MANY REFUGEES IN BULGARIA TURNED TO BEGGING

MANY REFUGEES IN BULGARIA TURNED TO BEGGING

Evicted Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia did not change their passports; they wanted to keep their Macedonian identity

During an interview Zdravka Iteva said, “My Grandmother died with the words, ‘At our place… in our region…’ She arrived in Bulgaria in the 1890s and died in 1973. She never accepted her home in Bulgaria, she always thought of it as temporary. My father was the same. My mother used to say, ‘Where should I go so that I can be accepted as a Macedonian?’ My father did not want to change his passport; he wanted to keep his nationality. Without a Bulgarian passport he couldn’t visit our relatives in Skopje. Many times we tried to persuade him to get a new passport but he refused every time. He often used to say, especially to my mother, ‘is there lemonade in this bottle?’ ‘Yes, that’s lemonade,’ my mother would answer. ‘And if you change the cork, will it still be lemonade?’ This was a warning to us, his children, to my brother and me that even if things change in life we were still the same… Macedonians...”

This is what Zdravka Iteva, a descendant of the Skrizevo and Bapchor refugees, remembers. After the population exchange Convention between Greece and Bulgaria was signed, her family was exiled to Pirin Macedonia. During the socialist era in Bulgaria she worked as an editor of a children’s magazine. She is now retired and lives in Sofia. Iteva survived the same drama many Macedonians in Bulgaria survived and carried that drama inside their souls. They exist in two worlds, in their past where their roots are and in the present where they live now. She speaks with great emotion when she speaks of her past, returning many years back and telling every story she remembered from her grandmother and mother, and her grandfather and father. She recounts these stories again and again as part of the life she lived in the distant past. She has opened her soul so that everyone can see and feel her drama.

“I feel an organic need to keep my connections to my past intact. I have a need to remember my relatives who lived and still live all over divided Macedonia. Those who were exiled to Bulgaria from Aegean Macedonia are descendants of brothers and sisters. Some are my grandfather’s and grandmother’s relatives. Some still live in Greece. We saw each other for the first time twenty years ago. I have a strong emotional connection with those people. I hear my grandmother’s, my grandfather’s, my mother’s, my father’s crying voices there. It’s their birthplace. Unfortunately slowly, little by little, I am beginning to feel those connections coming apart. Why? Because there is a border between us and because some people are telling me that I’m ‘this’ or ‘I’m that’…” added Iteva.

“It is an intimate thing, how someone feels,” she continued. “Those that are like me are stretched on a cross. I belong both to the past and the present. My past is connected with those people, who are Macedonians, who were Macedonians. I am Macedonian myself. At the same time I belong to this country, I was educated here, high school, university, specialization… I married a Bulgarian man. When I was getting married I didn’t ask him if he was Macedonian or Bulgarian, American or something else. Nor was he concerned if in my passport, my nationality was Macedonian. My son was born here, in Bulgaria; he was educated in the schools here. He feels Bulgarian. I have to speak to him one way and to my relatives, that visit me sometimes, another way.”

The issue to which nationality one belongs is clearly a human issue which every single person must consider for themselves. Unfortunately there are powers, especially political powers, which tend to determine ‘one’s nationality’, based on the interest of the powerful and sometimes with no regard to how the common people feel. When civilizations are created emotional attachments are ignored and all those who have political or national differences are made to suffer by the dictates of the more powerful.

Iteva especially stressed that the Macedonian language is an independent language, not a dialect of the Bulgarian language. She showed proof of that in the monograph of the village Bapchor written in the Macedonian language. According to Iteva, if the book was written in Bulgarian, it could not so strongly have expressed the

essence of life of the people who lived in that village located in the Aegean part of Macedonia. Here is what she said, “The Macedonian phrase, the accent, the vocal sound, the phonetic and lexical differences… all make a language a special language.” She was well versed in both the Macedonian and Bulgarian languages and was able to figure out that they were similar but not the same. In other words, she was able to figure out for herself that the Macedonian language was not a dialect of the Bulgarian language. Also, another thing she needed to remember was that historically the Macedonian people were living in Macedonia and spoke the same Macedonian language they speak today well before the Bulgarian tribes, a Turkic people, migrated to the Balkans.

Another interesting thing that Iteva mentioned was her association with Atanas Dalcev in 1970. Dalcev was a famous Bulgarian poet but Macedonian by origin. This was the time Bulgarian linguists looked for ‘different reasons’ to deny the Macedonian language.

