A CONCRETE START – ESTABLISHING THE ASSOCIATION OF REFUGEE CHILDREN

A CONCRETE START – ESTABLISHING THE ASSOCIATION OF REFUGEE CHILDREN

The first world meeting, held in Skopje in mid-summer 1988, attended by former refugee children from several European countries as well as from Australia, Canada and the United States, was not only a tremendous opportunity to visit family and friends who had not been seen for years and even decades, but it was also an opportunity to share childhood memories, knowledge and problems. It was also a forum, of course, to find solutions to those problems. This naturally prompted the former child refugees to become organized in the form of an association. This initiative immediately gained legitimacy and the “Association of Refugee Children in the Republic of Macedonia” was born.

To this end, an initiative committee was immediately constituted whose task was to carry out preparations for the establishment of the “Association of Refugee Children from Aegean Macedonia in the Republic of Macedonia”. Appointed to the initiative committee were Vane Plukovski, Mito Miovski, Georgi Donevski, Iliai Ainovski, Kole Mangov, Pero Nakovski, Kosta Ianchevski, Metodia Topevski, Eftim Chunovski, Paskal Gilevski, Naso Bekiarovski, Krsto Kiradziev, Eli Maneva, Mihailo Dichevski, Nikola Dumurdzhanov, Nikola Bundovski and Nikola Atanasov. Soon after it was formed, the initiative committee developed the first documents called “the Articles of the Association of Refugee Children in the Republic of Macedonia” as well as other documents required to register the Association. According to the requirements listed in these documents, in addition to electing members for the Presidency, members for another four separate committees had to be elected.

This included the Commission on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Committee, the Protection of Property for the Macedonians from the Aegean part of Macedonia Committee, the Commission for Culture and Science Committee and the Publishing and Information Committee.

The Association was registered as an organization in the Republic of Macedonia on December 23, 1989, at which point it began to function in its wide scope from organizing scientific and professional meetings, rallies, protests, marches and cooperating with related associations, to publishing books about Aegean Macedonia and the regular publishing of the newspaper “Nezaborav” (Never forget). The Association immediately sponsored the publishing of a dozen or so books.

In its Constitution the “Association of Refugee Children from Aegean Macedonia in the Republic of Macedonia” defined its principles with historical significance as they pertained to the persecuted children and to their parents and relatives. According to Article 10, these principles consisted of the following: introduction and fulfillment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Provisions, the Helsinki agreement, other documents that protect human rights and fundamental freedoms and how these principles were not followed by the Greek state. By ignoring these principles the Greek state had discriminated against the individual and collective rights of the Macedonian people living in the Republic of Greece, and against those living outside of Greece by not allowing them entry visas to visit their homes because they were Macedonians (not Greeks by birth).

The Association had been involved in numerous activities in the past years, which will be discussed at length on a separate occasion, so here we will only mention that this Association cooperated with all the other Refugee Associations, including the refugees and their children from Strumica, the Association for protection of human rights from Radovish, the Association of exiled Macedonians “Egei” from Stip, the Organization of Macedonians - descendants from Aegean Macedonia – Bitola, and so on.

As a result of this cooperation, two wonderful ideas were realized: the opening of the club “Nezaborav” (Never forget), located in the “Skopjanka” shopping centre, and the establishment of the “Union of Macedonians from the Aegean part of Macedonia”, which has now been registered, confirming and affirming the current number of joint actions and activities.

Included in this joint action mentioned above, among other things, was the organizing of another former child refugee world meeting, to take place in Skopje in 1998.

A SECOND WORLD MEETING FOR THE ESTRANGED...

During the first world meeting, held in Skopje on July 5, 1988, the refugee Boards from Canada, Australia and the Eastern European countries held a meeting with the refugee Board from Skopje and agreed to hold another world meeting. It was decided to hold it in Skopje in 1998 to mark the 50th anniversary of the child refugee exodus.

