Australian Greeks remember and honor their ancestors

From the shores of the Black Sea to Melbourne and Chicago – Mariah Papadopoulos

On a busy Wednesday morning, in a café bursting at the seams, Litsa Athanasiadis shouts me a coffee. We haven’tmet before, but I’ve asked her here to share a story with me.It’s a story that began thousands of years ago, on the otherside of the world. Somehow, it has found its way here, toMelbourne. It’s not an easy story to tell. So we start withcoffee, and the words follow.

“My forefathers from my mum’s side of the family wereTrapezoundian… After the catastrophe, they fled to Russia,”Litsa begins.

This time last century, Litsa’s ancestors lived on the shoresof the Black Sea, in Pontus, Asia Minor. They were part ofthe community of Pontic Greeks who had inhabited theregion for three thousand years. Now, they’re long gone.

Between 1913 and 1923, the Greek population in AsiaMinor suffered a genocide that is keenly remembered by itsdescendants. During that time, the Turkish nationalistmovement’s hostility towards minorities in Asia Minorbecame systematic. Records from the Asia Minor andPontos Hellenic Research Centre (AMPHRC) confirm theobjective was to cleanse the newly established Turkishstate of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks – Christianminorities. It began with the internment of Pontian men intolabour battalions and culminated in a fully-fledged campaignto eradicate the Pontian community.

Villages were razed and set alight. Women and childrenwere rounded up alongside the remaining men, and forcedto march into the Turkish interior. They walked for monthson end, slowly starving. Their experiences are contested,but memoirs like Thea Halo’s Not Even My Name are apowerful record of victims’ memories of the death marches.Hundreds of thousands perished this way. Many of thosewho survived were separated from their families, scatteredaround the world.

Litsa’s Yiayia(grandmother), Eirini, ended up in Novorossiysk, Russia. Eirini mourned the loss of Lemona, her littlesister, who had been separated from the rest of the familywhen they fled Pontus by boat. She was believed to havebeen thrown overboard and left to drown.

In Russia, Eirini married and gave birth to five children. Butin the Soviet Union, non-conformists were eliminated. Eirinifled once more when her husband, Litsa’s Papou orgrandfather, was captured.

“They took Papou because he didn’t convert tocommunism… they took him to Siberia, never to be seenagain. She picked up on her own with her five children, andleft.”

Eirini landed in Agios Dimitrios, a town in Northern Greece.She brought up her children, and then grandchildren.

Years later, a blind man who also lived in Agios Dimitriosreturned home after visiting a neighboring town.

“He said to Yiayia Eirini, ‘You have a sister, and she lives inthis village.’ And my Yiayia said, ‘I don’t have a sister. TheTurks threw her in the water.’ ”

The man insisted Lemona was alive.

“Months later, this woman was walking towards Yiayia’shouse, and Yiayia looked at her, and thought, ‘Oh my God,she looks like me.’ ”

For two decades, Eirini had believed that her sister hadperished. But Lemona was alive, just 33 kilometers away.They reunited, but nothing would make up for so manyyears lost.

“She died two years later. So they really didn’t even get tohave time together.” Tears fall from Litsa’s eyes. We sip ourcoffee. The commotion of the café continues around us.

Eirini’s story reads like a fable, with a mysterious blind manbringing news of a miracle. But the realization of what couldhave been was only an aftershock. It was the collateraldamage of what is now known among Pontians as the AsiaMinor Catastrophe.

The 1923 mandatory population exchange was theCatastrophe’s nadir, the result of negotiations betweenGreek and Turkish governments. Muslims in Greece weretold to pack up their belongings. They travelled east, toTurkey. The atrocities in Asia Minor continued. Pontianswho survived fled, until none remained.

Before the Catastrophe, the Pontic Greek community livedin peace in Asia Minor. By 1923, 353 000 had been killed, and over a million were displaced. They never returnedhome.

George Mavropoulos is the President and Founder of theAsia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Centre inChicago. At 82 years old, he has a lifetime of knowledge onthe genocide, having grown up in its aftermath.

On a grey morning in Melbourne, I set an early alarm to meet George over Skype. It’s late afternoon in Chicago, andI can see sunlight pouring through the window as Georgeshares his story.

“My own grandfather was taken intothe labour battalions, and he died atthe age of 43,” he says. “The averagelifespan was only two to threemonths… the intent was to get rid ofthem, to kill them silently withoutcatching any headlines.”

He explains how the Research Centrewas born well after he moved toChicago from Kozani, northernGreece. After serving two terms as asPresident of the Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, Georgefound there was a need to go beyond gathering socially. Aslate as the early 2000s, there was very little scholarship onthe genocide in English.

“That meant that we had to do something. As anobjective, we said, ‘Well, we need to have academicconferences. We need to ask for research papers, editthose papers and publish them.’”

Since then, the Research Centre has curated libraries,hosted conferences and worked with authors to publishscholarly texts on the genocide. Last year, it supported theproduction of a documentary film, titled ‘Lethal Nationalism’.

