The story of how my great-grandmother escaped the Greek genocide and the unfathomable hardships encountered thereafter.
Storytelling is the oldest form of human communication. Heritage is embedded into generational chronicles painting the traces to where you find yourself now.
Orphaned and married at 12. That is how my great- grandmother’s adult life began.
I sat with my grandmother, or “Giagia” [Yaya] in Greek, while she unfolded the unfathomably tough life her mother had.
Efterpi Triantafiliou was born in the Greek area of Pontos, which was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s. That was when the Greek Genocide occurred: the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population in Anatolia, where the estimated death toll was as many as 750,000. Among those hundreds of thousands of dead was my Efterpi’s father, Arxangelos. Arxangelos was a modest man, with a wife and two daughters, who owned a fabrics store. Giagia painfully described one of the means of killing was by burning them alive. Giagia believes that my great-great-grandfather, along with other Greeks, was forced into a school and set on fire.
He left his wife and two daughters behind. Prior to that, their one and only son was sent to a relative’s house in the USSR when he was only 16. He hid, lived and worked at a family bakery, afraid of being caught for being an illegal resident. Again, tragedy unfolds, as he was dead from tuberculosis by age 18. Giagia tells me that her mother’s eyes would fill with painful tears every time she told this story. Familial separation in search for a better life, ended with life-time grief.
They carried on, mother and daughters, aged 11 and nine. Aggressively forced into a ship to Greece where they settled in Filota. Sickness took away the last parent they had, as their mother died from malaria one week after arriving, leaving Ksanthi and Efterpi orphans, and living with relatives. Also a very modest family, they immediately wanted the girls to marry. At age 14, Ksanthi was married to a man not much older. Efterpi was playing with her dolls when she was told she would soon marry a 27- year old man. Efterpi cried while describing that moment to my Giagia. Efterpi begged her relatives not to force marriage. She wanted to study more than anything in the world, dreaming of one day becoming a lawyer. She promised to work in exchange. Unfortunately that was not enough. The date was set.
Her husband, Lazaros, was old enough that he fought in the war against the Turks prior to the Greek Genocide. He was a widower, whose only sons died at a young age, one burnt in Turkey -- a victim of the genocide -- and the other in Lazaros’s arms in a ship to Greece.
Giagia explained Lazaros was genuinely a good man, a successful craftsman and a kind and loving father. In the morning as he left for work, Efterpi engaged in making her own rag dolls.
She was 14 years young when she had her first baby, Dimo. Year after year, Efterpi gave birth to 10 babies in total, six of whom lived and four passed away. As if her life was not already tough, going through child marriage and more births than many will have combined, she also had to endure the motherly pain of losing a baby. As Efterpi walked around in town with her children, many would confuse them for siblings.
Along with being mother to six, Efterpi helped in the family business with Lazaros. She sold craftwork at the market every week, and occasionally traveled to Athens to buy products and resell in Ptolemaida.
She was, in fact, an exquisite woman; dynamic, intelligent and clever. Whereas Lazaros was soft, according to Giagia. It could easily be said that all the turmoil and tragic life she lived forced Efterpi to be strong and resilient.
Storytelling. This is what humans have done since the very beginning. It is important not to let touching stories die with us, but give them a life of their own. We must reflect on, and understand, the power these stories have on us, our life and our perspective moving forward. Be grateful for all that we have, and sympathetic for those who go through unimaginably tough times. For me, I am proud to have such a strong generation of women by whom I aim to live up to.
Photos taken from the Greek Genocide Research Center archives.
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