Iakovos D Michailidis. Israel Affairs. Volume 25, Issue 6, December 2019.
This article deals with the case of Greek Christian refugees who fled to Cyprus and to the Middle East during WWII in an effort to point out how their settlement was related in a way to the simultaneous movement of the Jewish refugees, mainly survivors of the Holocaust, who tried to reach Mandatory Palestine. The exodus was part of a general movement from many occupied countries, mainly Greece, Poland and Yugoslavia, towards safer areas under the control of the Allies in the Middle East and Africa. It has been estimated that more than 73,000 refugees from these countries had been established in these areas in 1944. The Greek Christian refugees were placed in Nuseirat and Moses Wells camps, while Atlit remained mainly a camp for the Jewish refugees. The majority of Greek Christian refugees were repatriated by UNRRA in Greece after the liberation of the country, in 1945 and 1946.
World War II was undoubtedly the bloodiest conflict in world history. It has been estimated than more than 73 million people, soldiers and civilians, lost their lives, and has also created a massive problem of displaced persons, namely all individuals who ‘were forced to leave their homes because of war and found themselves in liberated or conquered areas’. The definition of displaced persons was purposefully broad in order to include different groups of population such as refugees, Jews who survived the Holocaust, unaccompanied minors, forced labour workers transferred across the Axis countries and German settlers in other European regions. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), established in 1943, was responsible for the repatriation of the displaced persons in their respective countries. It has been estimated that there were more than 21 million displaced persons in Europe in the middle of 1945.
This article focuses on the case of Greek Christian refugees who fled to Cyprus during WWII in an effort to point out how their settlement in the island was related in a way to the simultaneous movement of Jewish refugees, mainly Holocaust survivors who tried to reach Palestine. Their exodus was part of a general movement from many occupied countries, mainly Greece, Poland and Yugoslavia, towards safer areas under Allied control in the Middle East and Africa. It has been estimated that more than 73,000 Greek refugees were established in these areas in 1944.
In the case of Greece, the plight of the Greek refugees started as a result of the country’s occupation by the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians. In the winter of 1941 due to the humanitarian crisis, thousands of Greeks suffered starvation and many of them lost their lives. Furthermore, the bombardment of many Greek cities by the Luftwaffe in late 1943, after the capitulation of Italy, turned into ruins thousands of buildings and spread fear among the civilians. For many Greeks living in the Eastern Aegean and in the Dodecanese, in the islands close to the Turkish coast, their escape to Turkey, which at that time was a neutral country, seemed the only option.
An estimated 25,000-plus Greek Christian islanders crossed the Aegean and fled to Turkey, with the outskirts of Izmir and Kusadasi as their first step. Although the arrival in the Turkish coast was a relief for the Greek refugees, it was by no means the end of their sufferings. Immediately after their arrivals, the refugees were usually directed to the nearest Turkish outposts. The reception by the Turkish soldiers depended on the fluctuation of Turkey’s foreign relations with the British and the Germans, the traditional suspicion with which they viewed Greeks, but also by unpredictable factors such as their possible bribery by refugees.
During the first months of 1942 the situation on the coast of Asia Minor was chaotic. The refugees were mostly staying outdoors, in abandoned areas, while those who had money with them rented rooms. Twenty years after WWI, Anatolia’s coasts were still in a state of economic backwardness. The situation worsened both because of the bad weather conditions of the winter of 194–42 and the torrential inflow of refugees, for which no one was adequately prepared. Thus, the initial surprise and embarrassment of the Turkish authorities was not unexpected. After the initial shock, from the very first few weeks, the development of a mechanism that would have the purpose of managing the flow of refugee started timidly. The British, leading the military operations in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, and of course the exiled Greek government, played a decisive role in this.
After some months of negotiations, the British, in collaboration with the exiled Greek government, decided on the immediate evacuation of the Turkish coast and the transportation of the Greek Christian refugees to safer areas. Two possibilities emerged as alternatives. The first one was the sea transport of some thousands of them directly to Cyprus which was under British sovereignty. The second, was to move them by rail or using trucks to the Syrian city of Aleppo where a transit camp had been established. There, the refugees would usually stay for a period of two to three weeks. In Aleppo they would register before their distribution by the British military forces to the rest of the Middle East and Africa.
