Repatriation and return

Among those who have done research in the field of mass population movements, there is a rather clichéd observation that patterns tend to repeat themselves. One such pattern is the effort on behalf of receiving states to eventually repatriate migrants, either because the emergency that originally displaced them has been resolved or because state entities do not wish for migrants to stay permanently within their territories.

Naturally, this was not the case with the mass population movement caused by the end of the Greco-Turkish war in Asia Minor, since this unprecedented migration actually became certified and legitimised on an international level by the countries involved. That is what made the Lausanne Treaty both particularly groundbreaking and utterly cynical: the willingness of both Greece and Turkey to approve and accept a population exchange, the mandatory implementation of which forcefully decided the fates of millions of people.

However, that had not been the Greek state’s attitude towards First World War refugees who had been driven away from various places to settle in Greek territories. A circular signed by the Minister Theodoros Zaimis, which was sent by the Ministry of Welfare on 23/11/1920 to all the General Governors and Prefects, as well as the refugee welfare authorities and committees, of Athens, Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Volos, Lesvos and Lavrio, ordered the immediate suspension of all welfare benefits to refugees originating from places where repatriation was now allowed. At the time, these places were the Dodecanese, western and eastern Thrace (except for northern Thrace, which was still under Bulgarian rule, and the areas beyond Çatalca), the parts of Asia Minor occupied by the Greek Army (except for the regions of Dardanelles and Prusa and the coasts of Propontis), Macedonia, Kastelorizo and Romania.

In another circular sent to the same recipients the following day, the Minister expanded the measures ‘towards the completion of the repatriation efforts’, calling for dwellings that had been requisitioned or leased by the state to house refugees from the aforementioned areas to be vacated. If the refugees refused to vacate the dwellings, the Minister ordered the responsible authorities to request police intervention.

Twenty-nine years later, it was another group of refugees who found themselves in the public eye. These were known as ‘communist gang victims’, people who either willingly moved away from areas where the war was raging, or were forcibly displaced by the Greek army in its effort to control the territories where the Greek Democratic Army (DSE) operated. Most of them ended up in the provincial cities and towns of northern and central Greece, with many settling in Thessaloniki. In winter 1947-1948, it is estimated that there were about 57,000 such refugees across Greece, of whom 17,000 were in Thessaloniki. Two years later, in July 1949, as the civil war was coming to an end, the mass repatriation of these refugees became government policy, a fact reflected in the minutes of the 27^th session of the Thessaloniki Regional Committee for the Welfare of Communist Gang Victims. According to the document, the repatriation policy associated the desired goal of repopulating the country’s rural areas with coercing the refugees to return by suspending all welfare benefits they received in the cities. Still, many of them did not wish to return to their places of origin anymore.

 ‘Mr. Tikopoulos told the Committee that, despite the Authority’s recommendation, more than 400 families from the region of Pella remain here, refusing to repatriate by providing various excuses. Having examined this serious issue, which, were it to become widespread, would lead to the failure of the repatriation effort, the Committee decides to take all appropriate coercion measures, namely suspension of clothing benefits and provision of clothing only on the day of departure, suspension of housing provision from July 1^st and, in case of refusal, request for an intervention by the General Governorate of Northern Greece’. 

Three years later, in June 1952, many ‘communist gang victims’ still remained in Thessaloniki, as indicated by this application to the General Governor of Northern Greece. The applicant, a pharmacist, requests that the expropriation of his building towards the housing of families ‘victimized by the communist insurgents’ should be rescinded. In his argumentation, the pharmacist invokes a specific article of Law 1315/1949, according to which ‘all housing aid granted to “communist gang victims” is immediately suspended upon the issuing of the order for their repatriation’.

A significant number of refugees never returned to their villages, paving the way for what became a mass postwar migration towards the urban centres.