Sakellaropoulou: The Greeks of Asia Minor turned the trauma of the refugee into rebirth and creation

“Despite the unhealed trauma of the refugee, the indescribable pain caused by the Turkish atrocities, the persecutions, the hundreds of victims, the loss of their holy places, the Greeks of Asia Minor managed to turn the heartbreak for their lost homelands into a lever of survival , rebirth, creation”, said the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou during her greeting at the opening of the exhibition “Asia Minor: Shine · Destruction · Uprooting · Creation”, at the Benaki Museum.

One hundred years after the disaster, an exhibition like the one we are launching today invites us to reflect on this crucial turning point in our history, without missing its emotional load, but also without underestimating its fertile power, PTD emphasized, among other things expressing her emotion and congratulations to the decision-makers.

The PTD greeting in detail.

It is with great emotion that I inaugurate the exhibition “Asia Minor, Brilliance, Destruction, Uprooting, Creation”, co-organized by the Benaki Museum and the Center for Asia Minor Studies, two valuable, for our national self-awareness, institutions that preserve the memory of the Asia Minor culture, studying it its scope and influence. The apt title of the exhibition alone describes the long journey of the Greek element in the Ionian and Aeolian lands: flowering and prosperity, prosperity and brilliance, destruction and destruction of ancestral homes, violent expatriation. But no crash, no annihilation.

Despite the unhealed trauma of the refugee, the indescribable pain caused by the Turkish atrocities, the persecutions, the hundreds of victims, the loss of their holy places, the Greeks of Asia Minor managed to turn the heartbreak for their lost homelands into a lever for survival, rebirth, creation.

The epic of the integration of the refugee population and its rehabilitation within the bosom of the Greek state, brings to mind the verse of our national poet: “The chasm opened by the earthquake immediately blossomed.” Because this so charming, multidimensional world of the East, the fertile civilization of centuries in the coastal cities as well as inland, may have been violently lost, swept away by the insanity of the historical moment, but it carried to the opposite shores social concepts and symbiotic morals, cultural elements and daily practices that, even if they initially alienated or repulsed the native population, very quickly turned into a “gift from God” for Greece, as the well-known American diplomat and president of the Refugee Rehabilitation Committee, Henry Morgenthau, characteristically reported to the League of Nations in 1924. The countryside was revitalized, crops were restructured and agricultural production multiplied.

Industry was stimulated by the entry of a new workforce and by the action of people with keen entrepreneurial spirit, education, training and progressive orientation. The position of women improved, with their dynamic entry into the economy. A new wind blew into the country’s intellect, renewing its style and ethos. The artistic creation was enriched and expanded. Musical expression gained vigor and diversity. Who should one remember first: Giorgos Seferis, Dido Sotiriou, Ilias Venezis, Kosmas Politis, Stratis Doukas, Fotis Kontoglou? Manolis Kalomiris, Yiannis Konstantinidis? Karolos Koon? Manolis Andronikos? George Sikeliotis? Those of the “Asian muse lover”, to use the wording of Theodoros Hatzipantazis, who grafted with their art the “new thalerous sprout of the oriental tradition of the Greek people, the rebetiko song?” And all of this, cultural revitalization, business efficiency, social progress, was achieved thanks to “the courage, energy, industriousness and receptiveness to new ideas that characterize the majority of refugees”, as the social anthropologist, keen student of Greek reality, John wrote Campbell.
We do not forget the people who were lost, the lives that were uprooted, the ancestral homes that were abandoned, the blood that was spilled, the mental trauma, the unspeakable pain. We do not overcome errors, delusions, idealizations, dichotomies.

But we are proud of the fruits of the transplanting of Asia Minor Hellenism on Greek soil. The great “immigration” brought about that great mental and spiritual mutation that drastically changed the directions and orientations of Greek society. One hundred years after the disaster, an exhibition like the one we are launching today invites us to reflect on this crucial turning point in our history, without missing its emotional load, but also without underestimating its fertile power.

I would like to warmly congratulate the art historian Evita Arapoglou who curated the exhibition and the two publications that accompany it, the director of the Center for Asia Minor Studies, academic Paschalis Kitromelidis, the researchers of the Center, the scientific director of the Benaki Museum Giorgis Magginis, the curators of the Museum and all those who worked for the realization of the exhibition. An exhibition organized as an exciting journey through the centuries of Asia Minor Hellenism.

Moving from Ionia to Cappadocia, crossing the Pontus, stopping in Constantinople and ending up in Eastern Thrace, we feel the shocking imprint of the place, we hear its secret voice. A voice that, as Ilias Venezis wrote, “becomes the most invisible and the most certain bond between the generations of ancestors and those to come, a sound that will remain when people’s memory has been lost”.

Read the News today and get the latest news.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.