The second world meeting of the former child refugees was held from July 15 to 19, 1998. The formal meeting, as the central event, took place on July 15 at the Skopje Fair. This event was attended by more than 3,500 former refugee children who came from Australia, Canada, the United States, but mostly from Eastern European countries and from the Republic of Macedonia. The opening speech during the ceremony was delivered by Giorgi Donevski, President of the organizing committee. Donevski’s speech was followed by a speech delivered by Kiro Gligorov, President of the Republic of Macedonia. The speeches were followed by cultural presentations performed by the literary and musical group “Children of Macedonia” compiled by Stoiche Toshevski, during which members of the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra participated. Other performances were conducted by the MTV choirs, the “Lale” (Tulip) children’s choir from Tetovo, the soloists Maria Muratovska, Svetlana Donkovski, Tsvetan Pavlov and Milan Fifrov, as well as recitationist Tome Vitanov and conductor Angel Shureta. The program was also attended by the Chartists Sonia Karandzulovska, Valentina Bozhinovska, Ilia Milchin, the singer Liupka Rondeva who lives in Sofia, and Malena Shomova from Melbourne. Branko

Giorgievski, writer of the song lyrics “Where are you young Macedonians” who lives in Perth, presented lyrics for a new song called “Nezaborav” (Never forget). This song was sung by the group “Bapchorki”. After that performances were delivered by the ballet couple Zuitsa Purovska and Zoran Velevski, by the poets Pando Kolevski from Prague and Risto Milianovski from Toronto and by the folk song and dance ensemble “Gotse Delchev” from Skopje. The entire ceremony was broadcast live by MRTV.

An exhibition of photographs and documents was also opened during this meeting. The exhibition at the Museum of Skopje was opened by Dimitra Karchitska, where 106 photographs and documents from the lives of the refugee children living in the various children’s homes were presented.

The participants of this meeting laid several wreaths; at Gotse Delchev’s tomb in the “Sveti Spas” church, at the Second World War veteran’s monument, at the bust of veteran Lazo Angelovski located at the primary school which bears his name and at the Child Refugee monument located in “Zhena borets” (Woman fighter) park.

The film “Inkontinuo” was primiered on July 16, 1998. This film was produced by “Vardar Films” at the request of the Refugee Children’s Association. The story was written by Kuzman Georgievski and Traiche Popov, who at the same time was also the director of the film. The film, and its importance, was narrated by actor Ilia Milchin.

A memorial service was held in the “Sveti Kliment” Macedonian Orthodox Cathedral in Skopje, in memory of the fallen and in memory of the deceased refugee children who died during the exodus. The service was led by His Beatitude H.H. Michael, Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia, y a number of bishops and y a number of venerable Fathers and deacons from the Macedonian Orthodox Church.

An art exhibition was especially opened for this occasion during which Kole Manev and Paskal Gilevski spoke. Organizer of this

exhibition was DLUM and its title was “Art Exodus 98”, in which 64 artists from Macedonia displayed their works.

An exhibition of books and publications, written by former refugee children, was also opened in the National and University Library “Kliment Ohridski”. The exhibition was managed by Stavre Dzhikov who also held seminars on the “Ethnic changes in the Aegean part of Macedonia from 1912 to 1955”. A concert, dedicated to the world meeting, was also held with Nikola Atanasov playing the flute and Hristo Hristovski playing the guitar.

This time too a festive dinner was held for the attendees. Grigori Popovski, member of the Organizing Committee, welcomed all the guests followed by speeches from John Bitove from Canada, Archimandrite Nikodim Tsarknias and Giorgios Nadzhulis from Aegean Macedonia, Jordan Kostadinov - Ivanov from Pirin Macedonia, Strasho Angelovski from MAAK and Academic Blaze Ristovski from Skopje.

Entertainment for the cultural part of this dinner event was provided by singers Petranka Kostadinova, Gotse Kasapovski, Mitse Dimitrov, Alena Shomeva, Branko Georgievski, the orchestra “Aegean melody”, the folk song and dance ensemble orchestra “Gotse Delchev” and the orchestra “Slavna Debartsa”.

The event participants and former refugee children who were guests at the meeting visited several cities in Macedonia including Bitola, Shtip, Radovish and Strumitsa. There was also an organized excursion to the city Voden. In fact, about 300 participants from the gathering visited the city Voden on July 19, 1988. Voden is located in Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia. But not everyone was allowed to cross the Greek border. Stopped at the Mezhitlia border crossing were 42 citizens from the Republic of Macedonia, 15 Canadian citizens, 11 Australian citizens, 2 from the Czech Republic, 1 from Hungary, 1 from Poland and 1 from Slovakia. They were not allowed to enter Greece to attend the picnic in Voden.

Three books were commissioned to be published and were published for this event. They were “Settled places in Aegean Macedonia” in

two volumes by Todor Simovski, a monograph “We are children of Mother Earth” by Dr. Fana Butskova and the monograph “Trsie and the people of Trsie” by Nikola Kichevski. At the same time, the National Bank of Macedonia issued a gold coin with the symbols of the meeting.

