Front Matter

Macedonians who suffered in Greek hands

Genocide committed against the Macedonian people

By Viktor Cvetanoski

(Edited by Risto Stefov)

Macedonians who suffered in Greek hands

Genocide committed against the Macedonian People

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March 18, 2024

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BANISHING AND HELLENIZING EVERYTHING THAT WAS MACEDONIAN

With unseen terror and hate Greece eradicated everything that was Macedonian in the Aegean part of Macedonia

Fifty four years later Aleksandra Cvetanoska found her brother Giorgi in Australia. She found out that she had a brother after she had spent her childhood and younger years in dormitories in Poland, where she and the other refugee children from Shtrkovo were dropped off when she was only two and a half years old.

Dotsa Gogarevska from Sestevo never saw her mother again after she left the village. After the massive child evacuation program from the Aegean part of Macedonia in 1948, her mother passed away from worrying. Several years later the Greek military took Dotsa’s father and two older sisters and imprisoned them in the Greek islands. Her two sisters now live in Greece, her older brother lives in the Czech Republic and her younger sister is with her in Poland.

“Eight years ago was the first time I met my parents since the evacuation. When I saw them it didn’t feel like they were my mother and father, neither did my brother feel like he was my brother. Growing up in the children’s homes I lost that feeling,” said Vaska Petrovska.

When Sofia Ristovska was told that she should go and live with her parents in Poland, she wished she could stay in the refugee children’s home in Romania. Fana Martinova, Lena Miliova, Milka Damovska and Ksantipa Kirova were ten year olds from Pozdivishta, Kostur Region. Before they left their village in the spring of 1948 they climbed up on the village church roof and sang the song “Goodbye mother, father, goodbye dear relatives, I’m leaving for a distant place”. They never returned. After spending years in dormitories in Romania and Poland they went to different places in the world. Lena went to Toronto, Canada, Ksantipa married a Polish man and remained in Poland, Milka went to Tashkent where her father was and Fana went to Macedonia. They didn’t see each other until forty years later. Iane Bendevski went to visit Orovo, his birthplace, but found his village completely destroyed. His house had been destroyed down to the foundation. Someone who knew the village well had to sketch a map for him so he could find it.

These are only a few episodes of the huge drama that the refugee children and their parents experienced during the Greek Civil War in Aegean Macedonia from 1946 to 1949. An experience which has continued to this day... Last year was the 60th year since this huge Balkan drama took place and was collectively remembered. Since then, there has been much research done to uncover the dramatic destinies of those children who were taken away and the reasons which caused this huge exodus. This book, published as a series of articles in the daily newspaper “Utrinski Vesnik” covers some of the details which may seem like a common account but each person’s experience is a separate traumatic story.

The Macedonian people paid the highest price in the Greek Civil War. It has been estimated that between 25,000 and 30,000 children from the Aegean part of Macedonia were separated from their parents and taken to the so-called democratic Eastern European countries in the communistic block. All those children had no normal childhood; they spent the best years of their lives in children’s homes, without the love of their parents. Among them were both Macedonians and Greeks but the vast majority were Macedonians. While they were away their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters stayed behind to fight in a predetermined losing war. Around the same number of children, about 30,000, mainly from the Aegean part of Macedonia were forcefully separated from their mothers by the Greek government army and Greek police and with the support of Greek Queen Frederica were taken to children’s homes inside Greece and Hellenized.

When the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) organized and carried out the collection and exodus of these children ages two to fourteen,

it told the parents that the evacuation would be temporary and the children would be returned as soon as their side won the war. But the war was not won and the children did not come back, not after a year, not after ten years, not after sixty years. Only the Greek children came back… but not the Macedonians because they were not Greek.

There was no transportation provided for them so most of the children had to walk from their village to the Yugoslav border, some barefoot, over mountains and rough and frozen terrain. By the time they crossed the border their feet were frozen and bleeding.

For over half a century these children were not allowed to see their places of birth, not even for a short visit. As a result they spent their childhood and adult lives roaming the world. All attempts made to enter Greece were barred at the Greek border where they were stopped from entering by the Greek authorities. Several years ago, however, the Greek government temporarily opened its borders and allowed some to enter, but only those who had passports with Greek names and Greek places of birth. Those who had Macedonian names and a Macedonian place of birth were not allowed to enter. Those barred from entry grieved for their birthplace and waited for the Greek authorities to allow them to visit the graves of their parents and grandparents. Unfortunately most did not live long enough to once again return to the homes where they were born.

According to data provided by the CPG, after it lost the Greek Civil War, around 50,000 refugees, both Greeks and Macedonians, but mostly Macedonians, were exiled from their birthplace. Around 30,000 ended up in Yugoslavia and the rest ended up in other Eastern European countries. Around 4,000 were sent to Romania, 3,800 to Czechoslovakia, 5,479 to Poland, 3,299 to Hungary, around 3,000 to the Soviet Union and 380 to Bulgaria. But we suspect the number was higher than 50,000. According to Polish sources about 12,000 refugees were transferred to Poland alone.

