Living at the tobacco warehouses

In a front page article entitled ‘The black wave’, the newspaper Thessalia reported on the 10,000 refugees who arrived at the port of Volos on September 19, 1922, and estimated that a further 50,000 refugees would soon be joining them. The first ship that arrived at the port of Volos was the ocean liner Megali Ellas. Three more ships followed, Miltiadis, Vithynia, and later that afternoon, Maiandros. The refugees disembarked at the pier with the help of lifeboats, barges and small steam boats. Soon, the pier and all the roads around the port were inundated with refugees. Exhausted and dispirited, they would put down their few belongings, ‘the few little bundles they were carrying’, and settle right there on the pavement. Private individuals were the first to provide the refugees with aid by supplying food and medicine, even though, according to the local press, they should have intervened sooner. Charities contributed by offering what medical care they could provide to those in need, along with food, medicine and clothing. Among the bourgeois members of the Volos society who mobilized immediately were the tobacco merchant Chondropoulos and the industrialist Papageorgiou who offered condensed milk and other food to children refugees. On the municipal level, the city council held an extraordinary meeting on September 19 and approved a 32,000-drachma line of credit for the provision of bread and another 32,000 drachmas to establish three food distribution sites. The need to find roofed shelters that could temporarily house the refugees soon became the administration’s main concern and the use of the city’s numerous tobacco warehouses emerged as a workable solution.

The first warehouses to receive refugees were the large Tzamali warehouse on the corner of November 2^nd Street and Xenofontos Street behind the Municipal Theatre, the Zarkados and Chondropoulos warehouses in the area of Metamorfosi, and the Pervanas warehouse in Agios Nikolaos. A few days later, on September 27, about fifty families from Sevdikioi (Seydiköy) and Buza in Smyrna, people of all ages from infants to the elderly, were transferred to the Papantos warehouse in the area of Palaia carrying their belongings in bundles. Burlap sacks were used to divide the huge tobacco warehouse into ‘apartments’ so that each family could have some semblance of privacy. At least the floor was thankfully wooden, but they could barely fit inside lying down and they used blankets and rugs to cover themselves. The following description by D. Konstantaras-Statharas, who is citing the testimony of Petros Palamidas, a refugee from Sevdikioi, is particularly vivid and reflects the harsh living conditions for the refugees who had to shelter in those warehouses.

 ‘It’s not hard to imagine how so many people slept in their own little ‘apartments’, literally packed like sardines… The human herd experienced nights of horror. How could they possibly get any sleep, any peace, any rest? The entire grotesque scenery was lit by a gas lamp that someone would always leave on, afraid of the thick darkness in the warehouse. It was like the heavy scent of tobacco, the human smells, and the stench coming off the squashed refugees aggravated the tired bodies. Before the break of dawn, an eerie silence would fall over them just for a little while, as they knew the sun would be rising soon and they would finally be able to come out of their grave and breathe… The women who lived in the tobacco warehouse started doing ‘household’ chores; tidying, washing, cooking…’    

Refugees had to live in this and other tobacco warehouses for almost two years, before they could slowly start moving to Nea Ionia in 1924, in what was then known as the ‘Settlement’, referring to the first refugee ‘houses’ in the twenty blocks surrounding Evangelistria Square.