The second world meeting was a complete success and in conformity with the noblest principles of humanity, which increasingly materialized in the consciousness of all the people in the world and in humanity as a whole, expressing demands that no child in the world should ever again experience the fate of the refugee children from Aegean Macedonia who suffered immensely as a result of the 1946 to 1949 Greek Civil War.

A Declaration was drafted during the meeting and was sent to all the peace-loving people in the world, advocating peace between people, human rights for the Macedonian people living in Greece, the right of Macedonians born in Greece to return to their homes and visit their friends and relatives, and the return of all confiscated properties confiscated by the Greek state from those Macedonians who were forcibly exiled.

During the second world gathering the organizing committee held a meeting in Skopje during which they decided to hold another world meeting in five years, in 2003.

WHERE ARE YOU YOUNG MACEDONIANS?

One thousand nine hundred and forty eight, Our Aegean Macedonia sheds tears, Little children are being torn from their mother’s warm chests, And are scattered everywhere… their children’s games they left behind.

Where are you young Macedonians? Where are you… where did you go? Mother Aegean Macedonia is shedding sad tears for you, Macedonia is crying for you!

The spring of forty eight is distant, Distant is the childhood, the childhood of the past, The memory of home for the fatherland remains sad, The mother’s cry, never forget your mother.

Europe, Canada, America, Australia, Together the Macedonians raised their voices, And we too have the right to live free, In our country, our fatherland, our dear Macedonia.

Branko Georgievski

The author of the above lyrics is from the village Drachevo, Skopje. He now lives in Perth, Australia. This song was sung for the first time at the first former refugee children world meeting, held in Skopje in 1988.

IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE –HAVE WE PASSED OVER THE THRESHOLD OF NATIONAL REDEMPTION?

Between corporal mortality and spiritual immortality

Naturally, the question arises: what sin had that generation committed, those little children of two to fourteen years old, that they should be branded and cursed to roam the merciless land with the mark of Cain on their forehead? What was their guilt, those children, to be snatched from their mothers’ arms and then exiled beyond the seas and beyond the steppes? Some of us still remember those epic images from the Macedonian national Bible: unarmed children, loaded in baskets, spending days and nights sneaking behind the guards at the border, climbing bare mountains, hills and rocks, exiled from their native turf, separated from their fathers and mothers, naked and barefoot like those children threatened by the sword of Herod; they lay scattered in the yards of Macedonian churches and monasteries, waiting for a slice of bread or a blanket to cover themselves at night; barefoot children who waited for months at railway junctions and then were taken to foreign people and foreign lands…

Can those who remember these images today give us the answer to the question, explain what happened to our national dignity and morality in those moments? Why were those children not kept in our homes, so that we could share the terror of our national catastrophe? What sin was committed that we ourselves punished our own children and cursed them with the fate of Cain?

It is not the contemplation and explanations, but the decisiveness and the responsibility of a nation that are an answer to national tragedies.

It is the law of Cain that marks this generation and separates corporal mortality from spiritual immortality. Great national figures have risen from that accursed generation of ours: in science and music, in painting and literature. And not only in our national environment: everywhere that they grew up and created their own selves, those children left deep marks of dignity and order, as a sign

of gratitude to those who, with great human love, shared the drama and destiny of the innocent children from Macedonia.

Contemplating the mythological context of the mark of Cain, Edmund Leach says that, as a paradox of existence, it signifies the contradiction between corporal morality and spiritual immortality; the one carrying the sign stands as a metaphor between human achievement and atheism. That generation of refugee children from the Aegean part of Macedonia, who were torn from their native hearths and persecuted around the world the defeat of DAG in 1948, are that metaphor today. We give praise to that generation.

The events connected with the refugee children should not under any circumstances be seen or interpreted as separate from the basic strategy and ultimate goal of our Balkan neighbours for Macedonia: its final occupation and colonization, the annexation of the territory of Macedonia and the removal of Macedonian history. Just as a reminder, barely ten years after the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, when the great exile of the Macedonians from their homeland had begun, the ill-prepared Balkan Wars and the First World War started. The result was a great misfortune for Macedonia: hundreds of thousands of Macedonians were driven from their homeland and it was colonized by a non-national population from the coast of Asia Minor and the Black Sea, from the Caucasus and Armenia, from Serbia and Albania. At least in Macedonia, it was proved that political annexation primarily requires cultural annexation, i.e. assimilation.

