...Who do you think you are?

A Brief History of the Aslanidis family

Picture right shows the author John K Smyrniotis aged 3 on the chair, his mother Loula nee Aslanidis standing behind him, her face above his. Next to her, her brother Vangelis and his wife on their wedding day, and standing at the opposite end their eldest brother Pericles with his wife, and next to her the three siblings' mother Panagiota.

From antiquity, Greeks had spread throughout and had occupied large parts of the Mediterranean, from Asia Minor to France and, since the second century AD, this had included parts of the Black Sea coast. What is now part of the Bulgarian coast on the Black Sea, the Greeks had called Anatoliki (Eastern) Romilia, or North Thrace, to distinguish it from South Thrace which is still part of Greece today. North Thrace united with Bulgaria in 1885. Greeks formed about 6% of the population of North Thrace but were more concentrated in certain areas.

In particular, many Greeks lived in a village they called Mesimvria (now renamed Nessebar by Bulgaria), in North Thrace, which enjoys Unesco protected status (World Heritage Centre) to this day due to its historical significance.

So the author's maternal grandfather Kostas Aslanidis, was a Greek born in the village of Mesimvria, in North Thrace. Kostas had a brother called Thanasis and three sisters, Afendoula, Eleni, and Marigo.

After North Thrace became part of Bulgaria in 1885, Bulgaria tried to force the Greeks to serve in the Bulgarian army. So by 1906 Greeks had started to leave as refugees (Voulgaro-prosfiges) to settle in Greece, either in South Thrace, or in Athens, or in Thessaloniki in Greek Macedonia, the second biggest Greek city, where they formed the area Nea (New) Mesimvria.

Kostas Aslanidis left Bulgaria around 1918. With his brother Thanasis, they stayed briefly in the Thebes (Thiva) area, north of Athens, before proceeding to Athens itself, often walking part of the 100km journey.

The last Greeks left Bulgaria around 1925.

Two of Kostas' sisters also settled in Athens and opened what became a famous patisserie shop near the central, and often in the news now, Syntagma Square. However, Marigo had agreed to stay behind in North Thrace in Bulgaria, and married a Bulgarian man so that the Aslanidis family would not lose all their property in Mesimvria. This was a relatively common practice among the Greek refugees leaving Bulgaria.

Grandfather Kostas Aslanidis went on to live in a part of Athens still called Kallithea today, on the corner of Laskaridou and Dimitrakopoulou streets. He was a carpenter / joiner by trade and went to work for the company called Saridis and for a Mr Pagonis whose carpentry business in Kallithea was doing badly at the time, on the verge of bankruptcy, but Kostas turned the business around. Reputedly, he was skilled enough to make even musical instruments. He bought a plot of land nearby, on the bank of the river Ilissos, at Salaminos 28, later renumbered 42.

Around 1919, in Kallithea, grandfather Kostas met and married Panagiota Bethani (top picture). She was living in Athens at the time but had her roots in a village called Kriekouki, in mainland Greece, and she had two brothers, Kostas Bethanis, who also lived in Athens and had married Magdalini, and Tasos who had emigrated to Canada where his descendants still live today.

The author's newly married grandparents Kostas Aslanidis and Panagiota had children but the infant mortality rate was high at the time and they all died young.

So a second generation, so to speak, of four children came along, all of whom survived to old age. Born at the above corner house (Laskaridou and Dimitrakopoulou) in Kallithea, they were, in this order, 1) Pericles the eldest of the 'new generation' and a carpenter / joiner like his father born c. 1923, 2) Evangelos (Vangelis) born 1925 who later became a skilled tailor, 3) Theodora or Loula, the author's mother, born 1926, and 4) Stelios born 1932.

Kostas Aslanidis, the author's maternal grandfather, later left wife Panagiota and the above four surviving children temporarily to seek work in Egypt. There, he was prized as a master-craftsman and with his new money he returned to Athens, where, with wife Panagiota, they built a house at the Salaminos 28 plot of land Kostas had bought earlier.

John K Smyrniotis (the author) actually lived in that house for a few years as a child and makes a reference to it in his published work. This house now stands as a block of flats owned by others.

Greece, including Athens, had been invaded and occupied by the Germans in the Second World War. After the Germans had left, there was a civil war between Greek communist and nationalist forces. Due to the ensuing famine, the family now sold everything they had in Athens, including the house at Salaminos, and moved to Panagiota's home village of Kriekouki where they lived briefly.

Later they went further north to mainland Thessaly, a more agricultural part of Greece, around the Larissa part of it.

There, the whole family worked as labourers in the fields for various landlords / farmers in order to survive, having left everything behind. It was very hard physical work, especially under the hot Greek summer sun, and it left a permanent mark, especially on the only girl, Loula, the author's mother, who, as a result, came to sympathise with the pro-communist rebels who went from village to village "singing beautiful songs" and preaching fairness and equality, her sympathies later converted to religious convictions but leaving pro-communist traces behind.

Her father, the author's maternal grandfather, Kostas Aslanidis, was a very sociable man by nature, a trait inherited most noticeably by the author's younger brother. Kostas Aslanidis played the violin e.g. at weddings, and he loved a moderate drink but he suffered from poor health especially with his stomach. It must be said also, the stress he had suffered all his life as a refugee and otherwise, briefly summarised above, had been enormous, and other stress-busting alternatives were limited in those days and under the circumstances. One does not need much to imagine the tragedy of a penniless and starving family who had just lost everything besides their property, twice over including that in Bulgaria, and also had lost several children earlier on, and now had to work for their food, but this was worn-torn Greece at the time. He used to distil his own alcohol in the form of tsipouro, a Greek beverage similar to ouzo but stronger. His stomach condition (probably an ulcer) gave him pain intermittently. On one occasion while in Thessaly, grandfather Kostas Aslanidis drank while distilling tsipouro and he suffered a perforated stomach and died as a result.

The four children were in their early to mid-teens at the time.

When the civil war ended, there was new legislation nullifying all property sales that had taken place during the war, now viewed as unfair and under duress because many families had sold everything in order to survive the Athens famine. So around 1946-48, the family, minus the deceased father, returned to their old house at 28 Salaminos Street, in Kallithea, Athens.

It was in Athens that the only girl of the family, Loula, was introduced to and married the author's father, Smyrniotis.

My gratitude to Vangelis Aslanidis (top photo) and to his two children, cousins Timothy and Dina, for providing most of the details of this extraordinary story and some photographs, all of which might have been lost otherwise.