Successive refugee arrivals after the collapse of the Asia Minor front

The collapse of the Asia Minor front in August 1922 triggered an enormous population movement from Asia Minor to Greece. These populations did not move in an orderly fashion and many of those who made it to Greece did not settle at the place of their initial arrival. Hence, concurrently to the mass arrival of refugees from Asia Minor, there was also intense population movement recorded within the Greek territories. Ships carried refugees, prisoners of war and the injured directly to Cretan ports, while boatloads of refugees coming from Piraeus and other Greek ports were disembarking in Chania, Rethymno and Herakleio.

The newspapers of the time outline the situation in Chania in the autumn of 1922. In the issues dated September 13 and September 22, the newspaper Empros, based in Athens, announced the ministerial decision to transport refugees to Crete (10,000 in each prefecture) and the partial implementation of the decision. On the same dates, a local Cretan newspaper, Esperinos Tachydromos, was reporting refugee arrivals. Clearly, these two refugee groups were not the same, as one was departing from other parts of Greece and the other was just arriving in Crete, but the publication of the articles in such close succession suggests multiple consecutive arrivals of thousands of people in the island.

An interesting point in the September 13 article in Empros is the reference to the ministry’s rationale behind the decision to distribute the refugees ‘among the wealthier communities so that they can be rehabilitated as soon as possible, become independent and stop relying on the State for their survival’. Instead, refugee rehabilitation proved to be incredibly time-consuming not only in Chania, but all across Greece. From what we know about the settlement process, refugees were accommodated temporarily in houses and large public buildings for protracted periods of time and their survival was a constant concern. On the same day the Athenian newspaper published appeals to help the refugees, the local newspaper announced that another evacuated public building had become fully occupied by refugees who had just arrived at the port of Souda: ‘The committee responsible for their reception accommodated them in the barracks near the Topanas area.’