Macedonians in Greece, Part 4

The Hellenization of the Macedonian people began way before Macedonia's invasion, occupation and partition by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. It began with the introduction of the Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian Churches in Macedonia.

When in 1878 Macedonia was given back to the Ottomans by the Western Powers, its status became "undetermined" with implications that Macedonian territories were now up for grabs.

There were no Greeks, Serbians or Bulgarians living in Macedonia prior to the introduction of the foreign Churches there because these nations never existed before. Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria are 19th century artificially created nation-states, created from the same ethnic Christian composition but each nation was artificially designed to support the aims of the Great Power which created it.

Using the same principles of artificiality with which they themselves were created, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria through their respective churches began to spread propaganda in an attempt to convince the Macedonian population that only Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians existed in Macedonia. Their aims were designed not only to convince Macedonians but also to convince the outside world and pave the way for Macedonia's occupation.

The population exchanges that subsequently followed were nothing more than expelling those people who the three states felt would be a threat to their objectives.

Macedonians were not Greek, Serbian or Bulgarian that is why these states, particularly Greece, had to apply extreme measures to suppress them.

Soon after the Greek government established rule in Greek occupied Macedonia it opened Greek language schools to teach the entire Macedonian population to speak Greek. While children attended regular school, adults were expected to attend night school.

Besides Hellenizing the Macedonian population by teaching it to speak Greek, the Greek state also took measures to eliminate everything that was Macedonian.

By law promulgated on November 21, 1926, all place names (toponymia) in Greek occupied Macedonia were Hellenized. All Macedonian names of cities, towns, villages, rivers, lakes, mountains, etc., were changed to Greek ones. In a similar manner, Macedonian families were forced to change their Macedonian last names to Greek ones. Even individual given names were changed forcing alien names upon the Macedonian population. Since then to this day families lost continuity with their relatives especially those who had fled Greece before Hellenization policies were put in place.

For those who don't know what "Hellenization" is, it is a process of assimilating people from various ethnic groups such as Macedonians, Vlachs, Albanians, Turks, etc., and turning them into Greeks. To an outsider this may seem strange and even comical but to Macedonians who were born in Greek occupied Macedonia and who had lived through this process, it was a living nightmare.

Many Macedonians have relatives; brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc., who have been Hellenized by Greek propaganda and today are the staunchest Greeks. The so called Greeks who are indigenous to Greek occupied Macedonia are no more than an artificial construct of Greek propaganda. They say they are Greek because since the occupation of Greek occupied Macedonia the Greek educational system has been telling them that they are Greeks and punishing them for feeling Macedonian.

What follows is a true story exactly as told by Peter Minas who attended Greek school in 1950, the only schooling available to Macedonians:

"A Young Boy that was I no more than 10 years old, playing with friends in the neighbourhood yard, not aware that we had been watched by none other than the teacher of our class.

Unaware of the political situation, feeling joy in my heart I called out to my friend Done in my native Macedonian tongue to, 'Come and play with us'.

Next morning in class, I hear the loud voice of my teacher asking to know 'Who is the one who still speaks in his native tongue?'

All around fear I see, I'm told to get up and stand in front of the class. I find the courage to rise up. 'You are a traitor, he said to me. 'You don't belong here. Take your books and go. Bulgaria is the place for you.'

He takes me by my arms throws me on the floor, attacking me with his feet and the long stick that he holds.

I look up with tears streaming down my face and with courage that I had never felt before I say in a choking voice "Teacher I don't know what traitor means I haven't done anything Wrong. That's the language we speak at home.'

I'm humiliated; my knees are weak. O Lord why is this happening to me. I want to go home and hide from the world. In the days and months that follow I am isolated by all.

They are told not to play with me or else... I am so alone.

I could not have known then that the Greeks would use such tactics on old and young to achieve their goal. First they destroy your soul then take away your identity. That black autumn day in 1950 I was not alone Our Lord Jesus Christ was there. He raised me up and restored my soul.

I have been living in this wonderful country that is called Canada for the last 55 years. I had a successful career; I have a loving family and many close relatives and friends." (Peter Minas).

Here is another story from a young girl who was punished by her teacher for being Macedonian:

"My first visit to school did not last very long. No sooner had I been shown to my classroom, I was greeted by my teacher, who instead of showing me to my place proceeded to sarcastically ridicule me in front of the other students. I did not understand all that he was saying, but his problem was the fact that I was wearing traditional Macedonian clothes, those my mother had made for me, instead of the correct school uniform. He grabbed my braided hair with the ribbons and coins, whilst facing me, pulling my head backwards. I winced. The venom in his words stung as much as my hair which felt as if it was being ripped out by the roots.

'How dare you come dressed in these rags and get that rubbish out of your hair! You need a blue and white tunic and blue and white ribbons,' explained the other children who translated for me. 'Go home and change, I never want to see you dressed in village rags like this again!'

