the Macedonian family. Information gathered by UNSCOB and other sources shows that the mass evictions of children started in March 1948. We know, however, that several groups of children were taken in January 1948. According to Lars Barentzen (UNSCOB a / p 574. 30): “The evacuations began back in January 1948 but actively continued into March.”

On the Greek government side, according to Queen Frederica’s memoirs, it was clearly stated that the time chosen for taking the children was before the communists began to take them, which was immediately after the creation of the Royal Greek program for caring for children in June 1947. But available letters of complaints, found later, confirmed that many such programs were implemented, especially the program to collect the children, roughly about the same time as the government’s propaganda began to blame the Communists for having committed the “Pedomazoma” (child collection program). The Queen’s statements probably referred to the general relocation of villagers from the war zone when the government army had begun its campaigns which were, at the earliest, in 1947, at which time, naturally, they collected thousands of disabled people and children.

Let us also mention that the communist Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its declaration dated March 7, 1948, about Frederica’s last order for collecting all the children in children’s camps, said: “We are doing this solely because the queen is doing the same thing”.

Maybe this had something to do with what the Greek government in Athens had disclosed the previous day, March 6, 1948, that the number of children taken was around 14,000. These children, according to the Greek government, were taken from the “bandit”

north regions. This information was obtained from British sources in Solun (British Department of Foreign Affairs: 868. 00 / 3-1948).

This news, which came eight days after the commencement of the propaganda campaign against the communist “Pedomazoma”, appears to be the first batch of formal news dispatched by the Athens government. This coincides with news dispatched by Athens newspapers, which disclosed that small groups of children had been evicted or had run away from their villages in Northern Greece, in the beginning of March, in order to save themselves from the violent seizures.

Similarly, at the same time, the Communist press began to broadcast complaints about the Greek government “taking children from their mothers”.

This was in agreement with an American press release which made reference to a time frame from January to March 1948 which confirms that: “The district administrators and the military cooperated to carry out Queen Frederica’s plan to abduct the children. Their aim was to take about 10,000 to 12,000 children. By March 31 they had abducted 6,240 children. (This was confirmed by the foreign aid IPA Foreign Relief Program, Greek mission, January-March 1948, p. 14.)

The American mission that was helping Greece (A. M. G.), for the month of April 1948, reported that the government accompanied the mission in its field expeditions and that “in reference to the same designated areas, it was prohibited from monitoring, but the mission estimated that the number of children seized totaled around 10,000”.

Even though UNSCOB was not directly involved officially, with the caution the Greek government took, on April 19, 1948, the Commission sent a questionnaire to the Greek Trustee and representative, to collect information about the number of children involved in the collection program implemented by the Greek government, just in the northern regions of Greece. The Greek representative responded on April 23, 1948 and said that they had collected 5,500 children ages 3 to 14 and that they had been removed from many regions in Macedonia and that approximately

2,150 children were housed in various centres in Solun. He also reported that around 5,000 children had been collected from Serres and Thrace. This work was supervised by order of the Ministry of Social Care. (UNSCOB Report / 754 (1948), p. 19.)

The press in Athens, on April 1, 1948, started publishing details of the government’s share of collected children. In an article entitled “The first group of children arrived in Athens today” the newspaper “Kathimerini”, among other things, wrote: “About 1000 children from the regions controlled by the bandits (DAG partisans) were transferred by boat from Solun to the village Kastri in Kafisia. A second group is due to arrive this morning, on April 2, in Piraeus and another, a third group is due to arrive in a few days. These children will be transferred to Patra and Syros.”

A separate article in the same “Kathimerini” newspaper described a meeting that took place yesterday. Among other things the article wrote: “At 11 o’clock the previous day the queen received Mr. Tsaldaris, Vice President of the Greek government, and Mr. Gkrisgulnt with whom she had a long conversation. During the talks, the queen introduced the two gentlemen to each other and informed them of the successes and cooperation that had been achieved to date and thanked them for their share in the collection, relocation and care of the children torn away from the gangsters operating in the northern regions of Greece”.

The newspaper wrote that these kinds of meetings were necessary and should be continued and that one such consultation was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the chairmanship of Tsaldaris. The newspaper made mention that such discussions were taking place in many Greek ministries and by American missionaries. There was also mention of the appointment of General Van Fleet as Head of the Special American Military Mission in Greece.

According to a report entitled “More committees and subcommittees” the child collection program was assisted “by the military commanders who operated in those areas”.

During a consultation meeting it was decided to start a new committee under the chairmanship of the Ministry of Caring. This

committee was required to have the “exquisite task of developing a complete system of care for the displaced children”.

