|
The cultural and Genealogical Digital Collection of Attica constitutes a specialization of the programs of Genealogy,
Testimonies and "My History" in the geographic space that the Region of Attica covers
today, but at the same time extends the grounds of the above programs so that
it forms an important source for the social history of the region for all its
citizens, of refugee background or not.
The region of
Attica is of particular interest in relation to the settlement of refugees but
also because of its development from the Interwar period up to now.
- Because in addition to Piraeus many
other smaller centers of reception and first settlement of refugees
existed in the area of the current region, like Lavrion and Eleusis but
also Hermioni, the islands of Argosaronikos and Oropos. Also, very important stations of
reception, care and sanitary control of refugees, as the quarantine in
Makronisi and in Ag. Georgios in Keratsini were established in Attica.
- Because
in the region of Attica we find the biggest span of refugee settlements, from
the noisy capital to the small islands and isolated, arid rural areas.
- Because
of the inequitable growth of the Athenian center against provincial areas,
urbanism and wars in the 40’s,
such was the high flow of refugees and their descendants to Attica , that
we can speak of a secondary refugee re-establishment after the 40s, as it
is pictured in a series of our interviews.
- because a lot of communities or
cities around Piraeus and Athens were developed in a similar way and
experienced the same problems, the same challenges and same transmutations
in the identity of their members regardless of the refugee, migratory or local origin of the present
residents. This led us to approach local communities in the region of Attica
but also cities that were mostly developed as immigratory centers and industrial
cities like Aigaleo.
- because a long time before the
country became a reception area for immigrants in the end of the 20th
century, Attica had experienced a European immigration in the 19th century
(Bavarians, Italians and Spanish) and the christian populations of
Armenians and Assyrians that followed the same refugee path as the greek
orthodox refugees of Asia Minor, Pontus and Balkan peninsula had taken
before.
- Finally, because the settlement
of refugees in the Attica Basin raised a series of issues that concerned institutional regulations, economic
and technical achievements and practical solutions, the confrontation of
which had widespread repercussions in the life of the country but also created
models, regulations and organizational forms on which the growth of the
rest of Greece was based. (See, Giorgos Tzedopoulos, Beyond the
Destruction. Asia Minor refugees in Greece of the Interwar, 2nd
publication, Athens 2007 "Attica receives the refugees")
The FHW ensures, those who participate in the Project that the submitted information is used solely for the purposes of the project.
|