Remembering Imbros Island : Studying The Memory Of Imbros Greeks From The Imvriwtika Magazine

Once a thriving community of farmers and fishermen consisting mostly of ethnic Greeksbelonging to Christian Orthodoxy who inhabited the Aegean island of Imbros, the ImbrosGreeks left their natal land between 1923 and the 1970s. Through the theory on culturalmemory and the method of thematic analysis, this study aims to uncover the story of thiscommunity and the way their suffering is depicted through the Imvriwtika magazine, aquarterly publication by the Imbros Greeks residing in Thessaloniki, Greece. Of majorimportance to this study is the way the magazine portrays the Imbros Greeks’ response to thepolicies imposed on them, their struggle of relocation and the preservation of theircommunitarian ethnic identity. The adversity that befell the Imbros Greeks reflects the fate ofmany small Greek (and other Christian) communities that were dislocated from their natallands by the Ottoman and, later, Turkish governments between 1915 and 1980. However, theirexperience as narrated through the pages of this magazine is unique, not only due to thedistinctive procedures the Imbrian Greek community went through but also due to the waythey themselves chose to portray their suffering, remember their traditions and past life, andpreserve their identity. The Imbros Greeks’ community, as presented in the Imvriwtikamagazine and explored in the present research, opted to narrate their perspective and maintaintheir identity by combining their ancestral memory with their current conditions, creating aunique amalgamation of what it means to be an Imbros Greek, purged from the island ofImbros and resettled in mainland Greece