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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN MEMORY STUDIES
Kristina Gedgaudaitė
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Series Editors
Andrew Hoskins
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
John Sutton
Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University
Macquarie, Australia
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends
that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to
that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes
in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory;
panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination
with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of
trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to
an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years.
Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect
what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This
groundbreaking series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’ under
these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its
interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoreti-
cal and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?
Memories of Asia
Minor in
Contemporary Greek
Culture
An Itinerary
Kristina Gedgaudaite
The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ, USA
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Digital cartoon. Special mention in the First KYM International Cartoon
Contest, 2016. © Oleksiy Kustovsky.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
In loving memory of my grandmother Maria
Acknowledgements
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
such events around the globe. This book, then, one might say, was written
as just such an affiliation link. However, it is an affiliation that I recognised
as such only when I started building the methodological framework and
working with conceptual tools that would enable me to see it in those terms.
Over the years, as this project grew and developed, it also brought
together a large community, people who have supported me and infused
the project with new energy and ideas when most needed. Antonis
Nikolopoulos-Soloup, Mimi Denisi and Maria Repousi met with me dur-
ing my research visits to Athens and generously shared views on their own
work and memories of Asia Minor. Kostas Skordyles, Guido Bonsaver,
Eleftheria Ioannidou, Gonda van Steen, Penelope Papailias, Emilie Pine,
Enrique del Rey Cabero, William Drummond, Alexander Kazamias, Effie
Voutira, Olga Demetriou and Pavlos Moulios, enthusiastically engaged
with this project in its various forms, providing constructive comments,
criticism and advice. Anouska Wilkinson, Richard Harber, Patrick Murphy,
Tatiana Faia and Nina Macaraig read and proof-read my drafts at various
stages with great care and patience. Exchanges with Giorgos Tsimouris,
late Libby Tata Arcel, Renee Hirschon, Emilia Salvanou, Vangelis
Karamanolakis, Antonis Liakos, Angela Melitopoulos, Will Stroebel and
Carl Mauzy helped answer certain questions. Kristina Svarevičiūte, Eleni
Bampasaki, Frances Restuccia and Claudia Koonz, each in their different
ways, led me to this book. Jean Ha, Mary Sarandari, Anna Papaeti, Fiona
Antonelaki, Neringa Barmute, Kostas Psathas, Rovena Papa, Pinelopi
Flaouna, Rahul Santhaman, Tatiana Markaki, Salomeja Marčauskaite,
Karolis Butkevičius, Anna Sandretti and Emanuele D’Osualdo and Nilüfer
Hatemi supported me in various forms in different corners of the world.
In this large community, a special word of thanks must go to Dimitris
Papanikolaou for the energy, enthusiasm and care with which he sup-
ported this project from its beginning as a doctoral thesis to its publication
as a book. His intellectual guidance has shaped my own approach to con-
temporary Greek culture in profound ways. Our conversations on modern
Greek literature and culture have been going on for a decade now, and I
can only wish that they will continue with the same energy into the
next decade!
Much more recent, but no less cherished have been the conversations
and intellectual exchanges with Maria Boletsi: I am enormously grateful
for her attentive readings of my drafts, sound advice and precious time gen-
erously shared with me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
For the past two years, both Dimitris and Maria were also my ‘partners
in crime’ in setting up the cultural analysis network Rethinking Modern
Greek Studies in the 21st Century/Greek Studies Now. This collaboration,
the conversations that it instigated and the people it brought together
hold many especially dear and enriching moments, important for both
rethinking the current project and embarking on new ones. I thank
Claudio Russello and Yiorgos-Evgenios Douliakas, the newest addition to
our editorial team, for all their help and support, as well as everyone who
took part in our network’s activities over the past two years and shared
fruitful ideas.
