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Contemporary Greek Culture: An


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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN MEMORY STUDIES

Memories of Asia Minor


in Contemporary
Greek Culture
An Itinerary

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?

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14682
Kristina Gedgaudaite

Memories of Asia
Minor in
Contemporary Greek
Culture
An Itinerary
Kristina Gedgaudaite
The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ, USA

ISSN 2634-6257     ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic)


Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-83935-2    ISBN 978-3-030-83936-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83936-9

© 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
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
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

In my dreamlike early childhood recollections, the wheel of my grand-


mother’s sewing machine buzzes through the night to finish my winter
princess costume in time for the morning carnival in Karaganda, then part
of the Soviet Union. Many years later, we would be sitting in the kitchen
in Vilnius, now in independent Lithuania, where, with the help of a differ-
ent sewing machine and a pair of scissors, she would help me shred my
otherwise perfectly fine pair of jeans to fit my rebellious teenage soul. Yet,
despite the multiple analogies we find in literature between sewing and
storytelling, she never talked of how she, as a young girl, once made the
journey from Ukraine to Kazakhstan to reunite with her family, who had
been deported there during the 1940s.
It was not until 2014, when I first embarked on the project researching
memories of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) in Asia Minor and read
about the intergenerational transmission of memories, that I came to
realise that not only stories, but also gestures, silences and worldviews can
traverse distances and shape who we are and how we relate to the world.
Perhaps it was the experiences of my grandmother, recollected from the
shards of the Soviet Union, that drew me closer to the ruins of a different
empire nearly a hundred years after its dissolution?
Several scholars whose theoretical insights form the backbone of this
book are representatives of the generation of postmemory, to use Marianne
Hirsch’s term, having grown up among the recollections of catastrophes—
they had not lived through these catastrophes, but they have long lived
with them, as memories of these times keep finding ways into the everyday
lives of their families, while also providing them with affiliations to other

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

staff, the community of postdoctoral fellows, especially Nathanael


A. Aschenbrenner and Yannis Stamos, and the Center director Dimitri
Gondicas for supporting me during the last stages of writing this book and
the unprecedented times of the COVID pandemic.
Over the years, the project was made possible and sustained by the
financial support I received through an Oxford-Aidan Jenkins Scholarship,
Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek, Merton College and Faculty
of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford; the
Onassis Foundation; the Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Foundation; a Marilena
Laskaridis Postdoctoral Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of
Amsterdam and a Mary Seeger O’Boyle Postdoctoral Fellowship at
Princeton University.
I am also especially grateful to Oleksiy Kustovsky, Soloup, Lefteris
Partsalis, Michael Bakas, Mimi Denisi and Ioanna Tzetzoumi for allowing
me to reproduce their images in this book. The material discussed in
Chap. 4 has previously appeared in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, as
article titled ‘Comics, Memory and Migration: Through the Mirror Maze
of Soloup’s Aivali’, while an abridged discussion of Leferis Partsalis’ pho-
tograph in Chap. 6 has been included in the collected volume (Un)timely
Crises: Chronotopes of Critique (Boletsi et al. 2021). I am grateful for being
able to include both as part of this book as well. The editorial team at
Palgrave Macmillan has supported me with great care and patience at each
stage of the publication process.
This project had many different homes and itineraries over the years.
From the beginning to its very end, I feel very fortunate to have had the
support of Robert Casado, whose reservoirs of encouragement, positive
attitude and epic music have sustained me day by day.
Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank my parents, Galina
Gedgaudiene and Raimundas Gedgaudas, for their unconditional sup-
port—not only at this milestone, but at every single one. Without their
fresh apple juice at the most crucial stage of this project, it would probably
still be under construction.
Contents

1 Memory Work and History in the Making  1


1.1 Cultural Form: Notes from the 1930s  2
1.2 Finding a Place in History: Notes from the 1960s  4
1.3 From Cultural Heritage to Inheritance: Notes from the 1990s  6
1.4 The Stories that Are Yet to Be Told: Notes from the 2010s  8
1.5 The Structure of this Book 10
References 14

2 An Introduction to the Histories and Legacies of the


Greco-Turkish War and the Memory Studies Toolbox 17
2.1 Historical Background 22
2.2 Cultural Legacies 28
2.3 Memory Studies as Methodological Framework 35
2.3.1 From Collective to Cultural Memory 35
2.3.2 From Memory to Postmemory 37
2.3.3 Visual Memory and Affective Connections 41
References 46