Thus the entire twentieth century of Macedonians being exiled from their country. The ultimate result of that situation is: if towards the end of Ottoman rule in Macedonia, from the ethnographic point of view, our country was one of the most numerous of the Balkan nations, and was a relatively homogenous unity, the situation has changed dramatically towards the end of this century: approximately 60% of Macedonian territory has been taken by force and annexed to Greece and Bulgaria, and the number of the Macedonian population in the three parts is today smaller than that at the beginning of the century. These are the truths, persistent and bare – the bone.

Despite all the misfortunes that have accompanied us through history, it is as if we still do not have the answer to the most crucial question: what have we learned from this ordeal of our history?

We are one of the few nations in human civilization to have its own spiritual, Biblical and anti-biblical demarcation, but what is our experience through history? Is it a kind of predestination of the Macedonian people to enter each new century more deprived and more crippled, or – refusing to look the truth in the eye – have we ourselves created the history of a fragmented country and the destiny of a decimated nation? How can we uncover the mystery of our national contradictions and dubieties? While trying to go through this we will have no need of help from emotional outbursts and touching repetitions of familiar and less familiar traumas and dramas. It is high time that we all tried, together, to find the most rational answer.

The basic issue that the generation of Macedonians born in 1913, regardless of where they were born and raised, they cannot feel other than a part of a violently divided national being. They are the generation who felt the tearing apart of their homeland and the division of its national organism with unbearable pain; generations that are more and more convinced that they are a part of the body and spirit of a nation, predestined to their sacrifice being the ultimate, most exhausting expression of its existence. This is especially so after the declaration of an autonomous and independent Macedonia! Today, all Macedonians accept and feel our state not just as a historical, but almost a mystical fact as well! It is a state for all Macedonians, regardless of where they have been scattered the threshold of national redemption. However, the circumstances surrounding us do not allow us to be completely convinced of it: we are a nation that was one of the first in Europe to become Christian, a nation with an independent archdiocese of our own, and one of the oldest, but still our church is not recognized even by those who have themselves sprung from it! Eleven centuries ago, the Macedonian language from Sukho and Shiroka, near Thessalonica, became the basis of Church Slavonic, the first literary language of all the Slavs – and that language is still not accepted by some who evolved from it; we have a name – they do not recognize that name; even ten centuries ago we had our own state, one of the

strongest states in Byzantium, and still – it is as though Samuil’s state had never existed; this nation has created music and visual arts that stimulated the Renaissance, but yet – they are trying to take that away too!

Precisely because of all these things, after so many national disasters, never has there existed a more emphatic need for the Macedonian to search for his own sense as a national entity and to discover his true position in the world. Unlike ours, the leading principals of the Hebrews national doctrine is the rabbi, who constantly retells stories from the mythological and historical genesis of the Jewish people to the children and their fathers! Our motto is: do not go back further than yesterday, so that you do not somehow harm your neighbours or others! Destructive thesis! A true example of the active negation of one’s own worth!

What should these things teach us?

Our sustenance through history, for us, the Macedonians can never have a rigid, strict, precisely delimited beginning. We are all, like others around us, a circle in which every process of our founding represents a spot that leads to the following one. In the same way, the creation of our autonomous and independent state cannot be seen as something torn, detached from our yesterday and from our historical continuity, as something free from all the influences and currents of the past. In other words, our present is not a phantom leap across history, but a subtle and painful build-up of events and generations one upon another, which have all been built into the ultimate goal…

The summary of Balkan history is being constructed here in Macedonia, whether anyone likes it or not. What is the ordeal of our history like, and what is the ordeal of the history of another nation such as the Hebrews, for instance, who in many ways share the same historic destiny as we do? What does our and their experience of history teach us? I am convinced that this comparison can be of immeasurable value to us.

Thus: Halpen Lavick, a Jewish poet of the night and the apocalypse, after his persecution in Siberia and the terrible social misery that he

experienced living as a painter and poet in New York, claims every person who is Jewish, but for whatever reason does not live in Israel, the land from which his people were exiled, to be in exile. The height of that exile is in America and Australia.

When it comes to our present Macedonian situation: regardless of how radical the previous attitude may seem, we cannot find any reason not to accept it. This means that every Macedonian who, regardless of the reasons why, does not live in Macedonia, the land from which his people were exiled – is in exile. The height of that exile is in Australia, America and Canada.

