GREEK QUEEN HELLENIZED 30,000 MACEDONIAN CHILDREN

GREEK QUEEN HELLENIZED 30,000 MACEDONIAN CHILDREN

Greek queen Frederica collected Macedonian children from the villages by force while the war was still going on

Parallel with the action taken by the Democratic Army of Greece to collect Macedonian children en masse and send them to the socialist countries, the Greek authorities, under the protection of Queen Frederika, were taking similar actions. The Greek military and police invaded Macedonian villages and took children from their mothers by force under the motto “save the children from the communists…”

This is what Vera Foteva, one of the Macedonian leaders who fought in the Greek Civil War, said, “After DAG lost the battles in Vicho and Gramos in 1947-1948, the Greek Army began to abduct young children. This action was initiated by the Greek monarcho-fascist government and was organized and carried out by Greek Queen Frederika, which the people called ‘Friki-terror’. Publicly Frederika said she was concerned for the children. But in reality she was going around the villages and abducting children by force, taking them out of the hands of their mothers and turning them into ‘janissaries’...” Vera was quoted by Misho Kitanoski and Georgi Donevski in their book “The Refugee Children from the Aegean Part of Macedonia in Yugoslavia”.

According to Vera Foteva, “When the monarch-fascist army was approaching the village Zagorichani, near Kostur, intending to collect children by force, the Macedonian villagers hid their children in their outdoor ovens and later at night they transferred them to the free territory. And because the monarcho-fascists could not find any children they murdered 17 women in nearby villages and threw their dead bodies into Lake Kostur. According to Vera Foteva, “Mothers in general did everything in their power to stop the Greek army from taking their children, and because of that they were mistreated, whipped, beaten and jailed.” This is what was said in “Mahitria”, a Provisional Democratic Government of Greece hearing on November 16, 1948, regarding the case of the women from the village Zupanista, near Kostur, who had gathered together to testify about their children being taken away by Queen Frederika:

“The Macedonian women were jailed because they refused to allow their children to be taken away by Frederika. Because of that, even women in their late pregnancies were sent to prison. Many babies were born in prison. The women experienced extreme terror…”

Katerina Mirchevska, who used several Greek sources in her book said that, “The initiative to collect children came directly from Queen Frederika herself. She was the wife of the King who took the Greek throne after his brother’s death in 1947. She came up with the ideas after she visited the women’s prison at ‘Themistokle’ Street in Athens. There she found women accused of being communists serving their prison terms together with their children. Some of these women were sentenced to death so she took their children from them to save them. She continued this practice for a while before she made it official in the period from June 1947 to August 1949, to when DAG was defeated. In total she managed to collect more than 30,000 children from the villages in the Aegean part of Macedonia, Thrace, Epirus, Thessaly and Old Greece, and placed them in her boarding houses and children’s homes especially prepared for them…”

Mirchevska believes that DAG’s program to collect the children was a kind of counter weight to the Greek Government project carried out by Queen Frederika who took primarily Macedonian children by force, which were later brought up and educated in the great Greek (Megali Idea) national spirit. This is what Mirchevska said, “The purpose of this project according to Queen Frederika was ‘to save our children from the Northern provinces and not to allow them to be taken outside the Greek borders and educated as enemies of Greece’…”

Mirchevska believes that DAG’s “child evacuation program” was used by the Greek government as a powerful propaganda tool against the communists. The Greek government called its program “pedomazoma” (in Greek, pedi=child, mazoma=collect), which sounded more humanitarian than its counterpart “evacuation of children”.

This is what Mirchevska wrote, “The action called ‘humanitarian’ was everything but humanitarian. On the contrary, the Greek government, the Greek police, the Greek army and the Greek units of the so-called Mai, were breaking into people’s homes in the villages and taking children away from their mothers by force. These were mainly Macedonian children. After they were taken the children were temporarily accommodated in the nearest gathering centres and later transferred to the children’s homes. In a single month 50 children’s homes, popularly called Queen Frederika’s homes and boarding-schools, were built in Greece. Most were located in and around Athens where 20,000 children were accommodated…”

According to Mirchevska, “The most effective method used to educate the children consisted of forbidding any kind of contact with their families. Children were not allowed to have visitors or write letters. The educational process and components of the learning curriculum were carried out according to a strictly predetermined daily plan with activities which the children undertook in the children’s homes and boarding schools. The children were not allowed to have watches or calendars. Their daily activities were regulated by a bell. The children were dressed in Greek uniforms and always walked marching, even when they were going to cinemas or walking in the parks…”

According to Mirchevska, who studied Greek sources to obtain this information, “The methods for educating the children were dictated by Queen Frederika herself who was new to Greece. She was German and came from Duke Ernesto August’s German royal family. Together with her brothers, Prince Heinrich and Prince Christian, Frederika grew up and was educated in the spirit of the

German Nazi youth. She used the same ideology and methods to educate the Macedonian children in her children’s homes…”

According to Socrat Panovski, “While most of the children that were evacuated to the socialist countries finished different courses in the schools and universities, the children in Frederika’s camp received only primary education. Not one of them continued their education beyond primary school. According to Greek historian Dimitris Servos, ‘The American mission which at the time was helping Greece, the same mission which helped Greece collect the children, later mediated a program that allowed rich American and Greek families without children to adopt these children for large amounts of money. In the beginning these rich families paid anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 dollars per child, but later the price rose to 10,000 dollars per child’…”

Using Queen Frederika’s own memoirs as a source, Risto Kiriazovski wrote, “The collection of children on the Greek government side started right after the Royal Voluntary Association was established in July 1947. The planned mass collection started in March 1948, when the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece (the Partisan side) began its child evacuation program. The collection of children on the Greek government side, personally managed by Queen Frederika, also involved the Greek army, the local Greek authorities, the Greek police, as well Greek educational and other organizations. The plan was to collect from 10,000 to 12,000 children. In March alone 6,000 children were collected. With support from the American mission and the UN Special Committee for the Balkans, at the beginning of March 1948, the Greek government announced that all preparations were made to collect 14,000 children from the Aegean part of Macedonia and the Peloponnesus…”

According to statements made by Queen Frederika, 24,000 children were collected. According to other sources, 14,494 children were collected from the Aegean part of Macedonia alone. In total the Greek state built 54 children’s homes in Solun, Leros, and Kifisia. These were only a few places in Greece where Macedonian children experienced brutal denationalization and assimilation under Queen Frederika’s watch…