During the Coronavirus season that started in mid-March 2020 in Israel, I figured I had the time needed to interview a few of the remaining Greeks living in Jerusalem’s Greek Colony.
This is the first video from a series that will follow on Greek Jerusalemites. Follow my blog’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/From-Jerusalem-With-Love-110426697318311 so that you do not miss any!
Here is a short excerpt from an interview in Greek with Zoe Nikolaidou. Zoe is the daughter of Nikolas Nikolaidis who was very well known in the neighborhood as he worked in the grocery store located in the compound of the Greek community.
I translated into English below the discussion Zoe Nikolaidou held with Anastas Damianos, the current Head of the Greek Community of Jerusalem as I witnessed it in person, relating to her father’s story.
“My father was twenty one years young, when he came to Palestine, the Turks were here at the time, and he was working with Michalaki at Barhalil he had an agency that brought immigrants from Cyprus and Greece for the holidays.
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In 1917 when the Turks were leaving Jerusalem and the English came to (power in) Jerusalem the Turks took with them 2000 Greek refugees with them to Turkey. My father was one of the men among them and so was the father of Luba, and the father of Sophia. They were taken through Syria not by air, but by boats, on donkeys, I have photographs of the trip, they were hostages in Turkey for three years.
I know two expressions that my father would say (in Turkish) “Ala bouyouk ala ekmek koutchouk. God is big but food is little.”
They worked hard in harsh conditions, in cold weather, they lacked food the poor ones. How many came back? Perhaps three hundred returned from among all of them. In 1933 my father opened the grocery store here, people had scattered and then in 1934 he got married. I was born many years later.
My father had good business, he brought merchandise from England, all the neighborhood the Nashashibi, Husseini, Datzani, they were British. Nashashibi was right there. Aweda
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Aweda had the three villas on Emek Refaim by the Aroma coffee shop.
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One of them still lives and I saw him at Ibtisam’s.”
For those of you who lived in the neighborhood, and know the characters or have photographs and stories completing the puzzle of the Greek Community’s presence here, please write your comments in the comments section of the blog and I will reach out to you and we’ll take it from there.
From Jerusalem with love,
Yvette Nahmia-Messinas