A thesis such as this inevitably suggests an addition: the Macedonian individual carries within himself the destiny of the whole of Macedonian history and its most active form; regardless of where he lives, that individual longs to return to his homeland. The person who consciously rejects this and such like longings is consciously losing the essence of his national biography, which is his personal biography as well. In this way he rejects to the core the most valuable feature of his Macedonian embodiment. Whether we like it or not, it is becoming very clear that in the Balkans there is neither the time for new national and assimilating regroupings, for the creation of “great” states. There is time and space, however, for the return of violently taken national and human rights; there is time and space for democracy. One more thing: whether anyone likes it or not, Balkan history and democracy are being written here in Macedonia and through its history.

Thus we come to the next logically drawn essence, according to which the Macedonian who does not feel exiled is also, in a way losing the essence of being Macedonian! At the same time, the Macedonian in Macedonia, claiming that every Macedonian outside Macedonia no longer has any fundamental ties with the homeland, is also losing the essence and sense of being Macedonian. In other words: the famous thesis of division into big and small, “inferior” Macedonians! Or, to be more precise, a kind of national cannibalism…

I have seen some of our people who bow down and kiss the land of their ancestors as they set foot in the homeland, how they caress the

bones of their mothers and fathers… Ah, those young people, I think to myself, who love the homeland of their ancestors more than they love themselves…

It is true that Macedonians living in Macedonia should be happier, should live in greater spiritual peace with himself and his homeland! That should be the main reason to envy him and to long for such peace and such a home in the homeland! It is also true it does not give the Macedonian living in Macedonia the right to live with the arrogant supposition that he is ethnically more dignified than his exiled brother!

However, it is also true that today the Macedonian living in Macedonia keeps watch, guarding the homeland. Despite all appearances, his homeland now finds itself in the most uncertain and delicate historical situation: it will either be a state of the Macedonian people, or it will disappear without a trace in the brutality of the great programmes for division and re-division! The support for Macedonian independence that comes from America and Russia gives hope. It is perfectly clear today that the existence of our people is connected to the existence of Macedonia! The soil is something much more than just the fruits that grow on it. We could manage without any one of the people, but we could never manage without Macedonia!

Why should we not canonize our own Macedonian Bible?

What we have been lacking for a long time, and now proves to be more and more, is our own national programme. At no time should we neglect the fact that we are a small country, even more – that we are a colonized country, in which all newcomers living in Macedonia have their own national states unlike us Macedonians to whom Macedonia is everything, the cradle and the tomb! Naturally, Europe and the world need Macedonia with its specific national and cultural traditions, its specific summits in Macedonian, its specific democratic vision of the Balkans and the world. Europe and the world do not need Macedonia as a political nonsense with an undefined and shapeless national vision. In order to keep at least the remnants of Macedonia, it is crucial that we have that national programme which we have needed for decades and centuries.

Our national programme should be a plain and strict Macedonian book. Our book of books. Our second Bible. We have been excellent interpreters of the first Bible through the centuries; we will be even better interpreters of our own, personal Bible. Now is the time to have this Bible of ours, because tomorrow it will be too late! Times are difficult, many things are unpredictable.

This book will be neither an anthology nor an encyclopedia, not a history nor a collection of documents, but all these things together! A word and a thought running ceaselessly from the past to the future. Not the book of a period, but an open book which the generations will constantly be supplementing with their own writing and their own ordeals. That book will be our Holy Scripture and our covenant, a book respecting God’s commandments and supplemented by our own, Macedonian commandments. The next century, Malrayx said, will either be a century of religion, or we will no longer exist. That book will never be completed or final, not be perfect. It will contain much wisdom and a little nonsense; there will be many dreams, but a lot of bitterness as well.

Why should we not canonize our own Macedonian Bible? It will not be a big book; one will be able to carry it with one, put it under the pillow, and give it as a present. That book will be our spiritual calendar. In that calendar, among the many holidays, the greatest and most respected will be the Day of the Separated! On that day we will all gather here in Macedonia, of course. Unless, God forbid, our end is already written in the stars, it is time we left the world a book about ourselves! A book – a personal confession!

Macedonia is an enormous historical experience. A country that stimulates high meditation, because there are not many nations that have suffered and survived all their sufferings with such dignity as have our Macedonian people. We travel through our own archaeology down numerous ages, each more mysterious, each more dramatic!