Greek Macedonia, a region in northern Greece, became an administrative area following the Second Balkan War in 1913.
The following article, published in 1919, tells of the starvation of and cruelty towards Greek families by the Bulgarians when returning Greek refugees.
Massacre by Starvation
The Red Cross reports that during the Bulgarian occupation of parts of Greek Macedonia 100,000 Greeks — men, women, and children — were deported. The refugees are now slowly straggling back to Greek territory.
Jammed into freight cars at the point of the bayonet, 100 of them in a car with capacity for 40, carried out in slow trains, “they arrive in droves at the American Red Cross relief stations, after having been without food of any kind for days. Women walk into the stations with dead babies in their arms. Young girls are driven insane.”
It is an unimportant detail, but one which throws light on Bulgarian acquisitiveness, that though the armistice stipulated that the refugees were to be returned free of costs, the Bulgarians exacted full railroad fare whenever they could find one who had any money left.
Source: Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]), 22 May 1919.