The article ends by discussing two options for the care of the children. One was about placing the children in humanitarian groups “where they will receive full education and care”, the other option was about “placing the children in the care of certain families, which were willing and had already made commitments to accept a large number of children and to provide for them”. With this approach the state budget would not be burdened with too many of these programs because the money, for at least six months of complete child care coverage, was going to be provided by Queen Frederica. (See “Kathimerini”, April 4, 1948.)

Now let us have a look at the motives and programs provided by the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, DAG and the CPG.

Ominous 1948 – clear facts and dirty aims... In its short time in the Macedonian presence, the CPG managed to turn the age-old traditional family, rooted on its native soil, into a political family scattered all over the world…

The CPG leadership, regarding its role in the collection and evacuation of the Macedonian children, had its own motives which it explained as “a need to rescue the children from the horrors of the war”, but on a voluntary basis at the discretion of their own parents.

What exactly does that mean? It means that the action the CPG took, with help from the Macedonian organizations NOF and AFZH, had clean facts but dirty aims.

In other words, NOF and AFZH, who were the guardians of the Macedonian people, did nothing outside of what they were ordered by Zahariadis.

In order to obtain a clear and realistic understanding of the general Greek attitude towards the Macedonian people, regardless of which political regime is in power, be it the monarchists, republicans, liberals, democrats, authoritarians or communists, one must understand that Greece has a single policy with regards to the

Macedonians: “destroy the Macedonian people in order to have a Macedonia without Macedonians”. The CPG was a Greek political organization and its aims were no different; “get rid of the Macedonian people”. But, at the same time the CPG did not want to be directly responsible for such an “unlawful” genocidal act. So to avoid being blamed for the “abduction” of children, it made the act “voluntary” and, at the same time, it implemented the child collection program through NOF and AFZH. It put NOF and AFZH in charge of organizing the program and convincing the Macedonian population to give up its children voluntarily. By doing this the CPG solved two problems; one, it distanced itself from the actual collection and two, by working through the Macedonian organization it achieved a greater success than if it had worked on its own. The Macedonian people trusted the Macedonians a lot more than they trusted the Greeks. But then very quickly we found out that the CPG had other motives that were not “humanitarian”! This became apparent when the older children were brought back, trained to fight and sent to the fronts to engage the battle-seasoned Greek government military combat forces at the war front. The not so clear CPG motive was to turn these children into DAG fighters and solve its recruitment problem but without parental consent. Another not so clear CPG motive for the evacuation of the children was to free their parents and to fully engage them into every aspect of the war effort, which it did in 1948.

Now let us have look at what DAG had to say about this in its own reports. Very quickly after the Greek government first complained about the “bandits” kidnapping children, the DAG leadership confirmed that indeed there was such a program on its part that collected children and sent them outside of Greece, but it explained that it was done in order to save the children from the perils of the war.

On March 3, 1948 the radio program “Free Greece” confirmed the following: “The partisan (andart) radio station announced that under ‘agreement’ between countries that are members of the Cominform, Greek children between the ages 3 and 14 will be sent to Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. According to the same report, the people in these regions, controlled by the partisans (andarts), have made demands

through public boards to the partisans to organize a child care program for their children and to take these children to the democratic countries which have already given their consent for admission and for hospitality. Because if they don’t the children will become victims of the American occupier. There the children will be able to continue with their schooling. March 3rd, 1948.”

The reaction of the second man in DAG command was: “The real, dignified and human endeavour of DAG is characterized by the government of Athens as... ‘Forcible collection of children’... ‘murder of children’ and ‘janissarism’. But the real forcible collection and acts of janissarism is done by Athens because many of the abducted children are children of the DAG partisan fighters, against whom the Greek government has committed unprecedented terror. These children have been abducted by fraud and are found in various so-called Queen Frederica schools in Leros, where in reality they are being turned into janissaries by teaching them that their parents are traitors and that they should be turned in to law enforcement and national security authorities.”

On March 15, 1948 the newspaper “Eksormisi”, published by the Democratic Army of Greece in the area of Mount Gramos, printed a notification from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, dated March 7, 1948, in which it attempted to explain its motives for this venture. In part the notification said: “The people’s and other organizations regarding the care of children in “Free Greece” and many thousands of parents and relatives have appealed to the humanitarian organizations in the people’s democratic countries and have asked them to take responsibility for the care of their children, who are in danger from the barbarism of the monarcho-fascists.

These humanitarian organizations, patrons of children’s organizations and various other youth organizations in these countries, have accepted the pleas of these parents with great joy and pleasure and have given their support to the Greek children, even if they need to take care of them for a long period of time.”

