WOMEN MASSIVELY INVOLVED IN THE WAR EFFORT

WOMEN MASSIVELY INVOLVED IN THE WAR EFFORT

Hidden behind the action for saving the children was the intention for securing new fighters

According to historian Risto Kiriazovski the child evacuation program began at the end of February and beginning of March 1948, and lasted until June of the same year. There is no doubt that the children were taken away from the ravages of the Greek Civil War and sent to the socialist countries to be saved. However the fact that they were taken away from their birthplaces and never allowed to return is an act of ethnic cleansing.

One of the essential reasons for evacuating the children was to create conditions for solving DAG’s reserve problem and for recruiting new soldiers. Freeing their parents from taking care of the children enabled DAG to mobilize the entire population for the coming difficult and decisive battles in Western Aegean Macedonia. And that is exactly what was done. After the children were evacuated, DAG carried out full mobilization of those people who had not yet joined DAG or DAG’s reserve units. In the summer of 1948, during the massive offensive on Gramos, the entire free (DAG controlled) territory was transformed into workshops, where the unarmed population, those people who were unable to carry weapons, worked for DAG’s needs. Units of women were created to transport the injured, to supply DAG with weapons and munitions, to dig trenches, bake bread, fish in Lake Prespa and so on.

According to Kiriazovski who personally participated in the Greek Civil War, the CPG leadership sold the idea for evacuating the children, not as a solution to DAG’s reserve problems, but as a humanitarian gesture to save the children from the ravages of the Greek Civil War. A wide political program was initiated in order to persuade parents to accept the idea of evacuating their children. The

evacuation was initiated as a result of a written request from parents, and children were evacuated with their permission.

According to Buchkova, the humanitarian motive was not the only motive for the evacuation. This is what Fana Buchkova, a child refugee herself, wrote in her book “We Are Children of Mother Earth Too...”, “We should accept that as a fact, but not as the only motive, because later events point to other reasons. There is another motive and that is the DAG reserve problem which the CPG leadership had not managed to solve…”

According to Buchkova, “Greek nationalists were looking for yet another chance to ethnically cleanse Macedonia of its Macedonian population. Evidence of this can be found in various Greek newspapers. For example the republican weekly newspaper ‘Elefteros’, in January 1946, wrote, ‘The Slav-Macedonians should disappear from here.’ ‘It is essential that they be sent away to any other neighbouring country.’ Greek newspapers consistently published articles about the need to ‘exterminate’ the Macedonian population. And it wasn’t only the newspapers. Every time patrols made their way into the Macedonian villages, they made sure to spread slogans that promoted ‘murder’, ‘forcible evictions etc., so that when the Greek King came to visit these villages he would not find a trace of Macedonians. Those slogans unfortunately were turned into action…”

According to Evdokia Foteva-Vera, who herself was a DAG Partisan, fought in the Greek Civil War and was directly involved in the child evacuation program, “The children were at all times exposed to terror and the danger of being bombed. This was not a good environment for being brought up and educated. In addition to those dangers the children were also exposed to hunger and many diseases. Because of those circumstances, the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, the CPG, NOF and AFZH turned to the free socialist republics for help to look after our underage children aged 14 and under…” This was emphasized in Misho Kitanovski and Georgi Donevski’s the book “The Refugee Children from the Aegean Part of Macedonia in Yugoslavia”. According to Evdokia Foteva-Vera, most of the Greek Civil War was fought in places populated mainly by Macedonians and because

of that most of the children evacuated were from Macedonian families.

This is what Evdokia Foteva-Vera wrote, “The way for mothers to save their children from the cruelty of the Greek Civil War, from the hands of the monarch-fascists, and from being bombed by American airplanes, was to appeal to the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece to take them and send them out of the war zone. And for that reason mothers willingly gave their children to be evacuated. This way mothers were assured that their children would be safe and have a happier future. A mother’s pain cannot be estimated when she is separated from her child, but in the name of safety, this time she chose what the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece offered her…”

According to Evdokia Foteva-Vera, the regional NOF organizations coordinated and implemented the child evacuation program in every village in the war zone. The people were assured that every measure possible would be taken to safeguard the children. The lists of children to be evacuated were prepared by NOF and AFZH. This is what Evdokia Foteva-Vera wrote, “One woman was assigned to look after and take care of ten children. A teacher was assigned to teach 20-25 children. The teachers had to belong to a Partisan family, a family that had a member of the family killed in the war, or people that were invalids… When I personally suggested to Malina Raleva from the village D’mbeni, who had four children to be evacuated, to go with them, she said, ‘No, I can’t possibly leave my friends, my sister and my brother here to fight alone. I know my children will be safe, I completely trust the people who will look after them. I can contribute more to our war effort if I stay here’...”

According to Katerina Mirchevska, “One reason for saving the children from the terrors of the war was humanitarian but also connected with how the war was going to take shape…” Mirchevska quoted a statement given by Urania Jurukova, an activist and participant in the war, who said, ‘Great battles were being fought in the beginning of 1948 and the villages around Vicho, Malimadi, Bigla and Gramos were heavily bombarded. The greatest victims of those bombardments were children and old people… A teacher named Fotini Zagrovska from the village P’pli told us that when the

airplanes came the children ran away from the school to hide. As a result they were injured and some killed. After that we started teaching during the night. We needed to evacuate the children in order to save them. We had already sacrificed some in the villages Zagorichani, Konomladi, Grache, Stensko, etc...”

According to Mircevska, “The other reason for evacuating the children was connected with DAG’s plans to increase its number of fighters. The CPG and DAG leaderships decided that the number of fighters should be increased from 24,000 to 60,000 - 65,000. This was possible only after the children were evacuated and their parents, primarily their mothers, where free to be mobilized in the war effort. This was confirmed by the fact that all men and women were mobilized after the child evacuation…”

Petre Nakovski shared the same opinion. Evacuating the children had a humanitarian character, but there were hidden aims behind this action. This is what Nakovski wrote, “First, after the children left, parents were mobilized as fighters or to serve DAG’s other needs such as transporting arms and ammunition to the battlefields, evacuating injured soldiers from the field, digging trenches, building bunkers, etc. Second, safe and secure, the children would grow up and become future reserves for supplying the Democratic Army of Greece with soldiers. This was evident by the fact that DAG mobilized some of these children during the second half of 1948 and in March of 1949, when 2,000 children aged 14, 15 and 16 were returned to Greece to fight. Only Poland refused to allow the children to be mobilized, or the adults who came with the children. Third, by evacuating the children the CPG and DAG hoped to raise the fighting spirit and morale of the fighters, aware that their children, brothers and sisters were safe and away from the war zone…”