![]() The descendants of survivors still ask how many relatives they lost and how many they never met. The third generation tried to find out about the violence and uprooting their ancestors experienced. Due to the “double wall of silence” between the first and second generations, the trauma of the first generation was passed on to subsequent generations. They also wanted to protect their children. With migration, the events were forgotten, and they tried to re-establish themselves in a new country. Greek survivors and, in some instances, their children, lived through the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. Greek Orthodox refugees faced discrimination when they resettled in Greece. The second generation did not ask the first generation about their experiences, and they did not discuss this with the third generation. Speaking about it would mean going back and experiencing it all again, which would have been extremely traumatic for them to do that,” explained a Greek interviewee with origins from Smyrna. It was easier for them to forget what happened. Usually, the survivors did not speak about their experiences due to trauma. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923, which shaped the borders of modern Greece and Turkey.ĭuring my PhD, I conducted over 70 interviews with Greeks and Assyrians in Australia. This was followed by the Population Exchange, where around 1.5 million Christians from Turkey were transferred to Greece and 500,000 Muslims from Greece were transferred to Turkey. ![]() The Catastrophe of Smyrna led to the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). ![]() The Catastrophe was an event that took place at the end of a broader period of violence and uprooting experienced by the Greek population living in the late Ottoman Empire. There were approximately 100,000 Greek and Armenian victims. ![]() The Catastrophe of Smyrna in September 1922 was the burning of the Greek and Armenian quarters of the cosmopolitan city. The Greek minority were known as Romioi and it was a term that referred to their Byzantine heritage. The Greek Orthodox population in the late Ottoman Empire lived in Asia Minor, Pontos, Eastern Thrace and the Levant. The three groups experienced death marches, starvation, massacres, labour battalions, sexual violence, and forced conversion.Īpproximately 3 million Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians died. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) recognised that the Ottoman campaign against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks between 19 constituted a genocide. However, the similar experiences of Greeks and Assyrians in the late Ottoman Empire between 19 remain largely unknown. The Armenian genocide during the First World War is internationally known. By Dr Themistocles Kritikakos, University of Melbourne.ġ00 years later, the trauma that Greek survivors experienced during the final years of the Ottoman Empire has been passed on to their descendants living in contemporary Australia. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |