From left to right, these three refugee children from Buca (pronounced Bu-ja), Turkey, a town southeast of Smyrna (modern Izmir), are Irene Sklavou, Efstratia Hatziathanasiou, and Emanuel Sklavos, their brother Thanasis is not present. In an interview, her daughter Anna asked Irene to tell her story, to which Irene replied, “I will tell you my child but it will make you cry. My mother’s name was ‘Antonia with the Beautiful Long Hair.” Irene’s story leads us from Buca, through the ruins of Smyrna to a refugee camp in Mytilene. “We slept on the streets. There we suffered starvation, but we had rations. We were given a pot of chickpeas covered in olive oil two fingers thick. The children would eat with their hands and whatever was left we brought back home. We stayed in Mytilene for two years and then moved to Athens where I was put in an orphanage. I longed for my siblings. When it rained outside, I would say ‘Where are my siblings?’ ‘Where could my siblings be? Are they safe?’ One day, there was a knock on my room’s door. It was my brother Thanasi carrying chocolates! We hugged, we cried, and we ate chocolates.” The siblings were reunited at last.
(photo from Chora, Mytilene, 1927)
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