The migration and refugee history of mainland Greece and the island of Lesvos is bound to genealogies and legacies of postcolonial violence, forced displacement and social suffering perpetuating across the mists of time (Figure 2.1). One of the darkest pages in the history of forced displacement in the region is the Greek genocide (1914–23), which was a systematic extermination of Greek populations living in the Ottoman Empire before, during and after World War I. Due to the national ethnic cleansing operations launched by the Young Turks (nationalists), all Christian populations (Armenians, Assyrians, Pontians and other Anatolian Greeks) were forced to leave to escape genocide, massacre and violence (Pontian Greek Society of Chicago ‘Xeniteas’, 2006). The Pontian Greek Society of Chicago ‘Xeniteas’ (2006) offers a few estimates of the deaths that occurred:

Many Pontiacs were forcibly deported to inner Asia Minor, Kurdistan and Syria while many women and girls were systematically raped by the armed escorts that were supposed to protect them (Pontian Greek Society of Chicago ‘Xeniteas’, 2006). The genocide launched by the Ottoman Turkish state against the Armenian and Pontiac Greek populations remains today denied. This denial inflicts genocidal trauma that continues to be felt across generations through – a process known as ‘intergenerational transmission of violent memory’ (White, 2017, p 22). One of the major consequences of World War I, the Greco–Turkish War of 1919–22 (Salvanou, 2017), produced approximately 1.5 million Anatolian Greek refugees, who fled to Greece and other countries neighbouring with Turkey. After the compulsory exchange of populations, a provision of the Treaty of Lausanne 1923, approximately 1.2 million refugees were settled in Greece (Green, 2010; Hirschon, 2014).

According to social anthropologist Renee Hirschon, ‘[b] ecause of its proximity to the mainland, the island of Lesvos directly experienced the challenge of receiving vast numbers of displaced persons’ (2007, p 171).