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Out of the Balkans

Part 1: Out of the Balkans

Chapter 2, continued:
Dimitraki: Out of Macedonia

Dimitraki frequently walked from his village to Kastoria to trade and purchase goods for his family. He rested at St. Katherine's church along the way having his lunch of bread, cheese and olives under the protection of a huge tree.

A photograph of Dimitraki at age 10 shows him posed with his family. The family group is sober, almost grim, probably frightened by the camera and its powder flash.

In the years immediately surrounding the photograph Macedonia was in conflict over the territorial designs of the Serbians, Bulgarians, Albanians and Greeks. Vlachs had interests as well, but their influence was relatively minor in the events of the time.

* * * * * * *

Kastoria was the center of the Macedonian-Greek nationalist movement in the region of southern Macedonian; from just south of Kastoria, north to Lake Ohrid and immediately to the Lake's east, the city of Monastir. From Monastir north Serbian and Bulgarian centers of national movements organized their irregular forces against each other, and against the Greeks and the Turks.

When people fight long enough and desperately enough; when they experience personal loss and cleanse blood from the bodies of fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters, and bury them; when they stand and watch their homes and villages and churches burn to the ground, and their fields and orchards and vineyards devastated, their capacity for reason, and decency and compassion and mercy is lost. Vengeance becomes the reason to live.

Some stories told of atrocities are true; many are rumors embellished and made greater in number. Rumors of obscene cruelty on the part of the others become accepted fact; myths become history; and retribution in kind sanctioned. The unimaginable becomes reality. In Macedonia and Thrace, the unimaginable was then and in recent times is reality.



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