VACATIONING CHILDREN FROM THE VALANDOVO HOME

VACATIONING CHILDREN FROM THE VALANDOVO HOME

We have provided a number of articles, as published in the newspaper “Voice of the Aegeans”, with many testimonies given by the refugee children from Aegean Macedonia about their experiences in the children’s homes. The following article is dedicated to the children from the Valandovo children’s home. This is what was noted in the article about their summer vacation:

“Last year (1952) the children from the ‘Aleksandar Rankovich’ children’s home in Valandovo, most of them Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia without parents or with only one parent, spent their summer vacation in the resort ‘Vodno’ near Skopje.

This year (1953) they are planning to send the children to vacation in other resorts. So a group of 60 children left for Ohrid on June 30, 80 children left for the Liubanska forest, located north of Skopje, and any day now about 100 children will be sent to Lake Doiran.

Earlier in this book we presented several articles published in the ‘Voice of the Aegeans’ newspaper. We chose them for the simple reason that they are a record of events that took place from 1950 to 1954; events that have historical significance in the defense of the

Macedonians from Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia and their just struggle for national freedom. We can safely say that the newspaper, the ‘Voice of Aegeans’, was and remains to be an indispensable witness to the refugee drama; to their uprooting. The newspaper pages carry authentic testimonials that are pieces of a puzzle that make up the mosaic of their childhood and life...

And what is to happen with the many (hundreds) articles then published on a daily, weekly and monthly basis in all kinds of newspapers and magazines in the People’s Republic of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Voivodina and Macedonia, which were not presented here? We are happy to say that a process has already been put in place. We are preparing to publish a special edition, a legacy edition to posterity, chronicling our time and ordeal that stretches out to all meridians...