This means that after receiving all these “guarantees” from these humanitarian organizations, the CPG and the Provisional

Democratic Government decided to accept the appeals coming from the various people’s organizations and from the parents of these children. With these guarantees the communists in Greece were able to satisfy all parental concerns and gain their approval to send the children out of the country until conditions in Greece were safe for their return.” (10)

Furthermore the newspaper gave no concrete information about the timing of these events and the impact this very important decision would have on the status of affairs in Greece, but from what was said we can assume the following:

a / this disaster was created by the policies of the “Monarcho-Fascists”.

b / there was a growing problem with feeding the children.

c / around 150,000 or more children were wandering around walking along the city, town and village roads. About ten children were dying each day.

d / Queen Frederica’s decree ordering the Greek authorities to collect all the children, no matter where they were, turn them into janissaries and place them by force into the Greek Fascist youth organizations, certainly accelerated the need to do something. And finally,

e / the bombardment of towns and villages exposed the unprotected women and children to great dangers. More than 120 children were killed from bombs just recently.

The same newspaper, “Eksormisi”, published a news article entitled “Women and children thank the Provisional Democratic Government and DAG” which, in part, said: “... a representative of this newspaper visited areas of ‘Free Greece’ and in his article he wrote that there were many parents in the villages under the Athens government control who came to the territory of ‘Free Greece’, to the free villages and signed petitions and made requests of National Council to take their children and send them with the other children. There were pleas from these people to have their children registered

for the mass evacuations along with all the other children from these villages. From mid-February to March 5, 1948 59 villages and 4,784 children were evacuated.”

At the same time, the newspaper provided the sequence of numbers under which children were enrolled and it did this for children from most of the villages which were identified by name. The same article also wrote that hundreds of telegrams were received from parents to express their gratitude to the Provisional Democratic Government. (11)

Two weeks later, on April 1, 1948, the newspaper “Eksormisi” wrote: “A large number of young children were loaded oto ox carts, horses, mules and donkeys and many raced on foot in long convoys in various different directions”. Writing about one such convoy, which arrived in a village late at night, the newspaper said: “Some of the children walked, others rode on horses, mules and donkeys and beside them were their mothers. They were from the villages Kondorabi, Kumanichevo, Bombaki, Tiolishta and Zagorichani. The youngest ones, feeling sleepy, were mounted on the donkeys. When the children were divided and separated for the night, the same mothers who brought them there stood and watched from afar, increasingly distancing themselves. They said goodbye to their children with tears and pain and with indescribable hatred for the Anglo-American occupiers and monarcho-fascists responsible for separating them from their children and for bringing misery to them!”

After that the newspaper published some statistics revealing the numbers of children that had been taken.

“Up to date, five groups have been sent. About 1,884 children with about 100 women to supervise them have been moved. Currently another 3 groups totaling 1,150 children are been prepared for travel.”

The same article also wrote: “In regards to enslaved Greece, the Monarcho-Fascist government in Athens has declared a wild war on the Greek children and their mothers. The army and militia are

active in conducting military expeditions in the villages and snatching small children from the arms of their mothers.

From the 150 children that the Monarcho-Fascists grabbed from the village Bouf, Lerin Region, their mothers managed to take 25 children back. This took place inside the Lerin Square, in the centre of the city. After that all the mothers marched together into the square, pleaded with the authories and got all their children back.”

At the end the article claimed that, in areas of Alexandroupolis, government agents threatened to harm group of parents if they did not surrender their children so that they could collect them and take them to Queen Frederica’s camps.

Then the same newspaper, in a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, dated March 7, 1948 and entitled “Parents and children begging the government” further stated that: “From mid-February to March 5, 1948 4,784 children from 59 villages, from the free territory of Greece, were freely given to the child collection program.” Similarly on March 20, 1948, the Interim Democratic Government decided to evacuate all the children up to the age of 14 and send them to Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Poland. According to available data, about 28,000 children were evacuated.

Now let us have a look at the motives and programs implemented by the Macedonian communists belonging to NOF and AFZH.

Were we Macedonians led with confidence by our own revolutionary experience and now we wanted to open a new period in the development of the Macedonian revolutionary tradition, or was this something else?

Let us now ask the question: “If NOF and AFZH were aware of the limits of what was possible, would they actually have gotten the Macedonian people involved in the Greek Civil War or did they naïvely take these steps?” The facts regarding the steps taken speak for themselves; improper and unprofessional steps were taken… the

outcome of events confirmed that, which turned out to be disastrous for the Macedonian people.