Later, when relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia improved, most of the Macedonian refugees from the Eastern Block countries went to Macedonia, a smaller number remained in the former communist countries and some went to Canada, Australia and the

USA. They had to abandon their attempts to return home to their birthplaces, which became desolate because Greece refused to allow them to return.

About 40 Macedonian villages dropped off the map during the post Greek Civil War census. In other words, 40 Macedonian villages were erased off the map because all the residents were not allowed to return and reclaim their homes.

The refugee children, as they were called by the authorities everywhere, did not recognize themselves under that name. Many argued that they were not refugees because they did not leave, they were escorted out under false pretenses; with the promise that they would be returned. They were grateful to the host countries for looking after them and giving them a good education but they refused to be called “Refugee Children”. A more appropriate description would have been ‘Expelled Children”. They were “victims” not only from the Greek Civil War but also from the “Inform Bureau” when Tito and Stalin had their disagreements and from the “Cold War” being separated by the “Iron Curtain”. Their case was brought to the United Nations, where several resolutions were introduced for their return to their homes in Greece but that did not happen, not during their childhood, and for most never.

There are a couple of reasons to consider for why these children were evacuated. One, for humanitarian reasons; to save them from being killed by Greek government bombs dropped on them, and two, to ethnically cleanse the Macedonian population from Aegean Macedonia. According to the Macedonian leadership which recruited the Macedonian population to fight in the Greek Civil War, “the Macedonians were fighting for their national rights; and those who actively participated in persuading parents to allow them to give them their children, say that it was a humanitarian action to save them from being bombed. But recently, after the communists fell in Yugoslavia, new and louder voices surfaced which argued differently. They say that the Greek communists were dishonest; they lied to the Macedonian people, and behind this humanitarian action hid their nationalistic intentions to ethnically cleanse all the places where Macedonians lived.

Many were the “Macedonians who suffered in Greek hands” when their great suffering left permanent marks on them. Especially on those who, in one way or another, were directly involved in this war, but mostly on the souls of the tender aged children who were permanently separated from their parents. People who have heard their stories and opened their hearts understand why they still have open wounds and why they are still suffering. Especially those who were then small children but now have aged and have grandchildren of their own.

Many were the “Macedonians who suffered in Greek hands” who felt pain while their children grew up in foreign homes behind the closed Iron Curtain and felt nothing for their parents when they met them for the first time. They felt nothing but pain looking at them like they were strangers, not being able to even recognize their own mothers. That pain did not go away. Instead it spread like an infection which was then passed on to their children and grandchildren who also had to experience the huge Aegean drama. Their pain must be understood, acknowledged and never forgotten.

However, the Macedonian suffering in Greek hands did not start with the Greek Civil war; it dates back to the 1912, 1913 Balkan Wars and Macedonia’s invasion, occupation and partition by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. With unprecedented terror, murders and violence Greece forced out around 120,000 Macedonians from the part of Macedonia which they occupied; and never allowed them to return unless they declared themselves Greek. Those who remained in Greece were systematically assimilated and turned into instant Greeks. The Greek aim was to destroy everything that was Macedonian including the Macedonian culture and language, erasing all traces of Macedonian national identity. Even though Greece was pressured by the United Nations to recognize the Macedonian people living in Greece and even after Greece published a Macedonian elementary textbook so that the Macedonian children could learn to speak and read in their Macedonian mother tongue, Greece never delivered on its promises. Instead, Greece continued oppressing the Macedonian people and all other minorities that were not Greek. Even today Greece does not want to accept the reality that non-Greeks live in Greece and is determined to continue to enforce the same “Greater Greece”

(Megali Idea) policies. To this day Greece has refused to recognize the indigenous Macedonian identity living on Macedonian ancestral lands which Greece invaded, occupied and annexed in 1912, 1913 during the Balkan Wars.

Greece refuses to recognize that Macedonian people lived on those Macedonian lands before Greece annexed them, including great Macedonian people like Gotse Delchev and Krste Petkov Misirkov who were born and spent their childhood there. Greece refuses to recognize Damian Gruev, Hristo Tatarchev and their friends who created the Macedonian revolutionary organization TMORO (VMORO) or the Solun assassins who sacrificed themselves to show Europe that Macedonians lived in Macedonia who were not free and who were struggling for their freedom. Greece refuses to recognize that Macedonian people rose en masse during the 1903 Ilinden Uprising and fought to free themselves from the Ottomans and liberate Macedonia, their country; a country and people which Athens to this day is systematically Hellenizing.

