A digital ‘atlas’ of the refugee imprint in Greece

The refugees from Asia Minor seen in this photograph hid in the mountains near their village for three and a half months after the Asia Minor Catastrophe, surviving on greens and roots, and carrying out nighttime raids on an olive grove. They eventually managed to escape after stealing a small boat and making the crossing to Greece, where the American Red Cross gave them food and clothes. [Library of Congress]

Is the trauma of displacement enduring? What is its impact - on the economy, on electoral behavior, on art - even decades later? How is a society affected when it suddenly needs to take in a large number of refugees?

Anatolia Imprints (anatolia.int.webjar.gr/map) is an ambitious and labor-intensive project aimed at scientifically recording the economic, political and social impact of the decade-long wave of refugee arrivals in Greece that peaked in 1922-23. The website includes an interactive map that allows users to find out which part of Turkey their ancestors came from and where they settled in Greece - it covers all the refugees from agricultural communities and nearly half of those from cities - simply by inputting their full name. The visual depiction of the data allows users to see the dispersion of displaced individuals from a specific community in Turkey throughout...

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