MY NAME IS SOTIR, A Memoir, “The Turning Point”

By Olga Lexovska Naumoff
“The turning point” is a chapter from eight year old Sotir’s life which takes place in his native village of T’rsie, Lerin, Aegean Macedonia in 1944 during the dreadful and turbulent war years. The story was taken from Olga Lexovska Naumoff’s book “My Name is Sotir, A Memoir of a Child Evacuee”,
A man may die,Nations may rise and fall,But an idea lives on. Ideas have an endurance without death.
JOHN F.KENNEDY, 1963
“The ugly character of war was beginning to leave its imprint on us. Yet, the world knew little and cared less about us. Our lives and deaths were of no consequence to others, particularly the Greeks under whose regime we had suffered for decades. To those powerful world leaders in whose hands our destiny lay, our land, our people were mere pawns to be used to their advantage in their war games.
Where were the journalists, the photographers, the reporters from the outside world? All sides used us to achieve their own ends, while men like my father gave his life's blood fighting for every Macedonian's ideal.
Is it unreasonable; is it treasonable to want to live with dignity, a free man? Is it unreasonable for him to speak the language he had heard from the cradle, listening to the lullabies his mother and grandmother sang to him in their precious language? Is it sacrilegious for him to listen to the Old Macedonian Slavonic liturgy, which is still heard throughout the world, and to worship in the language of his father, and his father's father, and their ancestors, spoken beyond the reaches of time?
Can it be illegal to read our history, to celebrate our creativity, to sing our songs, to have pride in our heroes and heroines, to know of our cultural background?
Where were you, oh world, when we needed you so that you could see how we lived, to understand our pain, to lead us out of the days of darkness and oppression we thought were behind us when the Ottomans were defeated ? Empty promises of a free, independent, united Macedonia were dangled before us by the Germans, Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, Greeks, aided and abetted by Great Britain, and/or the Soviet Union. You let Macedonia become the setting for one of the bloodiest massacres in recent history.
Turning their pent-up fury against us, the Greeks not only killed and tortured our people; they burned our homes, destroyed our farmlands and indiscriminately and dispassionately slaughtered our defenseless animals.
No one in the free world paid much attention. Who had ever heard of Macedonians, so why should anyone care ? Macedonians simply didn't exist! The fruits of the ambition of these countries were left in Macedonia to rot. Propped up by the British, the Greeks, rising from the ashes, could not help but rejoice in their hearts that the Macedonians were being cleansed out of their own land.
How wrong they were. They simply didn't understand the depths of our passion for our land, our communal history, our dignity and our self-respect. The Greeks, though, were beginning to see that the Soviets and British were going to solve the problem of their decades-long effort to cleanse themselves of every trace of the Macedonians and their hated language from Macedonia.
I remember one particular day in Lerin. The authorities had forced a large crowd to gather by the cemetery. There was something different about this crowd. Being the nosy, curious kids that we were, we crept closer to the action to see what was going on. What we saw was a horrible, senseless, inhumane thing for anyone to see. The Greeks were about to teach us stupid Macedonians a Greek lesson on man's inhumanity to man. The Greek authorities were ordering three men to dig holes in the ground. I recognized two of the three men, and it was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. Something really creepy was happening. One of the men was from the village of Bouf. The other, whose name was Gilo, was from our village, T'rsie. I knew him so well because his son, Pandel, was a friend of mine. We often played together. I wanted to shout out to him, to say something, anything, but I held back. What was happening here? My mouth was open, ready, to yell. As I looked over, suddenly, I spotted the old man, Gilo's father, who then was about 75 years old. The old man was hanging on to a tree limb, shaking with grief, trying to keep from falling. He cried out to Gilo, saying his name over and over and over, weeping, begging, barely able to stand. "Gilo! Gilo!"
His voice, his voice was so weak! That cry of a father's agony! I will never forget that sound. The Greeks were about to tear his heart out for the old man knew what was about to happen. They were rather enjoying the scene and its effect on the people. Nobody moved to help the old man. No one dared to comfort him. Fear was everywhere in the cemetery that day. No one dared to move because of the presence of the evil that surrounded everyone.
I couldn't say a word. I just stared, my heart thudding in my chest, taking in this whole terrible scene. I remember seeing Gilo's mouth. His lower lip had cracked open, bleeding. The Greeks were now really into it, enjoying the whole event, shouting at the three men, calling them and the onlookers “paleo vulgari”, meaning Bulgarian scum. Every filthy epithet, every curse they could think of, they hurled at their poor victims and those of us who were witnessing this cruelty. To my young ears, the Greeks sounded like men gone mad.