Several conferences also provided fruitful terrain for exchanging and
developing ideas over the years, including the Modern Greek Seminar,
Renegotiations of History in Light of the ‘Greek Crisis’, Crossings:
Negotiating Borders and Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean at the
University of Oxford, the symposium organised by the Historical and
Folklore Society in Rethymno, the Annual Postgraduate Colloquium of
the Society for Modern Greek Studies, the In Search of Transcultural
Memory in Europe Postgraduate Training School at the University of
Dublin, the Futures of Memory Workshop at the University of Leeds, the
Memory Studies Association Conference at the University of Copenhagen,
the Gate to the Eastern Mediterranean (GEM) seminar at the University
of Birmingham, the Research Seminar at the Department of Social
Anthropology of Panteion University, the Strategies of the Documentary
Conference at the University of Vienna and the Works in Progress: New
Approaches seminars at Princeton University.
The Taylor Institution Library, the Social Science Library and the Old
Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Gennadius Library, the Centre for Asia
Minor Studies, the Contemporary Social History Archives, the Library of
the Greek Parliament, the French School of Athens, the Scholarly
Communication and Information Centre at Vilnius University, the
Amsterdam University Library, the Calvia University Centre and Princeton
University’s Firestone Library, as well as their helpful staff, have been cru-
cial for honing my ideas in this book.
As the project moved through its various stages, the stimulating research
environment I found at the Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek
at Oxford, the Department of Modern Greek Studies at the University of
Amsterdam and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton
University were invaluable. The Seeger Center has been the last home of
this project before it goes into publication and I am grateful for all the
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
xi
xii Contents
7 Epilogue215
References221
Index229
List of Figures
xv
xvi List of Figures
Fig. 4.10 The exhibition Soloup Aivali: A Journey through Time at the
.
Benaki Museum (Pireos). (© Kristina Gedgaudaite)122
Fig. 5.1 Photograph used as part of performance promotional material,
with the burning Smyrna in the background. (© Mimi Denisi
and Ioanna Tzetzoumi. Reproduced with permission) 136
Fig. 5.2 Filio and Takuyi in the family living room. (© Mimi Denisi and
Ioanna Tzetzoumi. Reproduced with permission) 151
Fig. 5.3 A night out in the taverna. (© Mimi Denisi and Ioanna
Tzetzoumi. Reproduced with permission) 154
Fig. 5.4 Restaging the premiere of Rigoletto in 1917. (© Mimi Denisi
and Ioanna Tzetzoumi. Reproduced with permission) 157
Fig. 5.5 Welcoming the Greek navy to the port of Smyrna, May 1919.
(© Mimi Denisi and Ioanna Tzetzoumi. Reproduced with
permission)158
Fig. 6.1 The statue of a refugee mother in Mytilene, Lesvos, September
2015. (© Michael Bakas. Reproduced with permission) 182
Fig. 6.2 Three grandmothers of Lesvos, Skala Sykamias, October 2015.
(© Lefteris Partsalis. Reproduced with permission) 186
Fig. 6.3 Photomontage ‘Children’, March 2016. (© Soloup and To
Pontiki. Reproduced with permission) 202
CHAPTER 1
How does one begin to tell a story permeated by the violence of war and
the pain of loss—of one’s home, livelihood, family and the communities
where they belonged? How does one tell this story if it happened a long
time before they were born? And then, how does one retell it, knowing all
too well that, while it is familiar to many, certain things nevertheless have
not been told? These are the questions that echo through the pages that
follow, as I turn to the legacies of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) in
Asia Minor and the ways in which its memories have been kept alive in the
Greek community until the present day.
The how of these questions, as I will argue in this book some pages later,
is what sustains and animates memories of Asia Minor in Greece today, a
century after the end of the war. It also opens up a wide array of connec-
tions, showing that any answer to them requires a considerable amount of
memory work on behalf of those who chose to tell this story. Or perhaps I
should say that they chose to continue the work undertaken by those who
moulded this troubled past into many different shapes and sizes over the
course of a hundred years, so that it could be shared with others and
respond to the needs of the communities by which it was invoked.
Thus, before anything else, let me begin just there: recollecting frag-
ments of past memory work from the cultural archives in order to fore-
ground the concerns that this book addresses.
Then, when they were left alone the same evening in her room, Aunt Maria
made him tell her everything from the beginning, blow by blow, about how
they spent their days—fourteen months—of imprisonment.
