Interviewed by Vesna Karapetrova, others present, Virginia Stoymenoff, Despina Bursey. VP: I was born in the town of D’ambeni, Kostur in Aegean Macedonia. My maiden name is Tsila Popova. I have 5 sisters and 1 brother, my oldest sister was named Luba, married in Rizovi, the other, younger was named Tsana, the other younger one, married in Tsarovi, the 3rd was Anna, married in Engelkovi, and my brother was named Philip and they killed him in Korstur, they drowned him, the fascists. (Town names ?) My father’s name was Labro Popov, my mother’s name was Sofa Shmairanova. They are from D’ambeni. Our town was a large town with a large population and they are both from there. My mother’s father was Dedo Yorgo, my grandmother was called baba Kila, and her husband was Popo Fila was a pope. First she was called Yana, all from D’ambeni. At home we all spoke Macedonian up to 1936 then the Macedonian language was forbidden by dictator Metaxas. I was born on 25th of January in 1928. I was a small girl when our language was forbidden. I was a 8 year old girl and all the people were called to the town square by a man who came from Lerin province and said that this language has to be erased and will be forbidden from being spoken from here on. “You will bury this tongue (Macedonian language) under the soil” he said, and I as a child became very frightened. How can I put my tongue under the soil? I became scared. At that time, our language could no longer be spoken, not even on our porch, not on our porch. If you spoke Macedonian, you had to pay (a fine), this continued from 1936 until we went to be Partisans. We all spoke Macedonian prior to this without any problems. All my grandparents spoke our language. No one spoke the Greek language. They then had to go to night school to learn Greek. We had to hold the elderly up under the arms as they could not walk, and that was how they learned (Greek). Our language was forbidden, on all the doors it said “You must speak Greek” (posted on sheets of paper) and that was why we had to bring our grandparents to night school. My mother went to night school also, my brother was studying in Kostur and my mother had to go to bring him food but she could not speak Greek, so she went to night school and tried her best to learn Greek so that she would be able to go and bring him food at the school in Kostur. She learned enough Greek to get by. My brother was 9 years older than me, he was very bright, he came first in his class from grade 1 up to grade 6 and my parents were very happy with him. I was a ten year old child at home at that time with my younger sister. My parents were very happy with his success . My brother & a friend were in the fields and they stopped off by a stream and were late coming home. They (the Greeks boys) put him in a kibur(?) and who knows what they did to him. He had new clothing on as the next day he was to go to Athens to study . The professor had him at the top of the class and the students with a Greek conscience did not want him to prosper so they drowned him in the lake in Kostur. Who did it? God knows. He was just a young boy. My sisters and I were at home and a car came from the other town. We wondered what that was about. They had come to let us know about my brother 5 days after they found his body. My father would say, “where do I go, and who do I ask?”, there was no one to ask about what happened.

• published: 23 May 2015
• views: 918