The three ‘Lesvos grandmas’

"What did I do? I didn't do anything. I just wanted to help the girl, who was wet and tired." That is how Militsa (Emilia) Kamvisi had described her spontaneous decision to bottle-feeding the baby of a young Syrian woman who had just landed on the shores of Lesvos in the eastern Aegean after making the treacherous crossing from Turkey in October 2015.

The baby was crying. "Bring it here, my girl. Let me feed it," Militsa, 83 years old at the time, told its mother who was struggling to warm up. While she fed the baby, her friends sitting next to her on the bench, 89-year-old Efstratia Mavrapidou and her 85-year-old cousin Maritsa Mavrapidou, started humming a song to calm the little boy down. All three were children of Asia Minor refugees, they all knew what refugees felt like. The last of this "trinity," Militsa, died on March 12, at the age of 93, and was buried on Monday. ...