Tribune Excerpts

The following article appeared in the June 2005 Edition of the Macedonian Tribune

Detsa Begaltsi, Tragic Refugees of Greek Civil War
By, Virginia Surso

The detsa begaltsi are Macedonian children whose families lived in Aegean Macedonia.

In the spring of 1948, about 25,000 children were evacuated from Aegean Macedonia and sent to Eastern Bloc countries.

It was the time of the Greek Civil War. It was a time when young boys were being conscripted into the Greek Army, and it was a time when most Macedonians were fighting against that army.

The children were sent away by train, by bus and on foot to all parts of Eastern Europe to be raised by total strangers. Most never saw their families again. Some have recently been allowed to return to the village of their birth for the first time in nearly 60 years.

Macedonian families sent their children out of harm's way, not only for safety reasons, but also because they believed the children would be taken away by the Greek government and would be raised by Greek families as part of the cultural genocide program to make every citizen of Greece truly Greek.

The Greek government characterized the operation as genocide and a crime against humanity as it brought the matter before the UN. Obviously, it didn't consider its own requirement of forcing non-Greeks to be Greek, as an equally heinous crime.

No matter your political leanings, no matter if you believe the action was right or wrong, the fact remains Macedonian children suffered. As adults, they still are suffering, and as a people we have suffered.

It is why we fight so hard for our identity.

Aegean Macedonia is the area north of the 40th parallel in Greece. It was ceded to Greece by the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, which divided Macedonia after the Balkan Wars.