LIFE IN THE REFUGEE CAMP AND THE AGBU'S EMERGENCY RELIFE PROGRAMS
The greatest concentration of Armenian refugees was to be found in Athens and its environs (Fix, Kokkinia, Piræus, Faliron, Lavrion, Lipasmata-in-Piræus, Pangrati). Like the Greek refugees, many of the Armenians who reached the Greek capital settled in lodgings put at their disposal by the municipal authorities. However, in Fix (also known as Dergouti), the Armenian refugees built homes on land attributed to them by the government; thus some four thousand people were soon living in makeshift wooden cabins. Yet, in May 1923, thousands of refugees were still sheltered in tents in Fix (about 1,000), Pangrati (1,200), Lipasmata (2,000), and Kokkinia (800). With the exception of Pangrati and Lipasmata, where Greek and Armenian refugees lived together, the camps just mentioned had rather homogeneous Armenian populations.7 This mass of refugees was essentially made up of women, children, and old men, since the younger men had been systematically slaughtered by the Kemalists whenever their Armenian identity was revealed.
Unlike the Armenian refugees who settled in the cities and small towns of central Greece or the islands, those who ended up in northern Greece tended to live in the countryside. This held for the roughly seven thousand who found themselves in western Thrace and the fifteen hundred in Macedonia. In 1921-1922, faced with a labor shortage, the Greek authorities had encouraged ... Read all
Greece and Armenian Refugees
Schoolchildren and faculty of the Tbrotsaser School in August 1923 (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).