During World War II there was an important refugee movement to Turkey and the Middle East from Greece and the Dodecanese. Since the war started in Syria, an important refugee movement takes exactly the same path that the Greek refugees took in the past, albeit in reverse.
Fifteen-year-old Greek refugee Katerina saw with her own eyes the death of her brother Dimitris. “Not a dog or cat remained on the island”. According to the Syrian refugee Amin, “We fled the war so as not to die. So as not to die for free. Because when the planes bomb, they don’t know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, we all die together”.
“After a month, the bread ran out. As the days went by, all other foodstuffs began to run out” , Panagiotis, a Greek refugee recalls. Ioulia, also a Greek refugee remembers that “children swollen with hunger were trying to collect tangerine peels, to live with the peels, and they were so exhausted that they died… it was a horrifying sight” . Basima, a Syrian refugee, recalls, “For a long time, my sister and I spent nights without even having food. And we didn’t let the older children eat because we were more afraid for the little ones. We had nothing but sugar” .
According to the Greek refugee Panagiotis, “People were already beginning to realize that there were only two roads left. One led to the cemetery and the other to the shore in front of them, to the unknown…” . Efxaris, also a Greek refugee, recalls that when the sea was rough, women would dip images of the Virgin into the sea, pleading for calm.
In occupied Greece, people sold their property, their houses, and land, jewelry or even military boots, some food, and anything that could serve as a passport for their escape. Amin, a Syrian refugee, sold everything he owned to make the trip, while Said, also from Syria, had to work for a year in Turkey to pay the traffickers.
The boats they used back then are very similar to today’s small boats, both for their size and for the excess weight they usually carry, one of the factors that make them unsafe, which very often resulted, as today, in shipwrecks.
Very often, the Turks applied, as they still do today, what is called refoulement or push-backs. According to the Greek refugee Zaxarenia: “On March 25, fifty of us went barefoot and hungry with three boats. Our boat was indistinguishable from the water. The Turks would not let the captains return to Chios to send us back the next day. We were forced to return to Chios. It was the third unsuccessful attempt” . Hamida, a Syrian refugee, also tells that only two of her sisters managed to cross into Greece, the third one suffered refoulement by the Greek authorities and returned to Turkey.
Greek refugee Ioulia recalls: “We were in a huge chamber, like the stables where they put the animals, one on top of the other… Lice were running on the floor. One on top of the other… How to lie down? How to go to sleep? How to go to the bathroom? This was a drama for everyone”. Syrian refugee Carim tells how he stayed in an unofficial place in the center of Chios, with most of the Syrians: “it was an old abandoned building. And I stayed there for three months”.
In Aleppo, there was a large reception camp, which in a very short time the camp became overcrowded. The refugees could not leave the camp. “The camp had a huge iron gate that closed at night” , recalls Greek refugee Efxaris. Syrian refugee Carim tells about the “hot spot” of Vial, in Chios: “I lived in the camp for the first ten days. Then a big fight happened. Because it was overcrowded, and people felt like they were in a detention center. It was not a humane place to live” .
Syrian refugees in a Greek camp
Camp for Greek refugees in Middle East
Syrian refugees in a Greek camp
Camp for Greek refugees in Middle East
Syrian refugees in a Greek camp
Camp for Greek refugees in Middle East
“Going out we left a window open for our cat, because we didn’t know how long we were going to be gone”. Displaced people often think of their displacement as temporary. Some are lucky enough to return home after a certain time, others choose to stay in their new homelands for various reasons, while for some the return becomes an increasingly distant dream. The latter is the case of the Syrian refugees, which contrasts sharply with the return of the displaced Greeks whose repatriation was completed in the summer of 1946.
