Carolina G. is Alsatian. Pavlos Berberoglou is one of the French soldiers who died liberating their homeland at the end of World War II. However, although she is "native French", her mother tongue is Alsatian. She was taught French at school in the late 1970s.
So if, in France itself, a part of the population has to wait to go to school to learn the national language, what happens elsewhere? What happens to Russian, to the Kurdish language, to Greek and so many other languages, in countries that are spoken by many people, but which remain a minority? Can we consider it legitimate that those who speak them are sometimes prisoners of countries that do not recognize their culture and their historical heritage?
My paternal grandmother was from Himare. She arrived in France at the age of twenty-two, in 1936, to get married. Although of Albanian nationality, she spoke only Greek. Through contact with her friends in France, she learned Albanian.
In Himara, Metaxas' troops stopped Mussolini's armies after he rejected his ultimatum. The name of this city was engraved, along with those that marked the history of Greece, on the monument to the Unknown Soldier, in front of the Parliament, in Athens.
Himara Is considered the second largest greek city in northern Epirus. The Border between historical greece And albania Is located somewhere further north.
The population of Himare has always claimed its dependence on Greece. When I visited it in July 2011, we saw Greek flags everywhere, even on the wall of the cemetery. The Albanian government, ready to claim the annexation of Kosovo, has never recognized the inhabitants of Himare and other residents of the south of the country as Greeks.
He considers them as Hellenized Albanians, and not as Greeks themselves. They considered the residents who said they belonged to Greece as traitors or impostors.
Albanian writers or poets who went to study in Ioannina, Thessaloniki or Athens have nevertheless written some of their works in Greek. But they avoid publishing them in Albania. They have them translated into Albanian by others.
The constant climate of suspicion that hovered over the Greeks, against a backdrop of a purely ethnic and territorial difference, was poisoned the day Albania became communist, the bond with the Greek language was condemned not only as proof of Athens' expansionism, the Greek church supposedly being the spear, but also in the name of the ideological battle waged by the Party against religious practices.
Faced with this climate of suspicion and the difficulty of issuing tourist visas during the time of Enver Hoxha, especially when the country of destination had to be mentioned, my paternal grandmother was careful not to request papers from the Albanian embassy when she wanted to go to Greece in 1954 for family matters. She requested a Greek passport from Mr. Raoul Papadoukas, the Greek consul in Lyon. He issued it to her without any difficulty, noting: AE born in Himara, that is, Redeemed Greek.
Members of my family had stayed in Albania during the great economic migrations of the early 20th century.th century. It was impossible for them to leave the country to travel or emigrate during the decades of the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. When the country was opened up in December 1990, many of them crossed over to Greece and settled there.
A first cousin of my father received, with a simple application, the same pension that Greek pensioners receive, with the only mention of her place of origin, and although she had never set foot in Greece before. Even today, Himara is a region claimed by Greek nationalists, like other regions of FYROM or Turkey, which remain not released.
My grandfather on my mother's side was from Vouno. Vouno is located 8.4 kilometers north of Himara. This mountain village has a Greek name. They called it Dimoilia, a Greek surname. We find this surname in the archives of the prefecture of Lyon, in 1961.
However, the inhabitants of Vounos felt more Albanian than Greek. Most villagers spoke only Albanian, even if my grandparents spoke Greek fluently, which they learned in contact with the Greek diaspora of Pont-de-Chéruy.
Albanian immigrants who felt Greek would add an "S" to the end of their surname when registering with the French registry office. Thus, Zoto became Zotos for my paternal grandfather and his children. With the notable exception of my father, who remained Zoto, so as not to offend the irritability of my mother, whose family, originating from the Mountain, felt more Albanian.
In the same family, we therefore find, in The french Registry, Zotos and Zoto, Dhimoïlas and dhimoïla (for a reason i Do not Know, the last "i" of The surname, Between the "l" And the "a", disappeared during registration in the registry).
In May 2013, Russia decided to grant Russian citizenship to all citizens of former USSR countries who requested it and amended the law accordingly. Western media presented this measure as President Putin's will to restore the former Soviet bloc.
When the question of the Crimean referendum was raised, a Ukrainian friend of mine told me that it was difficult for anyone to understand what it means to see their country divided. I suppose the feeling must undoubtedly be different depending on one's history and where in the country one is when such a referendum takes place.
I think there are questions that should not be asked in the interest of social peace. Issues of minorities, or historical borders of States are part of them. But these questions inevitably come to the surface in times of crisis.
The crisis can be economic, as in Albania in 1990, political, as in Ukraine in 2013, or even military, as today with the Kurds in Turkey. At that time, many residents of the regions in crisis, who had learned to live in a country they did not consider their own, see access to their independence, or return to their country of origin, as a means of escaping this crisis that is affecting them.
Today, I have only one nationality, and I speak only one language. So I do not place myself in the field of nationalist claims. But, knowing the history of my family, I know that Mr. Putin did not decide to give Russian nationality to Russians abroad out of hegemonic will. He simply showed them that their country had not forgotten them, and would always be there to help them overcome crises.
Unfortunately, few people see the rulers of the countries they claim historically and culturally as having the courage to help them choose their fate, as in the case of Crimea. And if mr. tsipras Has briefly abandoned the illusion of a man capable of resisting in order to give life to his ideas, we must accept that the greeks of northern epirus should not Rely on Him To be seen as different from not liberatedAt Least for those who wish to go to Greece.
On October 14, 2014, in a qualifying match for the Euro 2016 Albania-Serbia, a diplomatic incident took place. A remote-controlled flew over the stadium, on which a flag with a map of "Greater Albania" had been hung, a nationalist plan that aims to unite the Albanian communities of Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece and Southern Serbia within the same country. The incident, organized by the brother of the Albanian prime minister, resulted in a fight between players from both teams.
I will remind these warlike authorities, who fortunately do not have the means to fulfill their ambitions, that there is also a map of Minor Albania, without its southern regions. Just as there is a map of Greater Greece, on which Northern Epirus is located.
I saw, In albania, hundreds of houses with two of their four pillars dynamited.
It's very effective! The builder we want to get rid of, either because we haven't managed to blackmail him into paying, or because we want to favor the local mafia, loses not only his house, but also his plot of land, which he can no longer use. And with just two charges of explosive, the result is guaranteed.
Above the body, lies the intelligence. Above the intelligence, lies the soul. We can break bodies. We can alter intelligence. We can do nothing against the soul of a people. (K. Chardaloupa, Gallipoli et sapresqu'ile, DEA greek history and culture, 1994, p. 5).
So, in order for these national, cultural and historical tensions not to end in new civil wars, it seems to me important, first of all, that the governments of the respective countries pay attention to the well-being of their populations. Even when they are minorities; even when this goes against the interests of the mafias that these governments support or tolerate. Because nationalist claims never become more acute in times of peace and prosperity.
