The life history of Giorgos Perdikakis, a case of early postwar internal migration

Giorgos Perdikakis was born in a village near Chania in 1920. Soon after he was born, his parents moved to Chania. During the German occupation, when Giorgos was 22-23, he decided to try his luck in Athens. ‘I didn’t know the city, the Germans hadn’t left yet, and I had never travelled before in my life! With another guy, I don’t know if he’s alive or dead now, God rest his soul if he is, we made up our minds and got on a small boat, like a fishing boat, but half as big because fishing boats were small back then. We travelled for two days before we reached Piraeus. So, we get off in Piraeus, and I’m just a country boy, I didn’t know the ropes or how things worked during the occupation, how hungry people in Athens were, how much they were suffering. I was holding a small straw bag with some clothes and some food that my late mother had given me. The guards rushed to search it. They almost tore the bag apart looking for anything to eat.’

In Athens, Giorgos found one of his brothers who had been living there for a while. He found a job and stayed with his brother for several years. In 1947, he was drafted in the army. He served for 33 months, but when he was discharged he didn’t return to Chania. ‘I didn’t think it was a good idea to return to Chania in just my army uniform, it didn’t sit well with me. So I stayed in Athens and worked to make some money… at least get a second change of clothes, so to speak’. After his army service, he found a job, but had no place to stay. ‘There was an entrance on Alexandras Avenue that led to the park. You turned right and in the distance – I can see it in front of me now like in a dream – there were some old abandoned buildings. I don’t know what they were for originally. Many homeless families stayed there. I’d found a room there too […] the buildings might have belonged to the state. There were couples staying there and single men like me’.

After a few years doing odd jobs, but also apprenticing with shoemakers, Giorgos returned to Chania and took over his father’s shoemaking workshop. He didn’t really like the job, but it gave him a way out, provided an income. His dream to become a sailor was never fulfilled, but he ended up travelling to a lot of far-flung places for leisure.

Giorgos’ migration to Athens during the occupation was not an isolated case, but part of an early migration wave to Athens which reached its peak in 1949. Studies have shown that population movements to and from the cities, Athens included, were very common between 1940 and 1945. One tenth of the country’s population moved at least once during that period and the liberation found many of them in a different place than where they had been in 1940. These movements were directly linked to the war and the occupation: populations moved away from the areas which had been heavily bombed; soldiers returning from the front became trapped in various places and moved around until they could safely return to their homes; people migrated away from rural areas where the occupiers were conducting purges and implementing policies which amounted to plunder.

Giorgos’ migration to Athens paints a picture of the reality for people moving by themselves: their movement generally lacked long-term planning. Their most pressing goal was to find a job and accommodation that would allow them to settle into a more orderly everyday life for as long as possible. When their circumstances changed, any new plans they made were also short-term. Individual migration between urban and rural areas, depending on which offered better employment opportunities at any time, was rather easy; easier than the mass migrations of individuals and families in the decades that followed.

Giorgos arrived in Athens without having secured accommodation, without even having notified his brother, who he ended up staying with for quite a while. ‘My older brother, who is long dead now, didn’t know I had gone to Athens, nor did I let him know I was coming. I went to a relative’s house and my cousin told me: “Giorgos, it’s good that you came, I’m not telling you to stay or leave, but the right thing to do is find your brother’. […] I met him a couple of days later and, God rest his soul, he picked me up and took me to the room he was staying at in Neos Kosmos and that’s where I stayed. I’m not even sure how many years I stayed there. […] It was a really small room, we had one single bed each… survival was a struggle. That was our life. […]’ Then, for some reason he cannot recall, he moved out of his brother’s house. ‘There was a park on Alexandras Avenue […] my brother told the director that I didn’t have a job and he hired me as a guard […] A man from Chania lived in the area. He was married and was a shoemaker. He said, “Come along, Giorgos, and you can be a shoemaker too.” So, I got a job there. […]’ He decided not to return to Chania immediately after his discharge not because he was hoping to build a better life, but because staying in Athens would at least allow him to survive: ‘I was drafted, served for 33 months and was dirt poor when I was discharged. So I stayed in Athens and got a job so that I could at least afford a suit, because I was still in my army fatigues’.