DOTSA GOGAROVSKA DOESN’T HAVE THE STRENGTH TO VISIT SESTEVO AGAIN

DOTSA GOGAROVSKA DOESN’T HAVE THE STRENGTH TO VISIT SESTEVO AGAIN

“If I visit my birthplace, I’m afraid that my heart will break from the memories that will return to me,” says Dotsa Gogarovska

Destiny took Dotsa and Leonidas Gogarovski to Poland where they raised their family and where they faced their future. And so Dotsa’s birthplace Sestevo and Leonidas’s birthplace German became distant memories that they will carry with them until they die. Dotsa never went back to Sestevo, the place where she spent her childhood, not even for a short visit. She said she doesn’t have enough strength to go there and face her past because she is afraid that her heart may crack from the memories that will flood her. Leonidas visited German three years ago but he did not see the same village he knew from his childhood, from 60 years ago.

Dotsa Gogarovska -Aleksovska doesn’t know exactly how old she was, 12 or 13, when she was evacuated from Sestevo because to this day she doesn’t have documents of when she was born. Her sister Gila who now lives in the village Vishini, located at the foot of Mount Vicho, told her that the Greeks burned all their documents. This is what Dotsa told us over the telephone, “Whenever anyone asks me how old I am I tell them I am forever young…” and then laughed. But she remembered the exact day, March 25, 1948, when all the children left Sestevo. This is what she said, “They gathered us in front of the school and they told our mothers, ‘If you want to save your children from death, you have to send them to the democratic countries, far from the war’…”

Dotsa continued, “My sister Gila loaded us on our donkey and took me and my younger brother Mito all the way to Zhelevo. We passed by Maliot Kamen (Little Rock) where we saw a huge handprint on a rock. We were told this was Marko Krale’s hand. After passing through many villages we finally arrived in Zhelevo. There we spent the night. When we woke up, Gila was gone. She left while we were still asleep. From there we traveled toward the Yugoslav border during the night because during the day the terrain was patrolled by airplanes and bombing everything that moved. We were afraid of being killed. After we crossed the border we arrived near Lake Prespa. We were all tired and sleepy from the long trip and from having to walk over the mountain. While taking a break, my cousin Mlado started yelling, ‘I see the road, there it is’ and ran down the hill and into the water. He was so tired he mistook the lake for a road. It was sad but hilarious…”

According to Dotsa, they first arrived in the villages Dolno Dupeni and Liuboino and from there they were taken to Brailovo, near Prilep, where they took a train. Dotsa and her brother were taken to Romania where they remained for seven months and after that they were taken to Poland. This is what Dotsa said, “It was very nice in the children’s homes in Poland. It was a bit harder in Romania because the country was poor but they did everything to lighten our hardship. They gave us as much as they had. They didn’t have much...”

Dotsa graduated from the pedagogical academy in Poland and worked as a teacher for the next 30 years teaching Russian to Polish, Macedonian and Greek children. She said she did not have the strength to visit Sestevo, her birthplace or any of the other places where she spent her childhood, because she felt she did not have the emotional strength to do it. This is what she said, “I will not be able to control my emotions and I’m afraid that something inside of me will break. I will start crying because every rock that I stepped on while I was a child, every tree that I passed by, will return me to the years of my childhood, which as much as they were poor, were very dear to me. I think that I will not survive a visit to Sestevo…”

After she was evacuated in 1948 Dotsa never saw her mother again. This is what she said, “My mother Sofia died from grief. She became ill after the Greeks took my father and two older sisters and interned them on some dry Greek islands. She stayed home alone looking after our cattle. I was told that she suffered a lot. She could not live without her children which broke her heart. She died in

1952. Luckily her sister had just returned from prison and was able to bury her. After he was released from prison my father returned to Sestevo and, after 17 years of separation, came to visit us in Poland. My two sisters Tsila and Toma now live in Greece, my older brother Iani lives in the Czech Republic and my younger brother Mito lives in Poland…”

Dotsa and Leonidas have two children, a son and a daughter. They named their son Krsto and their daughter Lena. Their son married a Polish woman and has a family of his own. They live very well. They gave their grandchildren Macedonian names - Zlatko and Petre. Dotsa visited the Republic of Macedonia only once. This was during the first Child Refugee meeting held in Skopje. This is what she said, “I will go to Macedonia again for this year’s meeting, this time with my daughter. It will be the 60th year since our evacuation…”

Dotsa’s family is still separated and has not sat at a table as a family. Dotsa talks to her sisters in Greece on the telephone. They are both married to Macedonian men. Both of their husbands are now dead. This is what Dotsa said, “I don’t speak the Greek language well, and their children don’t speak Macedonian so well. One time one of my nephews called me on the telephone and spoke to me in Greek. I told him I understand you but I cannot reply to you in Greek. I suggested that I speak Macedonian and he speak Greek. We had a good conversation…” Dotsa told us she believes that the Greek authorities and Greek politicians are responsible for all the evils committed against us Macedonians. She has many friends who are Greek.

Her husband Leonidas was 14 years old when he was evacuated from German. He said the airplanes were bombing all the time. His school was hit by a bomb. We asked him if parents willingly sent their children to other countries or was it a result of communist propaganda. This is what he said, “Objectively there was no other way out. The airplanes were above us all the time dropping bombs so the children had to be sent to a safe place…”

Leonidas has two brothers and one sister and they were all child refugees. He and one of the brothers ended up in Romania, his sister

ended up in Czechoslovakia and his other brother ended up in Yugoslavia, in Bela Tsrkva. Separating the siblings made it hard for them to re-unite. Leonidas did not know why they did that. He said he was saved from being mobilized by the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG) because he was short, even though he was among the older children. This is what he said “They were choosing the children according to their height and not according their date of birth. They were looking for taller children who could carry a gun. If they had known when I was born, they certainly would have taken me too…”

Leonidas was lucky; his family was not as spread out all over the world as were other Aegean families, but his two brothers and sister decided to make Poland their home. And because they were together they were able to avoid their nostalgia of being away from German, their birthplace. They all had a good education. This is what Leonidas said, “From the many Macedonians that arrived in Poland, only a few remained behind. There were only thirty of us left in Scecin of all the Macedonians that came here…”

Leonidas said, “Our destiny was tragic; about which many books could be written. When I went back to German for a visit I didn’t find any of our relatives. I met only one old man who was Macedonian. He didn’t want to leave his home when everyone else left. He didn’t remember me because when we lived there he was not in the village. He was mobilized by the Greek government army and when the war was over he came back to German. However, no Macedonian who fought for DAG was allowed to return. I was able to talk to him about how German was 60 years ago. I found German in a sad state of affairs. Before we left German was a large village that supported around 3,500 people. On the day of my visit there were only 150 people, all of them Greeks. There were also a few Vlachs who spoke a bit of Macedonian…”