This is what Iteva said, “Dalcev at the time was standing at the top of the Bulgarian ladder of poetry. He was a real gentleman. By spirit he was an aristocrat and a nobleman... There was no one to whom I could compare him. One time I went to Skopje where Gane Todorovski gave me one of his Macedonian books to take to Dalcev. I never told anyone about this. I had no idea how Dalcev’s followers would accept Todorovski’s book but facts are facts. He took the book, opened it, put his big glasses on and started reading. At one point he started reading aloud after which he said, ‘This is great; this is great poetry, real poetry…’ So I said, ‘Atanas, other people who read it are saying that this sounded like poetry written in a dialect… sounded ridiculous to them.’ He then said, ‘How is it possible that it could be great poetry when it was written in that language, the language that does not exist?’…”

Many Macedonians who lived in the Pirin part of Macedonia greatly resisted being assimilated by Bulgarian policies. As a result they experienced the same evil destiny as Iteva’s family.

By agreement between Bulgaria and Greece many Macedonian families were forced out of their homes in Aegean Macedonia after the First World War, and exiled to Bulgaria. They were forced out

from several places in Aegean Macedonia and settled in Nevrokop today’s Gotse Delchev, in Gornodzumaja or Blagoevgrad, in Sv. Vrach - Sandanski and in Petrichko. For example, an entire village from Aegean Macedonia was relocated to Mosomiste. Also all inhabitants of Koprivalen have Aegean roots. These people are the descendents of grandparents who moved there about eighty years ago. The entire village is constantly reminded that they are settlers and pressured to “be careful” how they behave because they “have not always lived there”. In other words if they openly show that they are Macedonians “something” might happen to them and based on how Bulgaria treats the Macedonians, one day they might be separated and relocated or vanish altogether.

After the Macedonian families were forced out of their homes in Aegean Macedonia, in accordance with the population exchange agreement, many were moved to the empty houses in which Turks and Vlachs had lived before they were evicted. The Turks left after the First World War. The Vlachs were banished by Vancho Mihailov who at the time had strong influence in Pirin Region. The village Mosomiste, mentioned above for example, was a Turkish village until 1912.

After arriving in Pirin Macedonia the exiled Macedonians experienced great hardship mainly because they were not supported with the material means for existence. In other words the Bulgarian state did not want to, or was unable to fulfill its obligations in accordance with the Agreement. The Macedonian people’s vocation was mainly agriculture but Bulgaria did not have enough land to give them so that they could live properly. As a result many had to humiliate themselves and beg for money in the streets. In addition the Macedonians didn’t even get the barren land that was promised to them. The Bulgarian state came to the conclusion that they “did not deserve it” and gave it to others. According to an article published by the newspaper “Eho” in 1932, “By not providing the people the land that was allocated for them there were unseen robberies committed. Most of the refugees were given only 5,000 square metres, while the powerful people, those who had committed murder, were given 20,000, 30,000, 40,000… square metres of land. The violent people were given three or four houses each of whom

then shamefully sold them. The refugees, on the other hand, were given the dilapidated houses that no one wanted.”

According to the newspaper “Eho”, “The refugees were promised to be given the land allocated for them but with various falsifications some of that land was given to the criminals associated with Vancho Mihailov’s VMRO. The same land was later sold to the refugees.”

According to the population exchange Agreement, Greece was expected to compensate the people it exiled from Aegean Macedonian for the loss of their properties. That money was expected to be given to the Bulgarian state. Some of that money was expected to be given to the refugees. Unfortunately that never happened. The refugees are still waiting for their money to this day. After the Agreement was signed two Commissions were formed, one in Greece and the other in Bulgaria. Their job was to provide value for the properties the refuges lost on both sides. Unfortunately the Commission in Greece didn’t do its job properly for the exiled Macedonians. However the Commission in Bulgaria did. It provided the right value for the lost properties that belonged to the exiles sent to Greece. This is mainly because the people exiled from Bulgaria were still in Bulgaria when their properties were assessed.

That opportunity was not given to the Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia because they had already left so their properties were valued at 50 percent of their real worth.

But that was not all. The other problem why the Macedonian exiles never saw their money was because it was kept (stolen) by the Bulgarian state. Sofia spent it to strengthen its economy that had fallen apart because of Bulgaria’s involvement in the wars. Instead of money, Bulgaria gave the exiles bonds. Years later, after the bonds matured, descendants of the exiles tried to cash them but by then the bonds were worthless. This was the money that Greece paid to correct the “injustices” it committed against the Macedonian people. Greece paid 30 million dollars not only to cover the personal property costs but also the damages it committed against the cemeteries, churches, etc., because by doing so Greece hoped to eradicate everything that was Macedonian.