Refugee telegrams

This category contains 993 artefacts and covers the time period from 1914 to 1955. Some of them are connected to the events of the Asia Minor Campaign. The telegrams, which reproduce news reports of the time, describe the dramatic moments of the departure of the Greek army in August 1922.

However, the majority of the collection consists of refugee telegrams. They are mainly sent by Asia Minor Catastrophe refugees who settled in rural areas in Greece or by local populations, and they are addressed to the Ministry of Agriculture and the president of the Government.
Following the Balkan Wars, World War I, and mainly after the Asia Minor Campaign, more than 1.2 million refugees came to Greece from Asia Minor, Pontus, and Eastern Thrace. The Greek government chose to settle most refugees in rural Macedonia and Thrace and to provide them with land allotments. This would achieve an increase in agricultural production, the ethnological and political homogenisation of the New Countries and the creation of a class of small landowners through the expropriation of large estates. Local populations reacted to the settlement of refugees in rural areas. The reason for the friction and tension between the two groups, which even led to bloodshed, was claims to contested allotments of farmland. The telegrams depict this exact aspect of the settlement of refugees in rural Greece. The messages in the telegrams, filled with complaints, protests, and threats, come from both groups of Greeks, the refugees and the locals, reflecting in the most vivid way the clear division of Greek society during the interwar period.