The call to the People’s Front, we assume, meant that it was a call to save our Macedonian identity from the crisis in Greece, but it is a fact that the Macedonian person in the 20th century was following the footsteps of his identity. This aggressive agitation carried out by NOF was strengthened by strangers, especially by the CPY/CPM and by the mindset which Tsvetko Uzunovski instilled in NOF when he said: “Today Yugoslavia has become the revolutionary centre of the Balkans and the Macedonian question has become a Yugoslav question because the CPY created the political organizations NOF, AFZH and NOMS in the Aegean part of Macedonia, which you are now leading.” The goal of these organizations was to give the Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia a Yugoslav orientation. As of then, the Macedonian people and the Macedonian movement were placed under CPY leadership. The Macedonian leaders from Aegean Macedonia were led to believe that they could fully achieve their goals only within federal Yugoslavia and that Aegean Macedonia was going to join Yugoslavia. (AM. Archive of Macedonia. F - 20 / 276, F - 20/196.)

Sadly, after the Macedonian organizations became subjugated by the CPG their orientation became completely different. It was no longer to unite with Yugoslavia but to fight against the Anglo-American occupier. In a broad sense the Macedonians were directed to “destroy the Anglo-American occupiers”, which became an open wound for the Macedonian people, especially for the villagers. It was exactly at this time, at this stage of the war, that the Macedonian people were failed and the way for their destruction and exile was prepared.

Why did we go in that direction? What exactly did we have against the Anglo-Americans anyway? A great majority of our people lived in villages and knew nothing of communism. Many even went to America to make their fortunes and returned home to invest them. So what did they expect to gain by entering this war? It is time for the truth to come out.

Were we fighting against evil? It appears that we were directed to do exactly that. NOF with its slave mentality, obedience and bent spine, now, as it did in 1946, full of euphoria, took the lead in this dark crusade and organized this latest suffering. NOF and AFZH were left in the care of the CPY/CPM, the powerful Yugoslav centre, which governed them through directives.

It should openly be said that in this action with the children, NOF no longer represented anything. The fate of these children was placed in the hands of the CPG and DAG and so was the fate of their fathers and mothers.

But what is most important is that NOF never took control and could not have taken control, no matter what kind of action was taken with regards to the Macedonian children. That control was held by the CPG and DAG leaderships.

So the question is: “What would have happened if the 28,000 children had stayed in Greece and were able to return to their homes? Did NOF ask itself this question? Today we have thousands of examples that show forceful moves to foreign countries, but we moved because of CPG propaganda! Why?

Testimonies: Speech given by Nikos Zahariadis during the People’s Liberation Front Second Congress.

March 25, 1948

“…Thousands of children were saved and protected in the people’s democratic countries. And as such the Slavo-Macedonian nation is peaceful from this point of view.” (12).

How should we interpret this comforting gesture by the leader of the CPG and the Greek Civil War, about the “protection” of the Macedonian people...?!

The Macedonian people did not need to take such “big steps”. The Macedonian people did not need such ambitious national leaders (including NOF and AFZH), who always took “great strides” with every plan. The Macedonian people did not need leaders like

Zahariadis who trampled on their lives and turned their children into victims of this war, which he himself created. And at the end, the Macedonian people did not need to have their children “rescued” by the likes of Zahariadis so that they could become permanent wanderers of the world.

In that spirit, let us have a peek at the AFZH newspaper “Nova Makedonka” from September 1948:

“...Today we all cried. We were moved like never before. We sat under the shade of a poplar tree. None of us had slept. It was getting dark and we had to go to work, we worked during the night. And... here was our friend Tsveta from the AFZH. We rejoiced at her presence. When she is with us, I don’t know why, but we are not afraid not even from the cannons.

This time she brought us letters from our children, who are in the people’s republics. My hands shook as we read the letters. My heart was pounding hard because our children were so far away. It would have been so nice to have kissed them a little!

The airplanes come here. The artillery throws grenades at our villages. It is so beautiful that our government sent our children away to be saved.

Now our eyes fill with tears. They write to us and tell us that they live well... We always think of you they tell us, of your suffering in the war...

Poor children! When will we see them again? We will see them when we free ourselves. It will be beautiful... but in order for that to happen we need to defeat fascism. And to beat the Fascists we all need to fight hard and soon. And we fight by building trenches and bunkers.

This night we built three more bunkers. We are doing this so that our children can come back sooner and so that we and our husbands can return to our homes…”

Further on in the same newspaper we read: “… No, I am not leaving my friend, my sister, my brother to fight here while I leave with the children. I know they will be safe; I have full confidence in the elected people from AFZH. Being here I will contribute more to the struggle.”

Does this not mean total surrender of the will of an individual to an outside force or ideological power? These are examples of unprecedented abuses of ideological power.