Six refugee camps in Palestine Mandatory and Egypt were formed to settle thousands of European displaced persons, among them a great number of Christian Greeks. The majority of Greek refugees were sent to the camps of Nuseirat in Gaza, Moses Wells in the Sinai Peninsula and Tolumbat in Egypt. Moreover, several housands of Greeks were moved to South Africa, Ethiopia, Belgian Congo, Ruanda-Urundi and Tanganyika.
Simultaneously, more than 5,000 Greek Christian refugees moved to Cyprus. They settled in some Cypriot cities and villages but mainly in four refugee camps administrated by the colonial British authorities with the support of the Greek community in the island, in Zygi, Xeros, Skouriotissa and Mavrovouni. The Greek refugees remained in their new motherlands until the end of WWII, when UNRRA organised their repatriation.
The settlement of the Greek Christian refugees in Cyprus started to face obstacles from the autumn of 1943. As will be argued, the case of their settlement in Cyprus had been confronted by the British within a wider context of refugee allocations, since at the same time thousands of Jewish refugees fled to Mandatory Palestine following similar routes. It was at that time that the condition of civilians in the islands of Kastelorizo and Samos began to deteriorate as a result of the Italian capitulation and the German raids on the islands.
In October 1943, the British Governor of Cyprus, Sir Charles Woolley, made known that the Middle East Military Headquarters had asked him to transfer and settle in Cyprus about 1,000 inhabitants of Kastellorizo because of the ongoing bombings on the island. Woolley added he would only accept this as an extraordinary measure, as he estimated that it would cause local discontent and reaction. It therefore called for care to be taken to bring refugees from Cyprus as quickly as possible within a reasonable period of two to three weeks. He even let it be known that the first 600 Dodecanese refugees had already arrived on the island of Aphrodite. Woolley finally argued that he was not willing to increase the cost of supplying the refugee care needed, while calling on the Secretary of State for the Colonies to take care of the simultaneous dispatch of blankets, dishes and utensils. But the reluctance of the British authorities in Cyprus diminished the extent of the humanitarian tragedy in the Dodecanese.
Apparently Woolley overestimated the ability of the British to prevent the arrival of hundreds of desperate refugees, which was confirmed by the developments themselves. In November and December 1943, 2,400 Greek Christian refugees from the islands resorted to Cyprus.
The British authorities in Cyprus found themselves unable to receive and settle all these refugees. So, they asked for their immediate transport to Palestine. At the same time, the British authorities in Palestine were informed to be ready to receive and care for about 19,000 refuges from the Dodecanese and Samos. Such a possibility, of course, involved many difficulties in its implementation given the lack of floating means for the movement of refugees, the ongoing warfare and the wider developments in the Middle East region. Especially the Palestinian Jews, according to the British, had their own reasons to be sceptical of the whole business; they had always expected the transfer of their compatriots who experienced their own Holocaust in an attempt to turn it into their national home as stipulated by the League of Nations.
Based on the above facts and in order to prevent the possible Jewish reactions, the British took care to proclaim in no uncertain terms that the emigration of the Greek refugees to Palestine and the Middle East would be temporary since, as they declared, the refugees would soon return to their home country. In this way, they attempted to alleviate the impact of their assessment – which turned out to be a decision – that the refugees from the Dodecanese and the refugees from Samos should almost all be transferred to the Middle East.
The British intention was the result of the tragic situation in which Greek refugees had fallen. Most of them were malnourished, lived in ruins or in the countryside amid unfavourable weather conditions and wore poor clothing. The large deficiencies in clothing forced the British to seek sources of supply from Algeria. According to the British plans, the most suitable solution for the refugee settlement was to place them in the Atlit and Nuseirat camps run by MERRA. An alternative solution was to send a number of refugees to the Sinai Peninsula, to the camp of Moses Wells. The transfer of the Greek refugees from Cyprus to the Middle East would begin in December 1943. The refugees would arrive by sea in Haifa and from there, according to MERRA’s instructions, they would be sent to the Atlit camp until the permanent settling in Nuseirat and Moses Wells.
On 10 December 1943, Sir Charles Woolley of Cyprus informed the British government that the refugee flow to the ‘island of Aphrodite’ from the Greek islands had increased, setting the number of refugees at 2,700. He also explained that the British authorities on the island were ready to start transferring 2,093 refugees to the Middle East, which would require two ships of 250 and 100 people respectively. The operation was planned to start on December 15. Together with the refugees, 700 blankets were sent in an attempt to limit the dramatic issue of the care of the most deprived.
