We have already mentioned intensively the issue of the Greek abducted children in many previous articles [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Today we will provide a wide collection of contemporary Greek newspaper articles related to the abduction of Greek children from Communist guerillas.

Many Thanks to our good friend Peter from Australia for his contribution.

We continue exposing the shameless falsification of history from FYROM’s propagandists about the Greek abducted children, during Greek civil war. We already saw till now the testimony of Irene Damopoulou, a self-witness herself, speaking about the hardships experienced by these Greek children!!

From the article “Innocent’s Day” by Time Magazine on January 9, 1950

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,811653-1,00.html

Peace had come to battered, impoverished Greece; the Communist guerrillas had been driven out, perhaps for good. But last week, on Innocents’ Day (the Church calendar’s anniversary of Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents in Judea), Greece had a day of mourning—for 28,000 children abducted by the bandits and now living on foreign, Communist soil.

A two-gun salute from Mount Lycabettus woke Athenians at dawn. Church bells tolled and flags drooped at half-mast. Newspapers appeared with black-framed front pages. Places of amusement were closed all day, and for half an hour all traffic stopped, streets emptied, doors were closed and blinds drawn.

Queens Do Not Beg. Earnest young Queen Frederika, mother of three, broadcast a poignant message from the royal palace. She begged for the return of the 28,000 children living in exile “as a mother—because queens are not supposed to beg.” Added Frederika: “The civilized world has remained silent too long.”

The civilized world had made some well-meaning but ineffective protests. UNSCOB (the U.N.’s Special Committee on the Balkans) had verified the mass deportation of Greek children. The U.N. General Assembly had called on Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Rumania for the return of the children. These governments had finally agreed to return any children called for by petition of their parents. Up to last week the Greek Red Cross had forwarded 8,000 petitions, but not one child had been sent back.

Not Even Goodbye. In the palace with Frederika was a group of black-clad peasant women huddled at her side. Kaliroe Gouloumi, from Gorgopotamos, in Epirus, remembered how the Communists took her children: “They were in our village for a year. First they took our animals, then our food, then our children. I had three.” Kaliroe wiped her eyes with her black shawl. “They did not even let me say goodbye. They said they were no longer my children but their children.”

Said Kleoniki Kiprou from Monopilo Kastoria: “First they hanged the priest, then they cut off his mother’s hands, and then they ordered us to follow them. What could we do?” In Albania her eight-year-old girl and five-year-old boy were taken from her and a rifle was thrust into her hands. Tapping the weapon, the rebel capetdnias said: “This is your husband, this your child.” Kleoniki was forced into the battle of Vitsi. She deserted and got back to her village—without her children. In Fourka Konitsa, the villagers learned in advance of the guerrillas’ abduction plans. They hid the children in ditches. The guerrillas, frustrated, took Sofia Makri and 20 other mothers to the mountains and tortured them. Said Sofia last week: “They hung us from pine trees. They burned our feet with coals. They beat us. When we fainted they revived us with cold water from the spring. Fourteen of us died up there but we did not tell. When the Greek army entered our village they found the dead living, for out of the earth came our children.”

There is no evidence that the Greek children living in Communist countries are physically abused. International Red Cross investigators have seen some of the children and reported that they are well fed. They are being schooled as young Communists and they are expected to feel and show enthusiasm. Said a U.N. delegate in despair: “In ten years there will be NO abducted Greek children; they will have been absorbed.”

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Thanks to Christos for the article.

Even if the entire world acknowledges the Abducted Children during the Greek civil war were Greek, Skopjans have invented through years another falsification of history, claiming that all these children were “Slavomacedonian”.

Here is an excempt from the book “I foni tis Irinis” by Ioannis Bougas, where one of those Greek children, the self-witness Irene Damopoulou shatters FYROMian propaganda with her testimony.

(EXCERPT FROM):

I FONI TIS IRINIS (THE VOICE OF IRENE)

I Martyria tis Irinis Damopoulou apo to Paidomazoma

(The Testimony of Irene Damopoulou from the Child-gathering)

By Ioannis Bougas

Erodios Publishing House

Thessaloniki, 2006

Part II (Chapter 19), pages 124 – 127

The KKE (Communist Party of Greece) Constructs Slavomacedonians

It was decided by KKE officials in our community in Florika [Romania] to divide the inmates of the base into Greeks and Slavomacedonians. This division into Greeks and Slavomacedonians started in school. The primary person responsible for the classification of children into one or the other group was the teacher Kostas Triantafyllides from Kalohori, Kastoria [Greece]. Although he had studied to become a teacher in Greece, he had become a fanatical communist, Slavomacedonian, and a persecutor of Greeks. He had personally thrown my brother Ilia and me out of the Greek school [in Florika]. He told us that we were Slavomacedonians and not Greek because we were from St. Demetrios [Greece], which according to him was a village solely of Slavomacedonians.

Since my brother and I refused to declare that we were Slavomacedonians and refused to take courses in  Slavomacedonci, we were also thrown out of the Romanian school for three days. Our dismissal from school above all created a problem of survival as we had no more right to food from the school mess hall. When my mother complained to the community leaders because we were not given food, she was told that there was nothing that they could do and that we should think of the consequences of our denial to identify as Slavomacedonians.

Then my mother went to the school to complain. She found one of the teachers, a man named Mr. Nikos from Kilkis [Greece]. Unfortunately, I cannot remember his family name.