Skip to content

Main Navigation

100sources
  • ΕΛ
Home
Cities
ChaniaPireausThessalonikiVolos
The Project

The research project “100memories”, starting from the refugee movement of 1922-1924, takes up the multiple migrations that followed over the next 100 years until today. The study of the past and memory meets the digital world and shapes new (analogue, hybrid and digital) narratives. More here: https://100memories.gr/

The Platform

The 100sources digital platform is a digital repository documenting a century of arrivals and departures.

Narratives

Let us think of our cities as spaces that are constantly woven through the journeys, histories and experiences of their inhabitants, through encounters and conflicts, separations and arrivals that always leave traces – more or less visible – in urban space. By unraveling, but also by intertwining, these threads of movement, habitation, work and daily life, we tell aspects of the history of refugee neighbourhoods.

Bibliography

The bibliography concerns all the research aspects studied in the project on the history of migration in Greece.

Map

The map identifies institutions with archival material related to the history of the refugee settlement of 1922-24, collectives and monuments.

Scripts

See the educational scripts developed during the project.

100places

Visit the 100places.gr platform.

Contact

Do not hesitate to contact us for any issue. [email protected]

From refugees in Greece to migrants in Germany (a common family history of 20th century Greece)

City

Thessaloniki

Migration Period

Migration to Germany Population Exchange Post-war Migration

City Narratives

Station

Tag

Life Narratives
Social reproduction

Category

Housing
Labour

Full Description

First, refugees in Greece. Then, migrants in Germany. Later, repatriated to Thessaloniki. This was a common life trajectory for many inhabitants of Macedonia.

Georgios Koumaridis, son of Ioannis, was one of them. He was born in 1921 in Primikiri (today called Harmanli) in the Bithynia province, near Lake Apolloniada (Uluabat). According to oral tradition, most of the village’s Christian residents had moved there from Mani as Ottoman captives after the Orlov revolt of 1770. [1]In their new home, they were mostly employed as ‘πιστικοί’ (pronounced ‘pistikoi’), namely trusted shepherds for the local beys, and that is where the local villages got their name: Pistikochoria. At the end of the 19th century, Primikiri was also the home of Muslims from the area of Larisa who had probably moved there after Larisa was integrated into the Greek state.

The next chapter of his life was written in Greece. The family’s refugee settlement documents read: ‘Head of household: Koumaridis Ioannis, son of Theodoros. Profession: farmer. Origin: Primikir of Michalitsi in Prusa. Age: 46.[2] Other members of the family: Efstratia, wife, age: 35. Konstantinos, son, age: 11. Efstratia, niece, age: 8. Georgios, son, age: 2’. The family settled in Palaiochori of Pravi (Eleftheroupoli), where both Muslims and Christians lived until 1924. However, after the exchange, refugees from Asia Minor, Pontus and Thrace settled in the houses of the Muslim residents who had abandoned them. During 1923 and 1924, the Settlement Service billed the family 50 drachmas, one ‘appropriated’ ox, 18 okas (approx. 24 kgs) of corn, 184 okas (approx.  240 kgs) of grass and 220 okas (approx. 286 kgs) of wheat. The family settled their debt in 1926 paying 225 drachmas and 50 cents.

Fifteen years later, during the Bulgarian occupation (1941-1944), Georgios was conscripted into labour battalions by the Bulgarian command. He was a ‘durduvaki’, a word probably deriving from a corrupted version of the Bulgarian word for the labour battalions. Along with some compatriots, Georgios was taken to Bulgaria to do hard labour like opening roads and laying train tracks. He returned to the village and was soon drafted in the Greek Army for a three-year service, fighting on the civil war frontlines (the third photograph was taken in Agrafa, on 12/8/1947).

After the end of the war, Georgios married Anastasia Lafazanidou (depicted in the second photograph with their first-born son, Kostis), daughter of Apostolis and Archonti, born in 1931 in Palaiochori. Her father was from Primikiri and her mother from the village of Kavak in Amasya. [3] Georgios and Anastasia had two sons, Kostis in 1953 and Panagiotis in 1961. Like most of the residents of Palaiochori, the family were tobacco and corn farmers. However, tobacco farming was not profitable and they found themselves constantly in debt to the producers’ co-op. All they managed to do with the money from the year’s tobacco sales was repay the previous year’s debt.

Anastasia was the first to leave for Germany in 1968, where she worked at a paper bag factory. After a while, Georgios left too. He had to be officially invited by his wife since he was older than 35, which was the German government’s age limit for migrants. The couple started working at the metal factory ‘Estenberg und Sohn’ in Ennepetal, a small town near Wuppertal in North-Rhine Westphalia. The factory made parts for Volkswagen tractors, combine harvesters and cars. They originally stayed at the ‘heim’, nicknamed the ‘hovel’ by the migrants, a dormitory next to the factory provided by the company where 15 families lived together sharing a single bathroom. Later, they moved into a house. The house they had left behind back in the village gradually fell into disrepair and was demolished. The couple returned to Thessaloniki in 1983 where they bought an apartment in the area of Agios Pavlos.   

[1] Some may have also moved earlier, at the end of the 15th century, after Mystras was conquered by the Ottomans.

[2] http://stavrakoudis.econ.uoi.gr/stavrakoudis/pontos/images/4/40050040929.jpg , 1928 census.

[3] http://stavrakoudis.econ.uoi.gr/stavrakoudis/pontos/images/5/40050050085.jpg , 1928 census.

Exhibits

Files

προσφυγικό-βιβλιάριο.pdf
footer-logo

Visit the project website 100memories.gr.

Terms of Use

Website Structure

CITIES

  • Volos
  • Thessaloniki
  • Piraeus
  • Chania

PAGES

  • Bibliography
  • Map
  • Entries

Το ερευνητικό έργο υλοποιείται στο πλαίσιο της Δράσης ΕΡΕΥΝΩ – ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΩ – ΚΑΙΝΟΤΟΜΩ και συγχρηματοδοτείται από την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση και εθνικούς πόρους μέσω του Ε.Π. Ανταγωνιστικότητα, Επιχειρηματικότητα & Καινοτομία (ΕΠΑνΕΚ) (κωδικός έργου: Τ2ΕΔΚ-04827)

Manufactured by Sociality