3 Affective Alliances in the Greek History Wars 55


3.1 Everyday Encounters: Asia Minor between Memory and
History 55
3.2 History as Building Block for a Nation 57
3.3 Chronicle of a History War: Actors, Arguments, Affects 62
3.4 The Multi-Vocal Public Sphere 68

xi
xii Contents

3.5 Mnemonic Itineraries 79


3.6 Conclusion 86
References 88

4 Fragmented Pasts, Postmemory and the ‘Grandchildren of


Lausanne’ 95
4.1 The Journey of Return 95
4.2 Graphic Novel, Literary Canon, (Counter-)History100
4.3 Through the Mirror Maze of Soloup’s Aivali102
4.4 Mnemonic Itineraries: Once Again120
4.5 Conclusion127
References129

5 Smyrna in Your Pocket135


5.1 In Response to the History Textbook Controversy135
5.2 Smyrna as Portable Monument141
5.3 Affect, Emotion and Historical Truth145
5.4 Witnessing the Greco-Turkish War ‘In and through Time’160
5.5 Conclusion169
References170

6 Framing the Futures of Memory175


6.1 Notes from the Field, September 2015177
6.2 Lesvos: Framing Solidarity, Empathy and Identification180
6.3 Locating Memory in the Frames of Media Witnessing185
6.3.1 The Three Grannies of Lesvos and the ‘Image of the
Europe that We Want’: Empathy as Identification
Reconsidered185
6.3.2 Comparison and/as Relationality: Crete, Eidomeni190
6.3.3 ‘We Are All Refugees’: Particularising the Universal193
6.4 Connective Memories198
6.5 Conclusion205
References208
Contents  xiii

7 Epilogue215
References221

Appendix of Primary Sources223

Index229
List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 A school parade in Mytilene on a national holiday. The word


‘συνωστισμός’ (synostismos) here makes a witty allusion to
the ‘crowding’ controversy, pp. 32–33. (© Soloup.
Reproduced with permission) 83
Fig. 4.1 Reflection of the city and the protagonist Antonis on the quay
of Mytilene, pp. 24–25. (© Soloup. Reproduced with
permission)103
Fig. 4.2 Family photograph album assembled in the graphic novel,
pp. 360–361. (© Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 105
Fig. 4.3 Antonis and his grandmother look through the newspaper
clippings, p. 363. (© Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 106
Fig. 4.4 The ghost of Photis Kontoglou shares his memories, pp.
70–71. (© Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 108
Fig. 4.5 Visual reference to Edvard Munch’s The Scream, p. 36. (©
Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 110
Fig. 4.6 Imaginary projections onto the landscape of Asia Minor, p. 39.
(© Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 113
Fig. 4.7 A statue of Kemal Atatürk encountered in Aivali brings back
memories, p. 320. (© Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 115
Fig. 4.8 Braiding the scream of the Greco-Turkish War, p. 163. (©
Soloup. Reproduced with permission) 117
Fig. 4.9 Double-page spread collating Francisco de Goya’s etching
No. 39 from the series The Disasters of War (1810–1820), the
gate of Auschwitz and the barbed wire around the detention
camp of Guantanamo Bay, pp. 386–87. (© Soloup.
Reproduced with permission) 119

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

Memory Work and History in the Making

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.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1


Switzerland AG 2021
K. Gedgaudaitė, Memories of Asia Minor in Contemporary Greek
Culture, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83936-9_1
2 K. GEDGAUDAITĖ

1.1   Cultural Form: Notes from the 1930s


Describing the lives that the refugees of the Greco-Turkish War in Asia
Minor had built in the refugee neighbourhood of Kokkinia in Piraeus in
the 1970s, Renee Hirschon claims that memory was ‘their most valuable
property’ (Hirschon 1989: 15). As refugee testimonies reveal, many fled
violence and persecution empty handed, or at the most carrying what they
could fit into a bundle (Apostolopoulos et al. 1980). Their memories of
life in Asia Minor and experiences of war travelled with them and, shared
among the members of the refugee communities, they served as grounds
for constructing a new identity in the newly acquired homeland—at the
very time when this homeland itself was also heavily invested in construct-
ing its own new identity from the disaster of war. Over the years, memo-
ries brought from Asia Minor also became associated with certain stories
and cultural practices. These memories, condensed and attached to spe-
cific signifiers, helped to make sense of the traumatic experience and shape
it into a narrative that could be passed on to subsequent generations, as
both personal and national memory.
Yet, by the time the accounts of Asia Minor had reached their audience,
the lines between fiction and real-life experience seem to have been
blurred.1 Strikingly, the term ‘fairy tale’ has often been invoked in refer-
ence to the accounts of what happened in Asia Minor. One might be quick
to assume that the fairy tale of Asia Minor tells of the happy life that the
refugees had had before fleeing their homes: this is the story that can be
commonly heard today. However, as can be seen in the extract from the
novel Serenity (Galini) by Ilias Venezis, a prominent Greek writer of refu-
gee origin, the refugees from Asia Minor frequently used this word to
refer to their experience of the violence of war:

