Για το παιδομάζωμα

Letter to THE GREEK STAR OF CHICAGO;

Dear Editor,

I would like to correct some of the falsehoods included in an article published in your April 2, 2009 issue about the documentary “Shelter from the storm: Children of the Greek Civil War”.

While in it Mrs Bumbaris states that the “”Storm” is neither intended to be a political film nor to spark controversy”, that is exactly what it is: a very political film.

Note that Riki van Boeschoten, a professor at University of Thessaly, in Larisa, has written two books* based on the recollections of people from Ziaka, the village of Mrs Bumbaris father in the region of Grevena, in western Macedonia.  In them, she includes the recollections of several members of the Bumbaris family, identified as local chieftains or just members of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). In the “Storm”, Mrs Bumbaris is reproducing the same material, but without telling that it is the communists view. It presents as facts old  propaganda against Greece and the Greek Army, and spreads the same lies about the reasons for taking 28,400 children from their parents and into the Iron Curtain during 1948.

Here are some of the worst falsehoods told by Mrs Bumbaris:

–   The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was never called the Democratic Party. The outlaw communist guerillas, fighting the Greek government in 1946-49, were using the name Democratic Army of Greece (DAG).

–   There were never any generals of the Greek Army telling villagers to send their children into the Iron Curtain. Mrs Bumbaris must be confusing the “capetanios” of DAG's guerillas with the generals of the Greek Army. The Greek children were taken for political reasons based on a decision by Comintern, which the KKE accepted, and not for Paidofylagma as they were claiming, and Mrs Bumbaris states again here as fact. 

–   There is not a single case of children hurt by bombardment or any other means by the Greek Army. The Greek Army NEVER bombarded inhabited villages or towns, even when they were overran by the DAG, and never took hostages, as the DAG did in dozens of cases when it occupied for short periods Greek towns. Its retreats were routinely covered by taking whole families hostages into the mountains, in some cases hundreds of them.

–   KKE's membership or group of sympathizers was never more than a tiny percentage of the Greek population. There were a few cases of small villages, where strong personalities or other factors produced strong majority support for KKE. That seems to be the case with Ziaka. A big percentage of the DAG's guerillas, and most of the women were forcibly put in their ranks from villages that were within areas under the communists' control.

The organized abduction of Greek children and their transfer to the countries of the Iron Curtain, was one of the most dramatic events of the Greek Communist Insurrection of 1946-49.  The story of paidomazwma, as it has become known from a similar policy of the Othoman Empire, officially began on March 3, 1948. Then, the Radio station of the communists informed that “during the last part of the Balkan Youth Council in Belgrade a univocal decision was taken to aid the children from Greece, ages 3-15 years old by taking them to neighboring democratic countries, where nursing and education could be provided”

This decision was ratified in the Kristallopigi Convention of members of KKE (under the direction of Markos Vafeiadis -the then leader of DAG) on February 10-20, 1948. Right after, children from villages of the Kastoria and Kozani regions of western Macedonia were taken to neighboring communist countries. Their parents were informed that if they did not give their children willingly, the children would be taken away by force.That is exactly what did happen in many villages.

The Minister of Public Education of the Republic of Skopje, Mitra Mitrovitz Tzilas, who also was a central figure of Comintern, originated the basic theme and the details of this plan. She, through Paidomazwma, introduced her revolutionary ideas about education: remove the children from the “reactionary” influence of the parents, so they can be raised according to communist theories. This new kind of education was based on the “collectivism” theory. Lieutenant Colonel Simits, a former Ambassador of Yugoslavia to Ankara, Turkey, and during this time one of the leaders of the Balkan Youth in the Comintern, undertook the “education” of the abducted children.

Reaction to Paidomazwma worldwide was strong. For brevity I include only two:

a) The Greek government sent letters and memos to the Balkan Committee of UN, to the General Secretary of UN and to all state-governments of the Western World seeking help for this heinous crime. On June 3, 1948 the Greek Foreign Ministry asked all the communist countries for the return of the children. The Foreign Minister received an answer, stating that due to philanthropic reasons the children won't be returned to Greece, if peace does not prevail in Greece.

b) On May 21, 1948 the Balkan Committee of UN wrote a full report, stating that the abduction of Greek children was part of a plan to exterminate the Greek nation, characterizing the act as genocide.

In the end, from the 28,400 children taken, a few thousands were returned to their parents when the latter were left in Greece. When the parents added up in the Iron Curtain countries -not only in the Soviet Union- as political refugees with the defeated DAG or taken by DAG as hostages, in most but not all cases, they were eventually united with their children. A few thousand children, with and without parents, were relocated in the fifties into then Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia and were indocrinated to become “Macedonians”.

I understand and support Mrs Bumbaris' initiative to present the recollections of her father and his family in a film, but she should do it honorably, stating that she presents the communists  point of view or what they told her, and not true  history. She should not mislead her future viewers, nor slander Greece and its Army!

Sincerely,

Ioannis Bougas (Montreal)

(author of “H FONI TIS IRENES”, the true Paidomazwma story of Irene Damopoulou)

ioannis.bougas@sympatico.ca

(*) The titles of the books, written in Greek, are: “Perasame polles mpores paidaki mou” and

      “Anapoda Xronia”.