His own mother, Aunt Sophia, was also beside him. She must also hear
the fairy tale and nothing else. He improvised what had happened and the
1
The blurred distinction between fiction and real-life experience undoubtedly also applies
to literature in the form of testimony, which came to play a prominent role in shaping refugee
memory (Chap. 4).
1 MEMORY WORK AND HISTORY IN THE MAKING 3
harsh lines evaporated, as happens with the fairy tales of dragons and mon-
sters that you tell a child to make them sleep.
Ilias Venezis’ Serenity, translated by Joshua Barley (Venezis 2019
[1937]: 146–147)
And was there anyone who did not mourn the dead? Who did not suffer and
who isn’t still crying? Only the children who were born here listen to this as
fictitious fairy tales.
Apostolos Mykoniatis (Apostolopoulos et al. 1980: 142)2
2
Here and elsewhere, all translations into English are my own unless otherwise specified.
4 K. GEDGAUDAITĖ
Today, the history of the Greco-Turkish War and its legacies form a water-
shed moment in Greece’s modern history. Yet the experiences of the 1.5
million refugees transferred between Greece and Turkey in the aftermath
of this war have not always been part of this history. The testimony of a
refugee woman Marianthe Karamousa, recorded in the archives of the
Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, is a poignant reminder of the
painstaking memory work needed to turn an experience into history.
When Marianthe Karamousa talks of her hardships in the aftermath of
the 1922 Greek military defeat in Asia Minor, she refers to her experience
in the plural, as if speaking in one voice together with all those uprooted
from their homes, as well as with those who could not speak out because
they had perished before crossing the Aegean. Her account of fleeing from
her hometown—the village of Bagarasi in the province of Aydin—is punc-
tuated by the many deaths of her family members and co-villagers. At
these very moments of narrating death, Marianthe laments that there is
nobody to turn their own suffering into history:
Oh, my dear child! Who will tell of our sufferings, who will make history out
of them so that everyone could read it and learn about it? Our own [suffer-
ings] do not survive!
Marianthe Karamousa (Apostolopoulos et al. 1980: 191)
Marianthe is sharing her story with an interviewer from the Centre for
Asia Minor Studies, which today houses one of the most important collec-
tions of refugee testimonies. At the time of recording her statements to
become part of the historical record, she nevertheless feels that she is left
out of history.
According to the archival records of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies,
the interview took place on 15 June 1962. That was the year when Asia
Minor refugee associations across Greece and abroad united in commem-
oration of the Year of Hellenism of the East, forty years after the end of the
Greco-Turkish War. It was an occasion that attracted nationwide as well as
diaspora media coverage, with many events, cultural initiatives and book
publications to mark the occasion as an important part of national history
(Anastasiadis et al. 1964).
We can get a sense of the attitudes towards the Asia Minor campaign
prevalent in the 1960s from articles in the national press: ‘The Asia Minor
1 MEMORY WORK AND HISTORY IN THE MAKING 5
3
Cf. Hirschon (1989: 36–55), who describes the difficult living conditions in the refugee
quarters fifty years after the exchange.
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KÉPJEGYZÉK.
1. A dálnai kastély 9
2. A kocsi csak repült előre 11
3. Gábor, szobájába érve, a kandalló elé ült 35
4. Virágban minden 53
5. – Azt mondod, semmi közöm hozzá 95
6. Egy eltévedt holdsugár… 111
7. – Fáradt vagyok, három órát lovagoltam… 130
8. Az öreg herczegné is épp felfelé lépdelt 146
9. Pompás négyfogatú állott meg az udvarban 155
10. – Olyan, mint egy Böcklin 179
11. Hallgasson meg, pár éve kinoz 210
12. És az öreg asszony egyedül maradt 216
13. A tágas udvaron találkoztak 238
14. Az ágy szélén egy fiatal leány fehér ruhában
267
Javítások.
Az eredeti szöveg helyesírásán nem változtattunk.
A nyomdai hibákat javítottuk. Ezek listája:
2 KALMÁN KÁLMÁN
73 «öreg kutya« «öreg kutya»
112 is Mátfay is Márfay
227 csirkékke csirkékkel
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