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)

Both incomprehensible to listeners and concealed from them, the experi-


ence of war becomes a fairy tale at the moment of its transmission. This is
not to trivialise the war, persecution or discrimination endured by those
who came to Greece as refugees. Rather, a fairy tale here acts as a template,
a form that lends shape to this story, so that the community could then
share it in order to mourn their losses. This particular form of ‘fairy tale’
shields listeners from experiencing the pain endured. ‘The tough lines
faded in the fairy tale’, and once it was heard there was no need to ‘learn
anything else’. With the fairy tale, the painful experiences found rest, like
‘a child put to sleep’. Yet, for the children who did not see the war, the
stories of refugees sounded unlike anything else that they knew in the
world around them.
The reference to fairy tales as a genre to tell of the experience of war can
be found not only in literary fiction, but also in refugee testimonies:

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

History relies on cultural templates to gain a form so that it can be


shared with others (see also Sect. 2.3.1). Listening to violent histories of
war as a ‘fairy tale’—far removed from any known life experiences—pro-
vides a template to make sense of these incomprehensible events, at the
same time as it helps rework the past trauma without transferring it onto
the listeners.
Over the years, the history of the Greco-Turkish War and its aftermath
has acquired many cultural forms, remediated not only in literature, but
also in popular films, music, theatre and even—more recently—graphic
novels. This book engages with a diverse range of cultural forms used to
tell the history of Asia Minor since the 2000s. As metaphors from the
cultural sphere come to inform public views and as public statements in
turn find their way into cultural representations, form plays a role as cru-
cial as content in linking the public and cultural spheres.

2
Here and elsewhere, all translations into English are my own unless otherwise specified.
4 K. GEDGAUDAITĖ

1.2   Finding a Place in History: Notes


from the 1960s

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

Catastrophe constitutes a vivid memory of the nation’ (Asterinos 1962);


‘Forty years have passed since the Asia Minor Catastrophe, this utmost
and shocking venture that put its bloodied stamp on our soul and the
whole of recent history’ (Soteriou 1962); ‘Greece will not stop mourning
this national calamity and holding memorial services for the martyrs of the
faith and of the homeland’ (Kantiotis 1962); ‘This year’s fortieth [anniver-
sary] from that indescribable calamity of 1922, gave, and is still giving, an
occasion for thousand—two [thousand] events [organised] by people who
lived through these horrendous days of the homelands of the East’
(Chatzianagnostou 1962). Quite clearly, within these articles, the Asia
Minor Campaign is recognised as a vivid and sorrowful memory that con-
cerns the whole nation. It would seem that at least some of this recogni-
tion transpired into the hearts and minds of all the refugees, giving them
a sense of belonging to history, as well as an awareness of participating in
it in various ways.
During the 1960s, the refugees’ contribution to the economic, cultural
and social development—as well as the modernisation—of Greece was rec-
ognised, and they were acknowledged as valuable members of society. This
was in line with the ideology dominant in the country, which emphasised
modernisation and progress as the main goals of postwar Greece, a narra-
tive fully embraced by the 1967–1974 dictatorial regime, too. For many
refugees, however, the hardships that they suffered simply could not be
consigned to the past, as they continued to live in appalling conditions
forty years after their arrival from Asia Minor, despite the major housing
programmes implemented by the state and international organisations
(Pentzopoulos 2002 [1962]: 225–36).3
Against this background, Marianthe’s complaint that refugee suffering
has no place in history shows that the public feelings expressed during the
commemorative events of 1962 were not necessarily part of the common-
place views that all the refugees held on the Hellenism of Asia Minor, but
rather the projections for its future. The time lag that can be seen in
Marianthe’s testimony is indicative of the memory work involved in turn-
ing an experience into history: in 1962—that is, forty years after the
events—she had an opportunity to share her experience during the Greco-
Turkish War with the interviewer from the Centre for Asia Minor Studies;
yet it took a long time and considerable memory work before the

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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