And then the shots! I will never forget the sounds of the shots.
Although gun and rifle shots were familiar sounds to me by now, this, this was a horror beyond anything I could have imagined. Gilo and the other two men collapsed into the holes they had dug. They fell into their graves, and I will never forget the look on the faces of those hateful Greeks, or the filth that spewed from their mouths.
I will remember everything that happened on that day in Lerin, to the end of my days. I can never forgive the Greeks, never, ever. There had been no trial for these three men. The accusations, which were made against them, were never verified. What was their crime? Well, they were Macedonians, and every Macedonian was suspected of helping the Partizani.
British gold found its way into the hands of those who were willing to spy for the Greeks. There was no evidence against the three. But, hey, to the Greeks it didn't matter if there was no verification. This strategy of accusation without proof worked well for the Greeks in their effort to frighten and intimidate the Macedonians, to keep them from supporting the Partisan resistance movement.
As it turned out, in Gilo's case, one of the neighborhood kids was coerced into accusing Gilo of having a radio concealed to transmit information to the Partizani. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, Gilo, intending to remain neutral was one of those men who resisted recruitment into the Partizan movement.
Years later, after the conflict ended, the Partizans confirmed that Gilo had never been recruited.
Each day, tension grew more intense as the horrors increased. The Greek strategy of intimidation became more and more severe and occurred more frequently. The Greeks and their agents recruited spies among the greedy to inform on their neighbors; to openly accuse them. More often the accusations were anonymously made. Even the children were objects of intimidation and manipulation to inform on their parents if they or anyone else spoke Macedonian in their homes or in the fields, or anywhere else!
My own Uncle Tase was hanged on Clepala Mountain near St. Bogoroditsa, but not before the Greeks had tortured him for weeks. They pulled out his teeth and then his fingernails. They beat him so severely that his agony could be heard throughout Kalugeritsa and Yanina Livada!
As informers and spies were courted, the informers targeted specific homes. By the summer of 1947, in late July and early August, our village began to be systematically torched. The arsonists and gunmen Macedonians called pushcari had the honor of torching the houses in sequence to create the maximum terror in the village.
The very first houses torched were our new house, which had been built 2 years prior, and Vane Pandov's house. It happened during vrshanie, the harvest season when entire families were involved in harvesting the wheat and other grains. The hay was being bundled into bales and hauled from the fields.
When the pushcari burst into the house, they looted everything they could lay their hands on, and then applied the torches. My brother, Stefo, escaped within minutes before the pushcari burst in. When I saw what was happening, I could only think of the horses.
I cut the ropes that tethered the horses and chased them toward the dire, creek. Stefo led the horses into the dire and managed to hide them. I recognized the torchers from the village of Rokovitsi and I knew who they were. I will never forget them.
One of them had tried on my brother's guna, a cloak-like homemade garment made of goat hair. It takes a lot of work to make and becomes a strong garment, an excellent protection against rain and cold.
Those "brave, heroic Greek soldiers," the "pride of Greece," watched their lackey pushcari as they looted, pillaged and torched. When the "pride of Greece" left, only the charred remains of the smoldering houses were left for the villagers to see.
Ironically, two of the torchers visited us here in America. One of them had come from Australia and they both came to our home, because one of them was a relative of one of my sisters-in-law. We invited him to stay for dinner and of course the conversation revolved around Macedonia. As we talked he said, "I know T'rsie. I have been there. "
This was my moment, and I responded, " I know you were. You were the one that stole my brother's guna. Do you remember pushing that old Baba as she tried to take back her grandson's guna ? "
He turned a brilliant red in the face and mumbled something that sounded like, "I don't think it was T'rsie." He couldn't wait to leave and they did so, very quickly. No coffee for them. They were in a real hurry!
Already with the Partizan movement, Father and so many others had joined because they believed that it was the only option they had to preserve, liberate and unite Macedonia. Father believed that the Partizans would put an end to the discrimination, humiliation, and murder that the Greek regimes had instituted to remove any trace of Macedonian past. Father believed, as so many others did, that they were forging a brighter future for our generation, so that we could live free from the constant specter of the hated Greek tyranny and corruption, even though they were partners in the Greek Partizan movement.