Even half a world away, through the screen, there isfulfillment in George’s eyes as he recounts the film’spremiere.

“We had 750 people… You should have seen theexpression, how people felt when they saw thedocumentary. It was unbelievable.”

I pause, wondering if all this talk of the past, day in and dayout, could be tiring. But it’s clear his sights are fixed firmlyon the present, and the future.

“In today’s world, a movie or a documentary is an importantthing because this way we can reach millions of people…what happened in Sudan, in Darfur, is not any different. It’sjust racism and xenophobia, and [the] elimination of its owncitizens by the government.”

The pain of the past may be out of sight, but it is alwaysthere, giving purpose to the present.

“Unfortunately, the Greek governments over the years didn’twant to talk about this, tried to keep it… in the dark. Theymade mistakes. We lost our areas, our land, homeland… Ifelt that for my parents, [it was] the least I can do, to telltheir story. To tell the story of all these people.”

The land itself is like a phantom limb for those displaced.Their new homes – Greece, Syria, America – were foreign tothem. The old culture was grafted onto a new geographiclocation, but the feeling of loss persists, even now. Thereare few things, if any, that could ever erase it.

Families separated were robbed of what could have been.Mothers and fathers who had watched their children die hadto go on living. Their sons’ and daughters’ futures wouldnever be realised. These are not the kinds of wounds thatcan ever find healing.

Perhaps this is why Eirini struggled to articulate her story toher granddaughter. A young Litsa was confused when Eiriniused the word πατρίδα, homeland, to refer to Pontos.

“I used to say, ‘Yiayia, why are you calling Turkey yourπατρίδα?’”

Μόνο να ήξερες, Eirini would tell her. If only you knew.

“She would not reveal… there was so much pain that manyof them didn’t talk about.”

Most Australians and Americans’ awareness of thegenocide is scant. Public recognition is rare. But themovement to tell the story of the Catastrophe is growing.

The instinct to preserve this collective memory – traumaticas it may be – runs deep. Pontian culture is ferventlymaintained throughout the diaspora. Today, Litsa isSecretary of the Central Pontian Association of Melbourne and Victoria, known as the Pontiaki Estia. The word Estiameans ‘hearth’. It’s the meeting place within a home, theplace where you keep the fire alight.

With that in mind, Litsa’s warm demeanour is nocoincidence. She works at the heart of several organisationsthat prioritise human connection, and the sharing ofheritage. At the Estia, she’s a source of enthusiasm andencouragement for the younger generations who attend theEstia’s dance group to practice the traditional Pontian styleof dance.

She is also the President of Merimna Pontion Kyrion ofOceania, a women’s philanthropic organisation. It was founded in 1904, in Trabzon, and was reincarnated in Thessaloniki after the Catastrophe. Litsa is responsible forestablishing its Australian counterpart.

In 2019, she was President of a committee that raisedhundreds of thousands of dollars to erect a statue of anAustralian humanitarian in his hometown of Ballarat, Victoria. George Devine Treloar helped resettle hundreds ofthousands of Pontian refugees during the Catastrophe.

“My biggest challenge was Treloar. It cost in excess of 180000 dollars to get this project happening, and today hestands in the middle of Sturt Street.”

Next to Treloar stands the figure of a young refugee girl.Litsa nicknamed her Lemona, after her grandmother’ssister.

“People are inspired by it and are visiting and that’s whenthey will be asking, ‘who’s the refugee, where did she comefrom?’”

For Litsa, Australian acknowledgement of the genocidemeans recognition of her predecessors’ suffering. As achild, she learned of their history at social gatherings. Herfather would play a wooden string instrument, a lira, andstories were told through song.

“There’s a terminology that we use in Pontiaka, it’s calledMuhabbet… We sit around, everyone tells a story by sayinga few words, singing them.”

“They would play and sing and eat… I always hungaround,” she remembers. “I would listen. And because Igrew up with the Pontic dialect, I understood what theywere saying. I would listen to their stories. And they werealways in pain.”

It’s impossible to erase the trauma of any genocide. May19th this year marked the Catastrophe’s hundred and firstanniversary, but the wounds remain, even as the last of thesurvivors near the end of their lives. If Litsa and George’sstories are anything to go by, this grief spans generations.

But the importance of preserving this culture andtransmitting these stories transcends the Pontian diasporaalone.

Litsa’s priority isn’t to lament the past, but to nurture the nextgeneration’s connection with their culture.

“My main goal was to increase the youth so we can havecontinuity. That’s what I believe in.”

When the coffee is drained from our cups, we linger for afew moments. I thank Litsa for sharing her story. My owngrandfather, whose ancestors experienced the Catastrophe,lost his memories to dementia long before my brother and Iwere old enough to understand them. The movement toacknowledge the genocide fills in the blanks for those who,like us, are trying to piece together our origins.

To tell and retell stories like these is to know that we mustn’tforget what the past has taught us. To disregard thoselessons is to sentence ourselves to their deadly repetition.