LOOKING FOR PARENTS

LOOKING FOR PARENTS

We should add that in Osiek, during the 1951/1952 academic year, there were 60 students studying trades, with 27 young ladies studying needlework, 19 studying to be tailors, 10 to be weavers, 2 to be confectioners and 1 to be a florist and a hairdresser.

In January 1951 the children in the Osiek home were visited by a delegation from the People’s Republic of Macedonia, which consisted of Dinko Delevski, administration head from the ministry of social affairs and care for the refugees, Atanas Kirovski from the People’s Republic of Macedonia’s Red Cross Main Board, Steria Vangelova, member of the Aegean main board, and Spiro Mechkarov city council secretary of the Aegean Association in the city Skopje.

In May 1952 52 girls successfully completed the three year practical training trade course, after which the Croatian Red Cross Main Board sent them to be employed in Skopje.

In August 1950 there were 7 Greek girls learning a craft in Panchevo, People’s Republic of Serbia and 26 Macedonian students learning a craft in Samobor, People’s Republic of Croatia. They were placed in a separate dormitory dedicated to them along with a teacher. Similarly, there were 78 Macedonian students placed in a separate dormitory with two teachers in Osiek, Croatia. There were 12 apprentices studying economics in Zagreb, Croatia. They were housed in a dormitory and lived with other students who were studying trades in the economic sector.

At this point it is important to thank the various Red Cross organizations including the Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian Red Cross for their contribution to the care of the refugee children from Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia, which included providing homes, boarding schools, education and other assistance, making their stay pleasant, making their lives comfortable and helping them to further their education.

At the same time the above-mentioned Red Cross organization made every effort to find the parents of the refugee children living in these homes in Yugoslavia so that the children could be repatriated with their families and continue to live their lives together. But this was a hard road to travel mainly due to strong resistance from the Greek government and from the Greek Red Cross which were demanding that the refugee children be returned to Greece. The Greeks wanted the hospitality offered by the Yugoslav Red Cross and by the Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian Red Cross to end. The Greeks applied unprecedented pressure to have the refugee children, at all costs, returned to Greece...

FOREIGN YOUTHS VISIT THE CHILDREN IN TSRIKVENITSA

At the end of August and early September 1949, the Tsrikvenitsa home was visited by foreign youths who participated in the construction of the campus in Zagreb.

Eight youth teams visited the home, most of whom were French, but several young people from Vietnam were also included in the ranks of these brigades.

Among other things, the visitors told the Macedonian children about their own life and heroic people’s struggles for freedom in Vietnam.

The children were especially attracted to an Indian student in France, who since 1946 had been many times in our country working in construction and by now had learned a few Macedonian folk songs and dances. He participated with the children singing folk songs and dancing.

The refugee children in Tsrikvenitsa were also visited by the Aegean Youth Brigade. Some of the youths in the brigade found their siblings and relatives and were happy to be reunited.

The children put on performances for each brigade showing off what and how much they had learned in these homes, especially about the Macedonian culture and language. In doing so the children demonstrated the kind of lives they were living and how well they were learning. This was another way of countering the propaganda waged against Yugoslavia by its enemies.

On the occasion of the “Week of the Red Cross” celebration, held in Tsrikvenitsa, the newspaper “Voice of the Aegeans” published a special report in which, among other things, it said that in the children’s homes in Tsrikvenitsa, where refugee children from Aegean Macedonia were housed and educated, there existed a Red Cross youth wing organization in which all the children were members.

The main task of these young people, as per the house rules, was to take care of the general and personal hygiene of its members, to make sure all basic hygiene rules are learned in order to avoid various diseases and to correspond with other organizations.

Besides the above-mentioned duties, members of the Red Cross youth wing were obliged to participate in the “Week of the Red

Cross” celebration. For this celebration they organized and conducted 4 very successful performances.

The folk group performed on several occasions; one for the city students, one for the citizens and two for the people of the Novi and Seltse surrounding areas.

With that, the refugee children in the Tsrikvenitsa home expressed their gratitude to the Croatian Red Cross and to Yugoslavia for the enormous care they were given.