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8 - Macedonian Refugees from the Greek Civil War: From Separation to a Transnational Community
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- By Anna Kurpiel
- Edited by Robert Sata, Central European University, Budapest, Jochen Roose, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
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- Book:
- Transnational Migration and Border-Making
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 08 October 2020
- Print publication:
- 02 April 2020, pp 189-208
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- Chapter
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Summary
STARTING IN 1948, Poland accommodated a large number of refugees from the Greek Civil War – both ethnic Greeks and ethnic Macedonians. Even though the general pattern of migration as well as the institutional care provided by Poland was similar for both groups of migrants, I argue that Macedonian migration to Poland was a different phenomenon from the Greek one. There are two main characteristics. First of all the Macedonians in Poland were a ‘minority within the minority’ and this condition influenced their trajectories as a separate group. Second, the Macedonian migration to Poland is deeply rooted in the political situation of Europe after World War II, which had an impact on actual Macedonian possibilities (i.e. connected to repatriation or war compensation) as well as the politics of remembrance, which stay closely related to identity. The chapter develops the characteristics of Macedonians migration and focuses on the processes shaping the identity of migrants, including how facing old and new borders translates into new conceptions of both the self and others. The text follows chronological order, discussing issues of ‘separation’ via ‘assimilation’ to a ‘new space of identification’. The three problem fields connected with Macedonian identity are the question of the Macedonian homeland(s); integration within the refugees’ group and with Poles; and self-organisation, politics and the politics of remembrance. I base my analysis on biographical interviews with Macedonian refugees (who were mostly children at that time), which I conducted in Poland, Macedonia and Canada, as well as on selected documents from Polish and Macedonian archives.
It was the autumn of 1948 when the first train with refugees from the Greek Civil War crossed the Polish–Czechoslovakian border. The first refugees were children, a total of 1,048. The following years brought even more transports to Poland: 800 children arrived in April 1949, and another 200 in August 1949. Then the refugees started coming by the sea: both adults and youths. In July, September and October 1949, ships with refugees came to Polish ports in Świnoujście, Dziwnów and Gdańsk. In 1950, the total number of refugees in Poland was 10,722. By 1955, as a result of family reunification, the number increased to 15,215 (Słabig 2008: 314).
Autobiographies of Macedonian Refugees
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- By Anna Kurpiel, University of Leipzig
- Edited by Marcin Kafar
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- Book:
- Scientific Biographies
- Published by:
- Jagiellonian University Press
- Published online:
- 05 January 2015
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2014, pp 79-90
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Summary
Introduction
Recently, in Poland, a number of anthropological and historical works have been written based on ‘oral histories’ or biographical narratives induced through an interview (cf. inter alia Włodarek & Ziółkowski, 1990; Engelking, 1994; Czyżewski, Piotrowski & Rokuszewska-Pawełek, 1996; Kurkowska-Budzan, 2009; Filipkowski, 2010). However, less interest is taken in written autobiographies issued in print, often in very limited editions, to satisfy the needs of family, friends, organizations and associations. During the research for my doctoral dissertation, dedicated to Macedonian refugees, 1 I encountered people who published their autobiographies as books and I would like to take a closer look at such texts in this paper.
Autobiographies of Macedonian refugees are unknown to a wider audience, just like the whole issue of Macedonian emigration from the time of the Greek Civil War. Aegean Macedonia, one of the parts of Macedonia, is the region of the Balkans that was the last to be liberated from the Turkish occupation. As a result of the Balkan wars it was incorporated by Greece, forming its northern province. Then, the autochthonous Slavic population living in this area—the Macedonians—became the largest ethnic minority in northern Greece, occupying mainly the Kosturski and Lerinski regions. During the Greek Civil War, which lasted from 1946 to 1949, partly voluntarily, partly under duress, the Macedonians joined the communist Greek guerrilla militias stationed in the mountain areas of the Aegean Macedonia.
The first wave of emigration from Greece took place in 1948 and embraced only children younger than sixteen years of age. The official reason for the expulsion was shielding the children from the turmoil of the war and, in particular, intensifying bombing. Children under the care of young women, the so-called majki (‘mothers’) and guerrillas, crossed on foot the mountain border between Greece and Yugoslavia, and then were sent by train from Yugoslavia, following the earlier agreement concluded with the communist parties of different countries, to the then Eastern bloc countries—Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Autobiographies of Macedonian Refugees
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- By Anna Kurpiel, University of Leipzig
- Edited by Marcin Kafar, Monika Modrzejewska-Świgulska
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- Book:
- Autobiography, Biography, Narration
- Published by:
- Jagiellonian University Press
- Published online:
- 05 December 2014
- Print publication:
- 05 December 2014, pp 79-90
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Recently, in Poland, a number of anthropological and historical works have been written based on ‘oral histories’ or biographical narratives induced through an interview (cf. inter alia Włodarek & Ziółkowski, 1990; Engelking, 1994; Czyżewski, Piotrowski & Rokuszewska-Pawełek, 1996; Kurkowska-Budzan, 2009; Filipkowski, 2010). However, less interest is taken in written autobiographies issued in print, often in very limited editions, to satisfy the needs of family, friends, organizations and associations. During the research for my doctoral dissertation, dedicated to Macedonian refugees, I encountered people who published their autobiographies as books and I would like to take a closer look at such texts in this paper.
Autobiographies of Macedonian refugees are unknown to a wider audience, just like the whole issue of Macedonian emigration from the time of the Greek Civil War. Aegean Macedonia, one of the parts of Macedonia, is the region of the Balkans that was the last to be liberated from the Turkish occupation. As a result of the Balkan wars it was incorporated by Greece, forming its northern province. Then, the autochthonous Slavic population living in this area—the Macedonians—became the largest ethnic minority in northern Greece, occupying mainly the Kosturski and Lerinski regions. During the Greek Civil War, which lasted from 1946 to 1949, partly voluntarily, partly under duress, the Macedonians joined the communist Greek guerrilla militias stationed in the mountain areas of the Aegean Macedonia.