Two refugees in the communist movement: their migrations through their own narratives

The development of oral history in Greece over the past thirty years has shed light on the experiences of people whose voices had earlier been excluded from traditional historiography and has contributed significantly to the rejuvenation of Neohellenic historiography. Simultaneously, oral history empowered subjects and communities to share their stories, thus promoting the exploration of subject areas that traditional historiography could not or would not engage with, such as memory and its multiple layers, lived experience and emotion, and the distance between archive and testimony.

In the case of refugees from Asia Minor and Pontus, efforts to record their accounts began quite early on. During the interwar period, the Centre for Asia Minor Studies first started recording the musical tradition of the refugee population and soon proceeded to record their narratives on the lives they led back home and their experiences from the war. These were handwritten by the Centre’s associates and went on to become the bulk of the Centre’s archives. ^[1]

In Thessaloniki, it was the Historical Archive of Refugee Hellenism of the Municipality of Kalamaria that has contributed the most to the collection of oral testimonies. Since its establishment in 1994, it has amassed 2,500 narratives by first- and second-generation refugees, while also collecting evidence and photographs relating to refugee settlement, organising conferences, and publishing studies which have contributed substantially to the relevant literature. The testimonies presented here are part of this archive.

The testimonies were given by two people who were born in the same year, were orphaned at a very young age and migrated multiple times in their lives. Their migrations are inextricably linked with 20^th century Greece and, apart from having the exodus from Asia Minor as their starting point, also share another characteristic: they encapsulate the movements of the people who joined the Greek Communist Party (KKE), a popular political choice among refugees. As a result, they represent a portion of the population that was particularly impacted by the violently turbulent decade of the 1940s.

Giorgos Moroudis was born in 1913 in Neochori, Prusa (Bursa), a coastal village next to Mudania. In his narrative, he describes how his early life was marked by his first refugee experience: His family had to leave their village and wander through other villages in the area. They finally settled in Peladari, where his widowed mother remarried. They returned to Neochori in 1919 when the Greek army reached the area. In 1922, they boarded a ship from Mudania to Silivria where they stayed for 40 days before heading for Thessaloniki. They stayed in Kalamaria for two weeks and then settled in Kato Grammatiko, Pella, which at the time was still a mixed village including Slavic-speaking and Muslim populations. Moroudis mentions that he learned Turkish while living alongside the Muslims of Kato Grammatiko. In 1926, the family settled in Foustani, Almopia, where there was a community of refugees from Peladari. He served in the army from 1936 to 1938 and fought in the Greco-Italian war as a farrier. He joined the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and ended up in Bulkes, Yugoslavia, where he stayed for two and a half years as he was left temporarily paralysed by frostbite. In 1948, he joined the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) and after the end of the Greek civil war in 1949, he went into exile. He found himself in Tashkent where he reunited with his wife and children in 1952. He returned to Greece in 1983 and settled in Thessaloniki.

Giorgos Malamas was born in 1913 in Apolloniada, another village of the Vithynia region on the lake of the same name. In his testimony, he speaks of his hard life in Apolloniada and describes the social and professional life in the village. In 1922, his family moved to Panormos and from there to Raidestos. From Raidestos, they made it to Thessaloniki where at first they stayed in covered passages around the church of Agios Minas. Later, the local authorities moved them to military facilities in Stavroupoli.  His family chose to leave the facilities and settle in makeshift shacks in the area of Kassandros. After a few years, they moved to the village of Ampeloi, in Serres, but did not stay there long. They returned to Thessaloniki and settled in the area of Neapoli. In 1938, Malamas became a railroad worker. During the German occupation, he joined the National Liberation Front (EAM) and participated in the Greek resistance. Post-war, he was asked to sign a statement denouncing communism so that he would be allowed to continue working at the railroad. He refused and was exiled in 1947, first to Ai Stratis, then to Makronisos, where he was tortured, and then again to Ai Stratis. He returned to Thessaloniki in 1952.

^[1] A number of these testimonies were compiled by the Centre in five volumes, published between 1980 and 2016, under the title Exodus.