The refugee settlement process in 1922

The arrival of a massive number of Asia Minor refugees after August 1922 required the establishment of emergency processes and mechanisms to handle their reception. One of the first major issues to be resolved was refugee housing.

The Greek state already had some experience on this issue due to the mass influx of refugees during the previous decade. An important measure that had always been under discussion during this time was house requisitions. It was a particularly delicate matter because, as it had been made clear ever since the relevant 1920 report by the Ministry of Welfare, requisitions impinged on the right to property which had been established in ‘the Republic’s fundamental law’, the Constitution. However, the refugee wave of autumn 1922 put the measure of house requisitions back on the table.

According to newspaper reports, by September 1922, refugees had already settled in requisitioned houses. The local newspapers wrote about the issue discreetly, probably in an effort not to trigger backlash on behalf of the houseowners. However, they didn’t fail to mention the owners’ protests, who complained that often the refugees were accommodated in their houses without any previous notification or communication.

The local newspaper Kiryx wrote in October 1922: ‘From now on, no house can be requisitioned without previous coordination with the owners’. The Decree-law of November 23, 1922, entitled ‘On the requisition of properties already in use for housing or other purposes’, attempted to solve the refugee housing issue for the year 1922. According to the law, under certain conditions, the state had emergency powers to requisition even houses which were already occupied.

At the same time, many of the city’s public buildings were used to house the thousands of refugees who continued to arrive at the port. In the issue of the newspaper Kiryx dated October 12, 1922, under the ‘Column for the refugees’, there is a list of the buildings which were housing refugees in the city and the suburbs. The All Girls’ School, the Muslim School, the Police Academy, the Italian barracks are just some of the public buildings that hosted large numbers of refugees.

The newspaper also published parents’ protests against the requisition of schools, as they resulted in the suspension of the educational process. The local authorities responded swiftly and announced the evacuation of religious buildings so that they could host the refugees who were currently accommodated in schools. This is confirmed by a report in the newspaper Empros a few days later: ‘The settlement of refugees in Crete is proceeding smoothly, as the refugees have settled in monasteries vacated by the monks’ (14/10/1922).