However, this plan of the British authorities in Cyprus caused an immediate reaction from the Palestine authorities, which were opposed to the further movement of Greek refugees on the ground that the country was not a refugee reception area. They even expressed their deep dissatisfaction with the possibility of using the Atllt camp, arguing that it was devoted exclusively to hosting Jewish refugees and immigrants. They added in addition that about 1,000 Jews were soon expected from Poland and Yemen and therefore there was no room for others.
The reaction of Secretary of State for the Colonies was immediate. With a telegram to the British Minister in the Middle East he expressed his surprise at the deteriorating situation in Palestine and his concern for avoiding a turmoil in the region. While recognising the difficulties the British authorities in Cyprus with the Greek refugees, he considered the fears expressed by British diplomats in Palestine more serious. He therefore proposed the immediate transfer to Palestine of the 250 Jewish refugees who were in Cyprus as a counterbalance to the non-transfer of Greek refugees.
For his part, the Minister for the Middle East considered the political dimensions of the issue to be serious, but even more important was the lack of shelter, staff and basic necessities for refugees. More than a third of the refugees, he continued, lived under tragic conditions in quarantine. Yet he acknowledged that Palestine had been in a state of emergency due to the mass arrival of Jewish refugees to their internationally-designated national home, hence suggested that if the stay of Greek refugees in Cyprus had to be extended, it was necessary to provide them with money and logistical infrastructure so as to allow the British authorities to successfully deal with the issue. In addition, the British considered the possibility of moving about 10,000 Polish Jewish refugees to Eritrea to decongest Palestine. The issue came up with the Foreign Office. At the end of December, the Foreign Office asked the Minister for the Middle East to consider the possibility of moving Greek refugees from Cyprus to Syria instead of Palestine.
In this context of intense diplomatic debates and background consultations, the British Minister in the Middle East eventually decided to transfer all Greek Christian refugees from Samos and the Dodecanese to the camp of Nuseirat with an intermediate camp at Atlit. This choice was made despite the fact that Nuseirat was largely saturated since the weather conditions made it impossible to build a new site. Finding themselves in a desperate condition, the Dodecanese refugees sought their own ‘land of promise’. Their tragic situation led the Minister in the Middle East to request the immediate availing of 30 tons of clothing to the refugees. The Greek War Relief Association as well as the American and Greek Red Cross were invited to coordinate the whole business. From then on, things evolved rapidly. At the end of December 1943, the British military authorities indicated that 8,000 of the 9,000 refugees from Samos and Dodecanese had already settled in the Nuseirat camp with the rest due to follow shortly. This camp was probably the largest, as its hospitality capacity was 23,000. Nevertheless, the number of arrivals slowed down again until April 1944 due to the volatile weather conditions and the lack of a sufficient number of ships. However, their feeling was that, with the exception of a few Dodecanese refugees who had been recruited by the Greek army or worked as auxiliary personnel on ships, the removal of all the Dodecanese refugees who had resorted to Cyprus was soon to be implemented. The housing problem in Syria was intense. In May 1944, the British authorities reported that the transfer of the Dodecanese refugees from Cyprus to Palestine had been completed and that their total number was 5,792. At the same time, other refugees from the Dodecanese and Samos, seeing the difficulties of moving through Cyprus to the Middle East, escaped massively to the Asia Minor coast. This refugee flow continued for about a year, until the end of 1944. According to a report by the Greek Consulate of Smyrna, when the last group of Dodecanese refugees arrived on the Turkish coast, ‘it was given ten biscuits daily’. Later, and following protests by the refugees, the individual portion was increased.
Under these dramatic conditions, from the autumn of 1943 to the end of next year, some 20,000 refugees from the Dodecanese and Samos arrived at the Middle East, Palestine and Egypt camps. Many arrived at Cyprus, but many thousands moved to Turkey from where they continued southward, to be eventually placed in Nuseirat and Moses Wells camps.
The Greek refugees fleeing to the Middle East were repatriated by UNRRA to Greece after the country’s liberation. Their stay in the refugee camps was short-lived, but their experience marked the rest of their lives.