How refugees integrated in Rethymno – Schools played an important role in their coexistence with the locals

Among the strongest connecting links and ties of Asia Minor Hellenism with Rethymno, was on the one hand the love of the refugees for the new homeland, on the other hand the welcoming schools and the establishment of new ones, in a prefecture, which after the Asia Minor disaster of 1922 in population the city of Rethymno, did not exceed 8 to 9 thousand people.

On September 29, 1922, the ocean liner sailed into the port of Rethymno COUNTRY bringing the first 2,800 refugees from Asia Minor to the new homeland, to the Rethemnia land of hope. They followed in 1924 after the Treaty of Lausanne 400 refugees disembarked by ship ANTIGONEthe following year 1925 another 990 refugees and in 1926 another 900 souls, suffering from the refugee and persecution, landed in Rethymno which now numbered 5,260 refugees.

It was already known how the Greeks of Asia Minor they attached great importance to Greek education, but in the first period in Rethymno, they had to face issues related to their survival and integration into the Rethymnon society. As the educator, researcher and author explains to APE BEE, Nikolaos Deredakis: “The arrival of such a large number of refugees, in a small, impoverished, poverty-stricken town, created great disturbance and trouble. Refugees, strays, family members of missing persons, with winter approaching and needs for shelter, clothing, food. Care committees were set up, dozens of fundraisers were held for their financial support, public buildings, churches, mosques of the city were mobilized for their accommodation, but in really miserable conditions. The small society of Rethymnon responded by offering from its backlog, for the care of the refugees. Even the Muslims of the city, since the exchange of populations under the Treaty of Lausanne had not yet taken place, financially helped the non-religious refugees, for whom finding work was almost impossible, in a city that could not even feed the indigenous inhabitants her».

Over time the conditions improved, the refugees who, according to the data, after settling in Rethymno, made up 1/3 of the total number of the city, received the refugee lot of land, began to live in settlements mainly in eastern Rethymno and from in 1924 the great march towards children’s literacy began. Although there was a large leakage of students due to the economic conditions, the results of the development of the students greatly helped the society of Rethymnon, says Mr. Deredakis, informing APE – MPE at the same time that about ten years after their arrival in Rethymno: “…the parents of the students have fully integrated into the society of Rethymno, practicing, most of them specialized professions, while several have opened their own businesses. Occupations such as, cook, retiree, machinist, dock worker, tanner, merchant, farmer, clerk, carver, butcher, milkman, driver, grocer, coffeeman, greengrocer, cooper, barber, shoemaker, fisherman, carpenter».

In the year 1924, it was founded 3rd primary school of Rethymnon as the first refugee one-class school, which eventually became six-class, in 1959. In the same year, the 10th single-class Platane Primary School of Rethymno was also founded, for which there was a great struggle to establish itself and withstand the prevailing difficulties. Refugee children are also found in the areas of Agia Paraskevi, Adele and Maroulas, villages where a large number of refugees had settled, with the Asia Minor students joining the school reality of the villages since 1922. Then there was the establishment of the schools of Mylon and Xiros Chorio, while at the same time, schools were also activated which had not functioned until then or were underfunctioning. The establishment of schools continued years later, Nikolaos Deredakis reports to APE MPE, proving, as he emphasizes, that in Rethymno, the interest in ensuring that refugee children do not remain illiterate continued for years. “For example, in the Viran Episcopate of Rethymno, a school was founded in 1929, to eventually serve the refugee settlement of Kainartze which was later renamed to Agios Konstantinos, but also the pure refugee Nea Magnesia with a total refugee population of 45 families». At the same time, decisions were made regarding the education of adults, such as the operation from 1922 of a Night School for Adult Asian Minors, illiterate people who were mainly Turkish-speaking, and was organized by the Rethymnon Educational Association.

