Preface

My paternal grandfather arrived in Greece in the early 1920s from the Black Sea region. His last name was “Değirmenci,” which translates as “Miller” in Turkish; hence my name “Mylonas,” which means “Miller” in Greek. Themistocles Mylonas was fluent in both Turkish and Pontic Greek. His Orthodox Christian background made him a prime candidate for the obligatory population exchange of 1923 between Greece and Turkey. His wife, also a refugee, came from Novorossiysk in Russia and spoke only Russian when she first arrived in the harbor of Thessaloniki (Salonica) following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. She was confused on her arrival by the presence of black soldiers along the shore. The Senegalese troops in the French Army of the Orient did not conform to her expectations about Greece.

My maternal grandfather was from Crete. During World War II, he fought as an officer of the Greek army against the Italians on the Albanian front. After the armistice of April 1941, he had no money to travel back to Crete and decided to stay in the north of the country. He settled in a rural area and married a refugee from Pontos.