Memory of Sweet Motherland

Saturday, October 14, 1922. The merchant steamer TWEFIK EL BARI arrives at the port of Larnaca from Alaya, a coastal city in Asia Minor, with its sole cargo of 509 distressed Asia Minor refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly. The ship is on an emergency rescue mission for the Greek population of Alaya. After the massacres and burning of Smyrna, the Greek inhabitants of Alaya and other cities were ordered by the Neo-Turks to leave their ancestral homes, leaving behind their houses, shops, property, churches, their lives, their past, their history .

The ship was stuck for days at anchor off Larnaca after the British colonial authorities forbade the disembarkation of the refugees, demanding the payment of guarantees in the exorbitant sum of 12 thousand pounds. The British did not wish for any “disturbance” because of the refugees, who remained crammed into the little steamer suffering, sick, terrified, desperate, experiencing unbearable anxiety for the fate of their children, their fathers, their husbands, their brothers. The Ottomans had captured all the men, mainly those aged 18-45, and transported them to the depths of the East in the infamous “Labor Battalions”.

It was then that the Church of Cyprus and Cypriot Hellenism mobilized once again, with the aim of securing the amount demanded by the British as a guarantee, in order to disembark all the refugee passengers of the steamship. Fundraisers were held, to which Cypriots contributed generously. The first goal was achieved, but much remained to be done for the care of the hundreds of desperate Asia Minor refugees, mainly of Greek and Armenian origin, who fled the massacres and were looking for a lifeline in Cyprus.

With the completion of 100 years since the Asia Minor disaster, the Cypriot documentary director/producer Stavros Papageorgiou created the first historical documentary, which refers to the Asia Minor refugees in Cyprus and is entitled: MEMORY OF SWEET MOTHERLAND.

The director initially decided to collect information about his Alayian uncle, Anastasis Tosounoglou, who had been transferred by the Ottomans in 1921 to the “Labour Forces”, as well as his mother, Getshimani Tosounoglou, who together with her two youngest children they came to Cyprus on the steamship TWEFIK EL BARI. This was the first stimulus for the creation of the documentary, through which the story of all the approximately 3,400 Asia Minor refugees of Greek origin, who had found refuge in the hospitable mega-island of the Eastern Mediterranean, is outlined. For many of them, Cyprus became their second home.