According to Ivan Katardziev, a famous historical analyst who researched this period of Macedonia’s past, “Greece has demonstrated great hatred towards the Macedonian people and everything that is Macedonian, especially during the Second Balkan War and the First World War. With its assimilation and denationalization practices Greece, with great bitterness, has involved itself in destroying and taking away everything that the Macedonian people inherited from their entire past.”

According to Katardziev: “For a long time Greece has tried to increase its land base and create a ‘Greater Greece’ by any means possible including stepping over basic minority rights on all people who did not feel like being Greeks. But, in order to get a real and objective picture of Greece’s policies regarding the rights of minorities in that country, regardless of its behaviour in certain situations and regardless of the declarations it makes to the UN bodies from time to time, we should keep in mind that the Greek foreign policy main formulation which has been systematic and permanent regardless of the political regime in power be it monarchist, republican, liberal-democratic, authoritarian and so on,

has always been to create a ‘Greater Greek’ state in the region with a homogenous Greek population.”

Again according to Katardziev, this is what the Greek constitution said when it was written in 1882: “All inhabitants of Greece who believe in Jesus Christ are Hellenes (Greeks) which is a clear and precise definition of the ‘Greater Greece” ideology which had received general national consensus in that country.”

According to Dalibor Jovanovski, who researched Greece’s policies regarding the Balkans in the period from 1881 to 1883, “From its inception Greece felt that Macedonia should be Greek because the existing small Greek kingdom of the time did not have enough economic resources for its existence. In other words, it needed more living space which could only be found in Macedonia which had the largest productive fields. Its territorial acquisition however had to be justified. It was at this point that Greek politicians and the Greek public in general, began to devise ways to show that Macedonia was historically Greek.”

At the conclusion of the Balkan Wars Macedonia was partitioned between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Greece was given the largest piece, 51% of Macedonia. Serbia was given 39% and Bulgaria 10%. Before Macedonia was partitioned it had a population of about 2,000,000 inhabitants. Greece received the majority of them, 1,163,477 people.

Greece’s genocidal policies can best be illustrated with facts and figures given by Todor Hristov Simovski in his book “Populated Places in Aegean Macedonia”. According to Simovski, “Just before Macedonia was partitioned the population in the territory acquired by Greece was vastly Macedonian consisting of 326,000 Orthodox Christian and 41,000 Muslim Macedonians. There were also around 295,000 Turks, 234,000 Greeks, around 60,000 Jews, 50,000 Vlachs, 30,000 Romanians, 9,000Albanians and so on.”

According to Simovski, before the Ottomans arrived in Aegean Macedonia, the population was predominantly Macedonian. Even though many wars took place and regular devastation took place forcing people to move, the population still remained predominantly

Macedonian. The first time the Macedonian population was forced out en masse was during the Second Balkan War when the occupying Greek Army demonstrated its cruelty by burning down towns and villages and indiscriminately killing people.

Greece’s “Greater Greece” policies of banishing Macedonians and other minorities from Greece’s territory were sanctioned by the Great Powers. Supported by the Great Powers Greece signed two conventions for exchange of populations, one with Bulgaria on the 27th of November 1919 under its own initiative, and the second with Turkey after Greece lost the Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922. During the Paris Peace Conference when the question for signing a peace agreement with Bulgaria arose, Greece submitted a Memorandum in which it asked if it could exchange the “Slav speaking” population in the Aegean part of Macedonia and Thrace with the Greek speaking population in Bulgaria. This meant, indirectly, that Greece wanted to remove the Macedonian population from its birthplace.

According to Katardziev, “Greece wanted to permanently remove the large Macedonian population from its homeland,clearly understanding that these people were not going to leave willingly. Aside from the terror tactics and reprisals used to remove them Greece needed international legitimacy and legal norms, with which it could cover up its policies of ethnic genocide.”

After the two population exchange conventions were signed, the ethnic map of Aegean Macedonia changed drastically. More than 32,000 Orthodox Christian and 40,000 Muslim Macedonians were forcibly exiled to Bulgaria and Turkey, and 640,000 Turkish Christian colonists and settlers from Asia Minor were settled in Aegean Macedonia.

The population exchanges, however, did not end the Macedonian suffering in Greek hands. The forced expulsions, forced assimilations, repression, jailing, beatings and murders continued. As a result thousands of Macedonians left their homeland and immigrated to overseas countries between the two world wars. Then, after the 1946-1949 Greek Civil War ended with the defeat of DAG on whose side the Macedonians fought, around 60,000 men, women

and children who left the war zone and crossed over the Greek border, were permanently exiled. Later another 40,000 Macedonians immigrated to foreign countries. As a result Athens’s plan to “get rid” of about 120,000 Macedonians was realized. According to Todor Hristov Simovski, “In spite of all the wars and Athens’s systematic genocidal policies, about 250,000 Macedonians still live in Aegean Macedonia.”