Emilia Kambysi, one of the three grandmothers of Sykamnia, passed away today at the age of 93, whose photo in the summer of 2015 was taken care of on the shore by an infant, the child of a refugee woman from Syria who had just landed on the shore , toured the world. The photo was then also the occasion for them to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. It should be noted that the three women continued to do the same for a long time, offering everything they could to the refugees, all this time when their village became the focus of the global refugee-humanitarian crisis.

Of the three grandmothers, first Maritsa Mavrapidou died in 2019 at the age of 92, followed by Efstratia Mavrapidou in 2022 at the age of 96.

All three refugee children from Moshonisi, Asia Minor, became a symbol of the solidarity of the people of Lesbos with the hundreds of thousands of Syrians – the vast majority of them – refugees, who spent the two years 2015-2016 from the opposite shores on the island. The “grandmothers of Lesvos” were visited and honored in November 2015 by the then President of the Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos and on the 15th of August 2020 by the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou. “Why are you saying bravo my son? What have we done;” they had told the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, on the day their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, in January 2016. When asked why they help the refugees, the grandmothers, Emilia Kambyssi had answered: “They are good children. Sometimes tired from the journey, they help me carry the wood for my stove.”

Emilia Kambysi’s funeral will take place on Monday, March 13 at 2:30 in the afternoon, at the Sykamnia cemetery. The funeral service will be chanted at Panagia the Mermaid, in the port of Skala.