I remember stumbling out of the school grounds, tears streaming down my cheeks; by the time I ran home, I was sobbing incessantly and hyperventilating. My grandmother took fright when she saw me and grabbed me wanting to know what had happened. My mother came running out of the house when she heard my grandmother's commotion and became distressed herself when I could not stop sobbing long enough to tell them what my first five minutes of school had been like. At that moment I wanted my father to be home, more than anything else. I knew that had he been there he would have dealt with the teacher in no uncertain terms, as only a father could handle the situation.

They made me sit down and gave me a spoon full of sugar to settle me down and finally I could get the words out. I told them that my finest clothes were not good enough to wear to school, the teacher called them rags and my traditionally braided hair with red ribbons and coins was inappropriate for school also. I needed to wear the colours of Greece. When I had finally explained what had happened, I thought my grandmother would explode, she began cursing incessantly that the teacher and the Greek regime be struck down with a paralytic disease, that they burn in the devil's own domain, that pestilence and disaster mark their day and so forth.

Once she had regained her composure the question 'Where am I going to find you a blue and white tunic?' arose. I could hear my mother and grandmother talking and yelling and cursing as they rummaged through the chests and cupboards where they kept cloth and garments. They managed to find part of an old dress and put it over my finest clothes and I was forced, practically pulling and screaming back to school, though I never wanted to return. The old raggy dress over my clothes was a signal to the teacher that my grandmother and mother believed that the raggiest dress was good enough for their school uniform. When my grandfather and uncle returned home, they were furious and in no uncertain terms had their bit to say to the 'educators'.

To say that I hated school would be an understatement, not because I hated learning, on the contrary, I was intelligent and wanted to achieve. The fact that today I have four university educated daughters is indicative of that intelligence. But I hated the way the teachers made me feel.

Early on in the process, my first five minutes at school taught me that my mother's and grandmother's handiwork, culture and traditions were worthless, and inherent in that negative reinforcement was a feeling of my own worthlessness.

I suppose it wasn't until I went to school that I realized that the Greek language was the language of the colonizing power. Even though Macedonian was spoken in the village, at home and with relatives, the necessary form of communication at school and church was Greek. We spoke it with a thick accent because we were Macedonian bilinguals. We were taught that our Macedonian language was inconsequential, that it had no name, alphabet and could not be taught. That it was not a language of 'high' communication, that is, one could not stand up and present a lecture or a speech in Macedonian because it was just a nothing or mongrel language with no structure or words, just remnants of the languages of the passing warlords.

It wasn't until I was in Australia that I realized that this was totally incorrect. I learned that there was an education system, literature and newspapers. I attended meetings, concerts and church services and spoke with educated relatives from the Republic of Macedonia. My father learned the script in the intoxicating eucalyptus bush of Western Australia to the sounds of the lonely rain birds' song and many years later taught my husband. My children became literate in Macedonian in Australia, completing University qualifications in the language. There is a certain bitter irony that it was in Australia that I too, at the age of sixty, became literate in my grandmother's language. And the lies I had been taught, and the worthlessness I had felt, dissipated with the empowerment that comes with mother tongue literacy, especially for those who have been forced to live a lie during their childhood.

It was not enough that we were stripped of our land, but they tried to take our dignity as people. We were taught we did not exist, that there were no Macedonian people and if they really wanted to denigrate us they would call us Gypsies or Bulgaros, because they hated these peoples almost as much as they hated Macedonians. We were second class citizens in our own homeland and because we clearly did not have a Hellenic background, ensuring that we acquired one via the education system meant imbuing students with a feeling of self-hated towards their own background. Our humiliation continued as in the course of the lessons the teacher made sure that the negative reinforcement was given to the Macedonian children. I remember knowing the answers to questions and putting up my hand constantly, only to be told to sit down and shut up. I was never praised for knowing anything. It would not do to develop the intelligence and self-confidence of a Macedonian child, she might one day work out what was really going on, and have the strength of character to oppose it! All this had the effect of making me become quite disinterested in school. This and the persecution for speaking Macedonian.

I've neglected to say that at school speaking Macedonian was absolutely forbidden, but my friends and I ignored this and in the play ground would use the language that rolled naturally off our tongues. One day as we were playing "pupana", a game like knuckles, with my friend Vasilka, I caught a glimpse of the teacher talking to an older prosfigi [Pontic settler] student. Almost instantly, the boy came over to where we were playing and started to belt us, me in particular because I was by far the most vocal and rebellious. The teacher watched on as the boy boxed me about the head and ears, so hard that I became dizzy and had to sit down. We begged him to stop; when he finished he raised his head towards the teacher. I gathered this was punishment for breaking the rule and speaking Macedonian.

