FRIGHTENED MOTHERS LOOKED FOR THEIR CHILDREN

FRIGHTENED MOTHERS LOOKED FOR THEIR CHILDREN

‘You mobilized everyone?’ yelled one mother at the gathering in Orovnik, when mothers found out their children who were supposed to be saved were recruited and mobilized

This is what Trpe Karcinski, one of the recruited child refugee boys, said, “One evening as it was getting dark our fully armed and barely trained unit was marching towards Orovnik. On our way there we became the centre of attention as we passed by a number of civilians going home after working in the fields. The people admired our new and clean uniforms and especially us who were the youngest Partisans they had seen. Then, I noticed one of the women, a mother, recognized her son among us. She immediately started yelling very loud. She said, ‘people, people our children… they are our children…!’ There was a lot of confusion among the people. Many of us turned our attention to the civilians. Some flew off the line as they saw their mothers. Then the rest left the formation and started looking for their parents. They kept yelling their names. It seemed like we had all lost our minds. It was getting dark. Mothers were yelling the names of their children and the children were yelling the names of their parents. It was chaos and no one was thinking about the formation or the march. I was alone watching the terrifying picture unfold in front of my eyes. I felt like I was an orphan. I didn’t find anyone from my family. As I began to cry wondering where my mother was, I heard a familiar voice coming from behind me. ‘I see you are also here’ it said. It was my Grandfather Dirnko Demirev - Agata from our village. He came closer and said, “Hey you, little one, it looks like your rifle is bigger than you… That’s a big backpack… I bet it’s heavier than you…Have you come back to liberate Macedonia?’ After that, my grandfather told me that my two uncles were killed in battle. He didn’t know where my father and mother were. All he knew was that they were fighting for DAG. This encounter terrified the mothers of all the children. These mothers thought that their children were saved from the war. They sent them to the socialistic countries to save them, not to turn them into soldiers…”

The planned meeting in Orovnik, which was supposed to be a gathering to draft a telegram asking for support from the World Congress for Peace, held in Prague, turned into a protest. The people began to shout at the organizers. One person yelled, “Was it not enough that you mobilized every living adult, you also had to bring back and mobilize our children? The only things that are alive in my house that are not mobilized are the rats. You turned our villages into desolate places. Send our children back to the peoples republics!” People were grief stricken and angry. Those responsible in the CPG, NOF and AFZ (Women’s Antifascist Front) had no answers. All mothers demanded that their children be saved.

Karcinski continued, “What I found out from my grandfather made me very sad. I cried uncontrollably. My tears kept pouring out from the depths of my eyes. No one judged me because of that, even though I was a Partisan and carrying a gun. It took a year after we became refugee children for us to become aware of our tragedy and the hell our people in the Aegean part of Macedonia, were pushed into…”

Karcinski carried a notepad and a pencil with him everywhere he went and documented everything he witnessed and experienced to hell and back. His dramatic life story was documented by Socrat Panovski and Ilia Lafazanovski in their book “The Persecution that Lasts”.

According to Karcinski, in December 1948, the children’s home in Tulgesh was visited by Petros Kokalis, a member of the CPG Central Committee. During his propaganda campaign Kokalis demanded that a massive number of volunteers join the Democratic Army of Greece. His propaganda was disseminated through Timios, the director of the Tulgesh children’s home. Timios often gave speeches to the children during which he promoted patriotic feelings towards their homeland prompting the children to join DAG massively and voluntarily. On Timios’s insistence 375 children between the ages 14 and 16 signed up. There were also 15 girls among them. Their basic motivation for volunteering was nostalgia

for their homeland, for returning to their birthplaces. The signup consisted of writing down on a piece of paper their full name, date of birth and place of birth and the words ‘I voluntarily sign to join DAG’. On March 6, 1949, the last group of children was loaded on trucks, and through Yugoslavia, sent to the military polygon near the villages Rudari and Strkovo. There the children were given 23 days of basic training which consisted of how to aim and shoot a gun and how to throw a hand grenade. After that military combat units were formed similar to those of DAG.

This is what Karcinski wrote, “We had orders, without warning, to shoot at anybody or anything that moved. Later we found out that the people we were ordered to shoot were Macedonian fighters and civilians running away from their homes and fleeing to the Republic of Macedonia. Many were searching for their children on the Yugoslav side of the border. So, we were ordered to shoot our own parents and relatives fleeing across the border to the Republic of Macedonia. My friend Alekso Chachanovski’s father from Zhelevo was among those fleeing. He was caught and executed. He was murdered in front of his son. Poor Alekso had to witness that. He was never the same after that. Our friends in a previous group were also sent to join DAG at the front lines on Gramos, Alevitsa, Siniak, Vicho and Malimadi. From those who arrived there 60 were sent to the war front. Most were killed during the first battles. Some were captured. The tragedies that took place, especially with our friends, were very difficult to forget. Three boys recruited to plant mines were killed during training. One of the mines exploded and killed them. One boy died attempting to unblock his machine gun.”

Karcinski continued, “One day a Greek from the political commissary came over to our unit and asked, ‘Is there anyone here that wants to stay with DAG?’ Two said yes. They were Vasil Martinovski and Gorgi the courier who worked in the training centre. If this question was asked a few days earlier we all would have volunteered. But after we heard what happened at the gathering in Orovnik, we lost our desire to fight. There was total silence. In the silence we could hear cannon fire in the distance. We looked as innocent as lambs before the Easter slaughter in front of a butcher shop. We were very young but we felt the cruelty of the Greek Civil War. Finally the Commissar broke the silence with the words, ‘Hand

over your weapons! We will take you back to Romania so that you can eat your marmalade.’ The man was so angry he left without even saying goodbye…”

Unfortunately this did not end the sufferings of the refugee children. The next day the same trucks that took the children before, came back and for the second time, they took them away from their homeland. When they crossed the Greek-Albanian border all the children, with a single voice, sang the song, “We too are children of mother earth and have the right to live…”

Karcinski continued, “When the children spent time in Albania they were exposed to a lot of hunger. We were practically starving. Some days later they took us to Tirana airport and sent us to Belgrade. The Yugoslavs offered for us to stay in Yugoslavia but we didn’t want to. So from there the Yugoslavs flew us through Budapest to Poland, where we arrived on August 2, 1949. We were accommodated in a monastery near Warsaw. Then, after they vaccinated us and we had our medical examinations, we were put on a train and sent to a summer resort. We arrived at the Solice Zdui summer resort on August 6, 1949, and were accommodated in a villa. There we were under constant medical observation and had regular medical examinations. Then, after several days of rest, we again began to feel like we were alive. We looked like living skeletons, skin and bones. We finally came back from hell…”

According to Karcinski, “Poland did everything in its power to make our young lives better. It helped us with our education and we were all educated… Unfortunately, deep inside of us, deep inside our souls, we still craved to go home to our birthplaces… we craved something called nostalgia.”