I can still hear the songs, the passionate songs of freedom, of independence, of the dawn of a glorious new day for the Macedonian people. However, that wonderful pattern and rhythm of our village life had been bloodily interrupted and changed forever.
The sounds of shelling in the middle of the night became the norm, which sent us running to our safe places for cover. The bloodletting began to take on a life of its own. In spite of the obvious danger around us, my gangsters and I were always on the lookout for anything that looked dangerous or forbidden. Bullets, grenades, anything different became our new toys. And then, we discovered LAND MINES! And, a new game was invented.
The mines had been placed on the paths and roads normally traveled by the villagers, adults and children alike. Some of the mines were placed in the ground, but others were hanging from the branches of trees, wired for tripping by a horse or donkey. We heard that some kids had been killed when unaware, they had stepped on one. So my gangsters and I looked for the mines. We found it great fun to defuse them as we cleaned them out. This was not a task for little fools. Nevertheless, sometimes we would pick up a mine and throw it as far as we could to watch it explode. Wow, what a sound that mine could make! It was dangerous, yet thrilling at the same time. I know that the danger was discounted for the thrill we got by throwing a mine with all our might just to see and hear the explosion.
Mother was less than thrilled with me. She kept warning me and threatening me with serious consequences. I listened, but I didn't hear, because I ask you, what more serious consequence of Fate could happen to me when Fate had made me a Macedonian?
I pretended to get the message every time my Mother harangued me, but we were living in a world with danger all around us: explosions, injuries, beatings of innocent people, shootings, torching, the terror and hopelessness, the smell of death and dying.
Nothing could shock us any more, could it? We were getting used to this new normalcy. Anyway, I felt that an invisible shield was keeping me safe. Somehow I was immune to injury and death. That had nothing to do with me. The war was over, supposedly; there were no more Germans or Italians. Maybe some Brits were still left among the guerillas. The Allies were victorious and the war, supposedly, had ended for Greece.
By 1944, I was 8 years old. There were all kinds of rumors floating around. Something seemed to be in the wind, a change of some kind was beginning to engulf us. A lull in the kind of action we had lived through settled in for a while. There was a lot of traffic in and out of the village and lots of maubet, conversations about the Partizani.
I didn't know what Partizan meant, but I knew that it meant good, and that they were on the side of the Macedonians. Everything I heard about them confirmed the thought in my mind that they were the good guys. After all, Father had joined the Partizani, and he was not only one of the good guys, he was the best.
I might have been overhearing important bits and pieces of information in the talk swirling about me, but heck, that was the business of the grownups. I had my own life to live. Everything around me was still comfortably familiar. I had Vesko, my bull. I had my chores-that had not changed. I had my gang of Turks, but most importantly of all, my family was all around me. Dedo was in charge and all was right with my world. Life was still good. I was still my fearless self. After all, I was born free, and I intended to remain free and unafraid of either man or beast.
I was free to watch the birds, especially the sokols sweeping over the fields and plains on their way to their perches, or maybe they were scouting around for food. I still took our animals out to graze, looking out for mines, of course. I could still lie down on our good, fertile soil and gaze at the sky. I still could let my imagination take flight as freely as I felt, flying on the wings of a sokol.
I never had to worry about a change in the weather, because the animals would give me the signal early enough to take action. If a storm headed our way, before I could see the storm signals, the flock would start tracking back down the mountain by themselves, heading for the barn. The goats would come down to the lower areas. And the lower the area they sought, the heavier the storm was going to be.
The sounds they made always brought me back to reality. They huddled together to protect themselves and me if we were caught in a deluge. They never let me down, whether they were sheep or horses, oxen or cows. They knew how to communicate with each other and Nature. Nature never let us down. Mankind did, time and again. Neither they nor we T'rsiani had any inkling of the severity of a storm in the making that would strike us shortly.
Within a few months after the Second World War was said to have ended, some of the T'rsianski Partizani began to return to the village. There were so many mixed emotions among us as they returned. When there was joy in a household at a safe return, every one rejoiced. But this time, because of the experiences of the Macedonian people of the last several years, joy was in short order.
Those who did come back were emotionally wounded. They came back disillusioned, bitter, and depressed. So very many men never returned. The families often did not know where the men were killed, and for them there was no closure.”*
*(Pages 101-106, “My Name is Sotir, a Memoir of a Child Evacuee” As told to Olga Lexovska Naumoff)