Lucas and Lena Papageorge at their engagement party. Photo: Lucas Papageorge

 

14 May 2011

THOMAS ANDRONAS

Lucas Papageorge was born in Levissi – a town now abandoned and known as Kayakoy in southern Turkey – on March 17, 1921. When he was very young, his family was forced to leave their village as part of the catastrophic population exchange between Greece and Turkey. What follows is not a comprehensive historical account, but it’s what Lucas Papageorge knows, in his own words.

“I never knew Levissi. I was born there, but I was 11 months old when we were forced to leave.”

“In 1921, my parents, their siblings and two others secretly left Levissi from a nearby beach. At that time the Turks were taking people into the army to fight against the Greeks, as the Greeks had invaded Turkey.”

“From my point of view, my two grandfathers and two of my uncles were taken away into the wild mountains. They were taken along with thousands of others from one place to another so they would waste away on the roads and be eaten by wild animals. They were tortured and never returned, my grandfathers and uncles.”

“No one really knows what happened to them, but I read a book about one American, a Brigadeer, who with his men went in search of them. He said the viciousness and brutality of the Turks was unimaginable. He said he saw the bodies and bones of these men, who were taken from village to village just so they would waste away and die.”

“In a few words,” his voice cracks, “Turkey wanted to rid itself of Christianity and the Greeks in this way. Some were forced to leave, others were tortured like this, and as we say in Greek, ‘the mother lost her child and the child its mother’.”

“I don’t know if they were killed or if they just left them, but I know they made them suffer a lot in the mountains of Turkey. They took them there naked, barefoot and starving. I lost my two grandfathers, one named Loukas Sergiris and the other named Apostolos Papageorgiou.”

“My father’s brother, Georgios Papageorgiou, was taken into the army by the Turks but he was lost. No one [really] knows what happened to him but I…learned later that my uncle, along with some other Greeks decided to flee the army, go AWOL, but someone betrayed them and they were shot, killed.”

“Later in Levissi, some others came to chase us out, and some people heard from sympathetic Turks that we would be given three days to leave. We left with my grandmother, five aunts, myself, my mother and my sister, on a boat that belonged to a Turkish friend of my grandfather.”

“Those that were taken into the army were from 16 years and up. Others were taken into the army and put to work, to build roads, and they persecuted them…It’s estimated that more that 3000-4000 Levissites died, some in exile, some soldiers, some in jail. Now, exactly [how many, we don’t know], there are no books, no records, everything was left behind.”

“These things that I’m telling you, I have learned from my father, my mother and my friends. My in-laws also lived it, and this is what they told me.”

“[The Turks] didn’t take my father into the army, he took off. He left from a hidden place on the coast, where he had arranged to meet a boatman from Kastellorizo…Others went left and right.”

“The majority of Levissites who left were scattered across various islands and mainland Greece. To this point the majority of Levissites and their children and grandchildren who are alive today live in Nea Makri in Pireaus.”

“They were all hard workers, family people, good people, who knew how to live, and their families still live there now.”

“When the war finished and we learnt that my father [had gone to Kastellorizo] we left Rhodes and joined him there. He found work as a lumberjack because Kastellorizo had lots of wood then. We also leased some land, so we lived there. Well, lets say we lived, when you’re a refugee you don’t have…” he trails off.

“As refugees when we first went to Kastellorizo, they helped us…One neighbour, Mrs Hatzivassili…gave us some pots and pans and plates so we could get by. They were very good people.”

“I never lived with Turks, but my parents told me that they lived very well together [in Levissi]. The Turks, whoever shouted them a coffee, they would never forget him. The common people aren’t to blame, it was the government, Kemal and the ‘new Turks’. The ‘old Turks’ were good people.”

“In Levissi itself there were no Turks, it was all Greeks. I think Levissi had a population of approximately 7000-8000. There were some Turks but they were out in the fields, not in the town.”

“My mother and my aunts told me that the Turks wept when the Greeks took their belongings and began the two-hour walk down to Makri, the nearest port to Levissi. They said the Turks wept, asking ‘why are you leaving us?’.”

“As the Greeks went down to the port to leave, the Turkish authorities, who had given the Greeks three days to vacate Levissi, confiscated everything except their clothes and blankets. They didn’t let anything past, no earrings, no rings, nothing, only their clothes. Some of the richer Levissites tried to conceal things in their bedding but the Turks would pierce the blankets with needles and discover the items.”

“I came to Australia [from Kastellorizo] in 1937.”

“I met two Turks here in Port Pirie… [Someone told one of them] who was going back to Turkey…that I had been born in [Levissi] and he got so excited that he wouldn’t let me buy him even one drink. He said, ‘no, you’re a compatriot because you’re from our area. And whenever you come there – he gave me his address – you come and find me’. What else can I say?”

“My uncle and my godfather came to Townsville in far north Queensland and I lived there for 10 years and in 1941 they took me into the Australian army and I served in the Pacific in 1942 when Japan entered the war.”

“My wife was born in Australia, in Port Pirie, but my in-laws were also from Levissi. We had two daughters. One, unfortunately, left us very early.”

“Perhaps you know about football? Do you follow it? Because my son-in-law was one of Australia’s good footballers, Nick Pantelis, and his son now is 29 years old and plays for Adelaide United, he’s one of their best players, Lucas Pantelis,” he says proudly.

“I have 5 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren,” he says with a proud chuckle.

“I went to Greece in 1983 but I didn’t go to Levissi.”

“I have learnt from compatriots here, of my own age, who have been to Levissi, that…three quarters of the houses are still standing, but they are naked, bare and not a soul has lived there since we left. They say the people there were afraid…and that at night they can hear voices and cries.”

“I wanted to go if I could have an old acquaintance with me who would recognize something and could show me. But why would I go to an abandoned town, to a cemetery, where I’d never been before, to see who?”

“There’s not a soul there, not a soul.”

The interview for this piece was conducted in Greek and translated by the writer.