In the research of the Ph.D. in educational history, Panagioti Paraskevait is stated that: “Unfortunately, the school records of the interwar period of the villages where the refugees settled do not exist due to their destruction over time, so only those of Maroulas and Adele are available.” According to the researchers, the literacy problem of the refugee children of Rethymnon was dealt with satisfactorily, in relation to data that exist for other regions of Greece. However, according to Dr. Haris Stratidakis, who is the Curator of the School Museum in Rethymno, the number of new schools was not large, because the refugee children were enrolled in already functioning schools in villages and regions of Rethymno. He even emphasizes in his study that: “The refugees believed more than the locals in the school institution and considered it to be the only way out to escape their children from manual labor, so they sent them to their schools without fail, even when they were in absolute need their labor force for the survival of the family. This, of course, in terms of primary education, since immediately after graduation they were handed over to craftsmen in the city or in the capital villages, in order to learn a craft».

During the difficult years of integration, there were cases of refugees who changed their original surname by adding the suffix -akis, e.g. Kiames became Kiamedakis, “…an attempt to “Cretanize”, in order to avoid the social separation that existed between refugees and locals”, according to the research of Panagiotis Paraskevas. The more than two-year adventure of the Asia Minor front and the Asia Minor refugees who found land in Rethymno for their new homes, brought new data to Rethymno, in relation to the state of education and always in relation to the prevailing social and economic conditions. According to Mr. Stratidakis: “The refugee population provided the place with a pool of educated people, who greatly alleviated the difficult situation up until then” and he means the lack of teachers, a problem that was magnified with the losses that occurred on the fronts of the Balkan wars, the A World War I and the Asia Minor campaign. In fact, in this potential of teachers as stated in his research by the curator of the School Museum: “…many women also joined, an unprecedented fact at the time we are referring to. In Mylopotamos district alone, in 1927, 8 female teachers of Asia Minor origin were serving in Anogeia (2), Angeliana, Dafnedes, Exantis, Zoniana, Keramota and Perama. They also served 5 male refugees in Eleftherna, Erfos, Orthe, Roumeli and Humeri. In other words, of the 65 teachers of Mylopotamos, teachers of Asia Minor origin represented 20%».

A lot of information was drawn from the student registers that were saved since the student register of a school is the photographic record of the school unit, according to Nikolaos Deredakis, for a specific period of time. As he explains to APE BEE: “From this we derive a lot of interesting information about the student population of the school at that particular time, we discover family information, parents’ professions, places of origin and residence, how many students continued in subsequent classes and how many interrupted their studies for various reasons reasons, mainly family, economic but also social. The wars, and their results, leave their indelible marks on the Curriculum as well.”

But so are the stories, from people who lived the refugee life, who lived the first hours arriving in Rethymno, who experienced the whole journey from a boat, to a school classroom and finally next to each other in a small society like Rethymno . Mr. Deredakis shared with APE MPE the testimony of the father of Giorgos D. Fryganakis, a philology teacher of Secondary Education, as he described it.

“At the end of September ’22, the ship “Patris” brought us loaded with suffocants and distributed us in Crete. Our man-carry was unloaded in some black barges in the open and then emptied in Rethymno, on the dock of the Venetian port. A pile of rags… A lot of people gathered around us and were curious about us… I felt afraid, but more than that I was ashamed of the people, and more so the children of my age, without knowing why!…”. Through the difficulties he lived through, through the martyred first years and the effort to integrate into his new homeland, through the wounds of his soul and the countless reasons why in his mind, many times and because of the people next to him, he reached at some point to tell to his grandchildren. “As I grew older, I saw things more clearly, until I realized that children carried to school what their parents carried from home. I understood that the so-called racism was about a few cases… because they saw the refugees as those who “took the bite out of their mouths…” Slowly the locals saw what the refugees brought them… Slowly the refugees saw what the refugees offered them locals… Little by little, locals and refugees became like the different grapes in the same wine press and like their musts in the same barrel that finally produce a good wine. And that with the help of right teachers and right parents… Right people and clubs…».

The Asia Minors gave momentum to Rethymno to travel into the future and today to be one of the prefectures that have a lot to offer in terms of spirit, letters, arts, history, games. Rethymnon proved through the coexistence of Cretans and Asia Minor that in Education and in survival the dominant component is struggle and coexistence.

RES-EMP

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