This memoir transports you to a time and place, a people and a culture, that few really know or have cared about. As one of the 30,000 Macedonian children, from two to fourteen years of age, Sotir became one of the Detsa Begaltsi, evacuated by the Partisans to countries that opened their doors to them, where the sounds of war would no longer be heard. The parents placed their trust in the Partisans, rather than the Greeks. This is a true, must-read story. It is one that will evoke happy, carefree memories of the child in all of us. It may remind you of life in the village, before and after the war interrupted the idyllic life. Sotir will make you laugh at his antics, cry and remember, learn and give thanks for the human spirit that survives.

Out of the land of Alexander the Great, from deep within the heartland of Macedonia, emerges one of the most touching, painful, and compelling books of our time, MY NAME IS SOTIR. It is a story of personal despair and personal discovery.

"Remember your name Sote, remember who you are and where you came from!"

Dedo Vasil Nitchov

Those words spoken more than fifty years ago by a revered grandfather, Dedo Vasil Nitchov, to a beloved young rascal, his grandson, Sotir, still resonate in the heart and soul of the grown man the grandson has become. His grandfather's words became Sotir's shield and sword throughout his exodus, warming his soul, stirring his pride, supporting him as he faced the many unforeseen challenges to his ethnicity. Therein, we discover, lay the key to Sotir's survival throughout the years. He never forgot his Macedonian roots! No one could destroy his love for and his identity with his birthplace, T'rsie, Macedonia!

Sotir's story begins at the onset of World War II. His life as a carefree young Macedonian child is fondly recalled as we share the adventures and capers that carry him through that period, unaware of the impending disaster which was to follow. The end of World War II was not the end of war for the people of Macedonia and Greece. A second and final clash between the modern-day titans from the East and the West engulfed the region with horrific consequences. The vitriolic political passions overwhelmed the people. The bloody, devastating war that followed the end of WW II has been chronicled as the Greek civil war. That war came to a flaming, cataclysmic end in 1949, in which American military played a key role in the defeat of Macedonian aspirations for freedom from discrimination and fear, and of hopes for independence.

But what of the children in Macedonia? The concern for their protection and safety was paramount in the eyes of the Macedonian Partisan leadership. By 1947 in Yugoslavia they agreed to the unacceptable, to evacuate the children from their homeland into Yugoslavia. All the young children, ages two to fourteen, were to be separated from family, from home, from country. They had to leave their villages, their homes, their families, and walk across Macedonia to the Yugoslav border, not knowing whether they would ever return.

The pain of their separation was almost indescribable, as the young, naively trusting children, began a lonely, frightening sojourn, accompanied by surrogate "mothers" into unknown worlds, to live among strangers, who spoke unfamiliar languages. These young, confused children came to be known as the detsa begaltsi, the children who left. Bonded together through their fearful exodus and from their experiences, far from the land of their birth, they became known as the Macedonian Detsa Begaltsi generation. They have never forgotten their roots nor how they survived the years of separation.

The Macedonian trail of tears began for Sotir, his brother Stefo, his sisters Sofa and Mara, as well as his friends and neighbors, in 1948. The trail took him from his beloved village, T'rsie, in the Lerin district of Macedonia, into the Yugoslav town of Bela Crkva, via Prespa, Bitola, Skopje, and Belgrad.

Destiny decreed that Yugoslavia would serve as the testing ground of Sotir's moral fiber. By tempting him with exciting opportunities to reach for the stars in the sport that he loved, Sotir struggled to make the right decision. Destiny was a severe taskmaster. A quirk in the timing of events forced Sotir to make a haunting, life-altering decision.

Sotir's choice will break your heart, as it did his.

Olga Lexovska Naumoff Published by Splendid Associates, Dearborne, 2003 Paperback | 355 Pages | ISBN 0-941983-03-X