8 minute read
The chronicle of the Exodus
Discovering the events of the population exchange through the eyes of a 109-year-old Asia Minor refugee
by Kyriakos Kourtidis
Miss Magdalene Paulidou, one of the last survivors, or quite possibly the last surviving witness, of the Asia Minor Disaster, currently standing at 109 years old, talks about the events of the great exodus. The infamous population exchange stigmatized the contemporary history of two opposing countries facing each other in the Aegean Archipelagoes.
They didn’t really try to take us into their homes. We slept upon the stones
As we finally reach the 100th anniversary of the tragic events of the Asia Minor disaster, we now realize the distance from what was once a recent memory for millions of people. The testimonies of the protagonists of the drama, of which a very small percentage survives today, haunt our imagination as we wander through the events that shaped the first official mutual expulsion of populations. This major compulsory population exchange, also named the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations,” signed at Lausanne in 1923 by the governments of Greece and Turkey, was based not on language or ethnicity but upon religious identity. The exchange involved at least 1.6 million indigenous Orthodox Christian populations from Turkey, stretching from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps, and the Caucasus, and on the other side, 355,000–400,000 native Muslims from Greece.
The testimonies of that time take bone and flesh in our minds when we try to imagine myriads of people arriving at the ports of Greece. The refugee population that managed to finally arrive at the Greek ports consisted mainly of women and children. According to Miss Magdalene, “here (in Greece) came only some children and some widows. No men came […]. My mother (when she arrived in Greece) had a son and me. I also had another sister, who came later. She had been taken as a prisoner […]. My mother-in-law was a widow, her sister too. All the women came here as widows”.
When we came here, we found nothing
Hundreds of families with few alternatives found shelter wherever possible. Refugees were settled in military barracks, camped in factory warehouses, or even under railroad sheds. “The first year when we were in Old-Greece (Asia Minor refugees used to call the Greek State Old-Greece), do you know where we lived? At the place where they made oil [...], they didn’t really try to take us into their homes. We slept upon the stones”.
The time passed, and the difficult conditions started taking a turn for the better, but still, the refugees did not show a willingness to fully adapt to the new environment. That was due to their deep conviction that sooner or later they would return to their homelands and homes.
However, the reality had already been shaped through the Greek-Turkish negotiations. Under the new circumstances, refugees started moving from place to place in search of better opportunities and scattered relatives of their own on Greek soil.
They were refugees, and we were also refugees. We were like siblings
"We stayed in Kavala, from Kavala, we came to Drama, from Drama, we went to the Pugia villages. We stayed there for a while. There was no road. They gave us a mule, a cow, and an old Turkish house, we spent some time there [...]. A Turkish little house, one room, we stayed in the living room. Then we left again and came here to Haritomeni. Here, we worked with my mother and my brother. We bought a house here. The house we have is not Turkish. We bought it”. The urgency of the situation, combined with the consequences of poverty, did not leave much room for hesitation between professional employment options. Unskilled employment, regardless of gender or age, was the only solution for the refugees to meet their needs. “The refugees took fields. They sowed corn, tobacco, etc. […]. I was little. My mother and my brother worked on the edges, and I was put to work in the middle. Poverty!".
The Asia Minor refugees had to get used to a new way of life. Compared to their native lands, Greece was underdeveloped and had huge economic problems. As Miss Magdalene describes: “Our house was big, we had a lot of property. For the oven, we had a small house, for the grain, we had large barns. We were the first in our village. Sheep, cows, houses, fields, we had a lot. Our house had three floors, I remember it! When we came here, we found nothing [...]. The locals were poorer than us. They didn’t have clothes, quilts, or anything like that. They slept on the floor. Very poor! [...]. Not even bread they knew how to make. Now they’ve learned something. They didn’t know anything before”.
The refugees developed a special identity that was passed down from generation to generation and distinguished them from the native Greeks. The term “refugee” resounded different to these people. It condensed in one word the events of the exodus, the marginalization, the adaptation to the new socio-economic circumstances, and the struggle for restoration. “They were refugees, and we were also refugees. We were like siblings. My neighbor is from Asia Minor. We were like siblings, like siblings with his mother. We helped each other”. On the other hand, the refugees called the local population mainly Old-Helladites (Old-Greeks) and locals.
There were no ‘locals’ or ‘refugees’ for the children
Inevitably, the everyday contact among locals and refugees, and consequently the mutual influence between them, through social conventions and social institutions, was decisive in the subsiding of the social insecurity. The school was one of those institutions that undertook the role of transforming stereotypes and mutual suspicion into feelings of equality and solidarity.
Mrs. Magdalene Pavlidou captures this transformation beautifully: “At first as strangers but then as siblings. Together at church, together at school, everywhere we were together […]. We didn’t have locals and refugees, we didn’t separate. They were together. The children went to school together. There were no ‘locals’ or ‘refugees’ for the children. There was one school and one church for all. Also, on holidays and every Sunday, we all went to church together. We didn’t separate. We lived very well”.
We had a great time. We became like siblings
However, cases of more substantial contact, such as mixed marriages, were slow to emerge between the two groups. The place of origin continued to dominate as the most important criteria for the acceptance of the candidate, groom or bride, by the respective family. As the famous proverb goes “take a shoe from your place, even if it is patched”. From the perspective of Mrs. Magdalene, the epilogue of social separatism starts with the mixed weddings among refugees and locals and is pleasantly depicted with an air of optimism. “At first we weren’t taking locals. Locals with locals and Pontians with Pontians […]. But then we mingled. Local people took Pontian men, and we took local brides. We had a great time. We became like siblings”. And by the passing of time, under the same Greek sky and upon the same soil, living all the varieties of Greeks, they resembled each other so much that today one can perceive one’s refugee origin only by the exotic syllables crowning certain surnames.
In June, 2023, Miss Magdalene reached the age of 109 years old, although her relatives hypothesize that she is older, probably close to 110.
The article at hand is dedicated to her, foremost as a happy birthday gift and also as a thank you, for the bag of delicious pomegranates that she gifted me. Happy birthday grandma Magdalene!