Taken by the mass euphoria, we believe in the birth of a new day. We were not familiar with the mass international struggle between the capitalist Empire in the west and the Communist Empire in the east.

Use of such controlled aggressive behaviour can be seen from the slogans that called upon the people to become involved which, for the Macedonian people, had tragic and devastating consequences.

Like Krapov said: History recognizes tragic events like the separation of children from their parents. Regardless of motive, the violent separation of a child from his mother will always bear the hallmark of tragedy. The violent separation of a child from its parents is an immeasurable tragedy for both the child and the parents. The violent separation of thousands of children from their parents is a catastrophe, not only for the individuals involved but also for the entire nation. This has happened to us. This catastrophic genocide has been perpetrated against the Macedonian people! The displacement of the Macedonian children from Greek occupied Macedonia was part of a planned strategy of ethnically cleansing Macedonia and the most recent history of the Macedonian people.

* * *

We walked along the famous cobblestone streets in Kostur, which once were called “Ribarska” (a place of fish) and spiritually felt at peace. Our eyes began to water.

Krapov said: “This was all done for us Macedonians, you know. In those days even if you found yourself in the right track, you would be run over just for standing there...”

Most of the time I kept silent while walking but at one point I said to Krapov: “You have lived a sad life!”

Krapov turned towards me, raised his head high and, with eyes half closed looking like a true martyr, said: “Yes, in those days, full of dirty lies and brother fighting against brother, it was my fate to be sad, as it was for so many Macedonians. Now here in Kostur a man is lucky if he even owns a grave. This is what we, the people of Kostur, have achieved with our sacrifices...

What do you think my good friend? Can the human mind reconcile the fact that a person is prevented by the occupier of acquiring a grave so that he can be buried beside his ancestors?!

God, my God, I have a hard time believing that we are scattered all over the world. How can my persecuted family be buried all over the world, in Tashkent, in Zgozelets and in Brala?”

I wanted to ask him something but he continued: “Here, and I believe it is also the same in the entire world, on ‘mrtov den’ (day of the dead) a river of people used to flow towards the Kostur cemetery despite the cold winter, which freezes people to the bone, or the warm summer, which is hot as hell. We used to greet each other with what was traditional for this day, with the greeting: “Let them rest in peace. May their bones be anointed and may they not divide themselves as freedom fighters and communists. May God forgive their sins!’ But now I say nothing and only think of those greetings when I pass people by.

My wish is that their descendants live on so that there will be someone to remember them. Perhaps God will determine the time when the truth comes out… and reveal how they were stabbed in the back...

And now, on top of their suffering, for years they had to put up with being mocked for their physical handicaps from the war. They lived

the rest of their lives with no purpose and in constant pain. No one understood their pain. And based on the mocking of people who notice their physical disabilities, no one respects them. No one knew their mental anguish; let alone what they had done for their people. No one even cared what these gifted fighters had done for Macedonia and for Kostur during their days as Macedonian freedom fighters and rebels,” concluded Krapov.

After he stopped talking, he looked down. I looked at him and noticed that his cheeks looked dark, probably from the suffering he had endured in the past. He carried with him his sorrow, pain and pride of his old family lineage from Olga Ivanova – Vorontsova -Velichkova, on his mother’s side. Kiriana, better known as Kiratsa in Kostur, got her name from Kiro Velichkov, a priest who completed his liturgical studies in Leningrad where he met and married Olga Ivanova. Pop Kiro was slain by the andart Pavlos Melas.

Krapov raised his head and, as if he knew what I was thinking, looked at me and said: “You know, the love between Kiratsa and I was an endless dream, endlessly complex, more complex than a rainbow full of colours. Kiratsa belonged to her meek people in an ordinary world. When I returned home and saw her, she looked very beautiful, even without make-up.”

Krapov looked down again and after a moment of contemplation said: “I was often asked why I became a freedom fighter at such a young age? And I would say ‘great love is rare, as rare as great works’.

There was much pride, love and support among the people of Kostur, who joyfully strolled over this cobblestone street. They felt pride and spiritual peace while leisurely walking down with their first love...

Kostur gave birth to the most beautiful girls... The women of Kostur, tied to their home as they were, were responsible for cooking, looking after the children and the older people. They washed the clothes, cleaned the house, guest rooms and cupboards. They swept the courtyards and pruned and watered the roses… Today all that is

gone. It is so far away that it seems like it was only a dream… a distant memory. The only thing that was left for me, which I thought of every day, was my thoughts of her…” concluded Krapov and begun to sing:

“I fell in love with a girl from Kostur The girl fell ill Her beautiful face turned pale, oh, oh, oh Her dark eyes closed...”