When I went home, whimpering and sobbing yet again, as was a seemingly regular occurrence, my grandmother would lose her electric temper and toss all the Greek text books in the fire. Her words still ring in my head 'Its not enough, they have taken our land, but now to mistreat our young, to take our language, this is too much!' She would curse and yell and I understand where the rebellious streak in me came from. This served to neutralize the effect of the Greek schooling process, as she reinforced our self-worth by rejecting any system that denigrated us for being ourselves. To be dispossessed in one's own land poses all types of problems. It became all too obvious to my grandmother that our dispossession would not be only of the materially visible things. As well as the land, our language and culture could also be confiscated, leaving us with nothing but an empty shell of the people we once were.

This was how the Greek national neurosis about the 'endopi' [indigenous] was incubated and perpetuated to oncoming generations. Intolerance for non- Hellenes was the stepping stone towards hatred for a people whose only fault was to live on land which now fell under Greek domination. This was how I learned first hand that my grandmother's words made sense 'Kaj shto ima sila nema pravina' -where there is power there is no justice. It seems that all songs sung and now words written are about challenging injustice of one form or another. Injustice provides the necessary ingredient for human tragedy.

I suppose one of the final insults to our family was a school performance which promoted the sense of 'mother Greece's' embracing power. The different traditional outfits of the prosfigi [Pontic settlers], Macedonian and Vlach students were swapped. I was dressed in a Prosfigi outfit and my Prosfigi friend in a Macedonian outfit. This was so hard for my family to bear seeing their child dressed in the traditional dress of those who had been allocated our land, those who had fought with my father and uncle. And the teachers knew this. This was a deliberate act to rub salt in the old wounds and to assert their power. I will never forget the disgust in my grandfather's eyes the night of that concert. Thankfully, during the war years this type of schooling was interrupted." (Kita Sapurma & Pandora Petrovska. "Children of the Bird Goddess". Pollitecon Publications. 1997. Pages 84-88)

There is no Macedonian born in Greek occupied Macedonia that hasn't got a similar story or that has been spared from such a tragic experience.

News of the Greek acts promulgated on November 21, 1926 and the new, official Greek names were published in the Greek government daily newspaper "Efimeris tis Kiverniseos" numbers 322 and 324 published on November 21st and 23rd, 1926. These acts are binding to this day.

Following these acts the Greek government implemented a compulsory policy of removing all evidence of the Macedonian language from Churches, icons, monuments, tomb stones, cemeteries, archeological finds, etc. All Slavonic Church or secular literature was seized and burned. The use of the Macedonian language was forbidden also in personal communications between parents and children, among villagers, at weddings and work parties, and in burial rituals. (John Shea. "Macedonia and Greece The Struggle to define a new Balkan Nation". Page 109)

Failing to completely Hellenize the Macedonian population subsequent Greeks government introduced pre-kindergarten schools. The pretext for these schools was to free the parents so that they could go to work but their motive became clear when such schools became available only in Greek occupied Macedonia and nowhere else in Greece. The idea here was to separate young children not from their parents but from their grandparents who traditionally looked after them and taught them values and the Macedonian language while parents were out in the fields working.

The act of forbidding the use of the Macedonian language in Greece is best illustrated by an example of how it was implemented in the Township of Assarios (Giuvezna). Here is a quote from Karakasidou's book Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood.

"[We] listened to the president articulate to the council that in accordance with the decision [#122770] of Mr. Minister, General Governor of Macedonia, all municipal and township councils would forbid, through [administrative] decisions, the speaking of other idioms of obsolete languages within the area of their jurisdiction for the reconstitution of a universal language and our national glory. [The president] suggested that [the] speaking of different idioms, foreign [languages] and our language in an impure or obsolete manner in the area of the township of Assirios would be forbidden. Assirios Township Decision No. 134, 13 December 1936." (Page 162, Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood)

By 1928 1,497 Macedonian place-names in the Greek occupied Macedonia were Hellenized (LAW 4096) and all Cyrillic inscriptions found in churches, on tombstones and icons were destroyed (or overwritten) prompting English Journalist V. Hild to say, "The Greeks do not only persecute living Slavs (Macedonians)..., but they even persecute dead ones. They do not leave them in peace even in the graves. They erase the Slavonic inscriptions on the headstones, remove the bones and burn them."

In the years following World War I, the Macedonian people underwent extensive measures of systematic denationalization. The applications of these "denationalization schemes" were so extensive and aggressively pursued that in the long term they eroded the will of the Macedonian people to resist.

In Greece, in 1929 during the rule of Elepterios Venizelos, a legal act was issued 'On the protection of public order'. In line with this Act each demand for nationality rights is regarded as high treason. This law is still in force.

To be continued.

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You can contact the author at rstefov@hotmail.com