Political refugees of the Greek Civil War
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The term "political refugees of the Greek Civil War" refers to Greek citizens, especially Greek children abducted by the Communist Party of Greece (Greek: Kommounistiko Komma Elladas; KKE) and its military wing, the self-proclaimed Democratic Army of Greece (Greek: Dimokratikos Stratos Elladas; DSE), during the Greek Civil War. More specifically, these Greek children aged 2 to 16 years of age were abducted during the years 1946-1949, and transferred to the states of the Eastern Bloc. The DSE removed approximately 30,000 children from areas of northern Greece into adjacent countries of the Eastern Bloc (Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and the USSR). Some of the children were given willingly by their parents but the large majority were taken by means of force or coercion. In addition to the children abducted and transported to the Eastern Bloc, thousands of DSE fighters and KKE officials crossed into the Iron Curtain countries during and after the end of the Civil War.
According to the KKE's official history as well as books by former DSE officials who have remained loyal to the KKE,[1][2] the evacuation of the families of DSE partisans was as a measure undertaken after the Battle of Grammos in the summer of 1948 and the defeat of the 3rd DSE Division in the Peloponnese for their own protection.
Opponents of this action (The Royal Family of Greece, the legitimate post war government of Greece, center and right-wing parties, the International Red Cross, and the United Nations) have claimed the opposite and these claims are not unjustified based on various United Nations resolutions on the matter: Indeed, on November 17, 1948 and in 18 November 1949 the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolutions 193, and 288 respectively, condemning the removal of the Greek children, demanding their return. According to non-Communist Party of Greece sources, in 1948, the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) evacuated about 30,000 children from Greek villages across the northern frontiers (provinces of Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessalia), to be brought up under Communist regimes[3] and to be indoctrinated as janissaries.[4] Several United Nations General Assembly resolutions appealed for the repatriation of children to their homes.[5]
The opponents of the removal of children from Greece refer to the practise as paidomázōma (Greek: Παιδομάζωμα), inferring that the action represented mass child abduction reminiscent of Ottoman times. It has been stated by Greek government sources at the time, and eye witnesses that the DSE was forcibly relocating refugees for re-education and eventual incorporation into the communist cause. Many of these refugees (including children) were returned to the battlefield to fight against the National Army of Greece.
A major goal of the KKE and the DSE along with the support of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, was to partition the northern Greek province of Macedonia into a communist state and eventual annexation into the communist bloc as a country named Macedonia. The Slavophone Greeks who were taken from Greece refer to themselves as the Detsa Begaltsi (children evacuees). Many of these people had a Greek ethnic consciousness (slavophone Greeks) but were subsequently educated in the Iron Curtain to believe that they were of slavic origins.
It is well known that the Greek Civil War was fought throughout Greece yet only children from the northern Greek frontier were removed across the border. The opponents of this removal state that if the DSE was trying to protect Greek citizens during the war, they would have removed children from throughout Greece. Furthermore, there has not been any evidence or report that a Greek civil area (village or town) was ever bombed by the Greek National Army. The DSE made it a habit of relocating villagers into surrounding camps in the forests and it was there that the refugees were in danger from Greek National Army artillery.
After the end of the Greek Civil War when the DSE was defeated by the National Army of Greece, many children and their families were never returned to Greece either because they had died or preferred to stay in the Eastern Bloc countries. A majority had family members in Greece and many families were torn apart. The children and refugees that managed to return to Greece in the early 1950s, with the help of the Greek Red Cross, the United Nations, and the Greek Royal Family entered one of the 58 "Children Cities" or Paidopoleis of Queen Frederika which were functioning as boarding schools and provided shelter and support to many. The children of DSE fighters, as well as children left behind in evacuated villages after fights came under the control of the National Army, also ended up in these "cities". The role of these schools has always been disputed by leftist and communist sources since the 1950s. At the end of the 1950s, all of the children who were in these schools were returned to their families, or their next of kin, in Greece.
