When entering the exhibition “Asia Minor. Shine. Eradication. Destruction. Creation” at the Benaki Museum/Piraeus 138. It is not the only one, but it is he who makes you feel that from the first step you start a journey to the places of Asia Minor, where your grandparents or their neighbors lived. and their friends who are familiar with geography, fertile and beautiful places, our people and their culture.

The first stop of the exhibition tour, cosmopolitan Smyrna. Walking along the wooden deck of the ship, you come to the railing, listening to the cries of seagulls, and a panorama of the city passes in front of you: the embankment, the imposing buildings of the port, some tiled roofs in the background. Here you are, a passenger on a fictional ship sailing off the coast of Ionia, late 19th century. You walk, as if preparing to disembark, and out of the corner of your eye you catch the first images of the city: The living room of a city house with heavy furniture and portraits, white clothes, embroidery, evening dresses and European habits. On the streets are famous schools, commercial activities, the daily life of residents. This journey through space and time, this great historical exhibition, presented exactly one century after the Holocaust, begins with light. At a time when the brilliance of Hellenism in Asia Minor was not yet overshadowed by tragic events.

“My relationship with Asia Minor is personal through my grandmother, who came to Greece in 1922 with a grandfather whom I never saw,” says the exhibition curator, art historian Evita Arapoglu, recalling the beginning of her personal involvement in the problem of Asia Minor, which happened many years ago. The trigger was internal and emotionally charged: a tribute to a father who passed away too soon. Digging through the past with her sister and researching how to fulfill a family obligation, she was surprised to discover something she didn’t consciously know: how deep her need – the need of the third generation of refugees from Asia Minor – to seek a connection with her homeland and her history.

“The first generation was a generation of silence,” says Ms. Arapoglu. “She couldn’t relive through the stories that she had, so she kept them mute inside her so she could go on.”

“We realized that four out of five Greeks had at least some distant relationship with Asia Minor.”

Their children, sons and daughters, who were born in Greece in already settled homes, began to trace connections, look for evidence, see memories again, preserving family heirlooms from the “homeland” with great excitement. The third and fourth generations can now read behind words and images that convey trauma. He strives to combine the fragments – rumors, readings, testimonies, customs, music, tastes, narratives – to compose an Asia Minor chronicle that does not end in September 1922. Like the river of the East – and so the exhibition’s curatorial itinerary also flows – the long, heartbreaking march of refugees from Asia Minor crosses history and ends in Greece in the 1920s, and changes it forever, enriching even the most arid lands with perseverance, determination and perseverance.

“While I was lost in the stories and testimonies of that time, choosing those that would accompany the exhibits and pages of the catalog,” says Ms. Arapoglu, “I read and reread an excerpt from Tatyana Stavrov’s novel First Roots,” which made me think about what might mean this vertical deepest crack: “It takes a struggle to get into this white dry earth. […] I think about my children. None of them will suspect our anxiety when they grow up.”

Each part of a particular exhibition and each showcase could be the occasion for a separate presentation. It consists of three sections – “Shine. Eradication. Destruction. Creation” – uniting in the narrative before and after the critical year that marked the end of the Asia Minor campaign – a thread that starts from the heyday of Hellenism to persecution, passes into the dramatic period of 1919-1923. formation and integration in Greece. The chronicle is told through works of art, paintings, church, military and personal relics, clothing, jewelry, handicrafts, maps, photographs, archival and film materials, newspapers, letters, postcards and much more. The narrative is supplemented by excerpts from personal testimonies, enlivening images and silent objects.

There are many aspects of the story – not all of them can be covered – and countless people who have contributed to the collection of exhibition material. “Especially valuable personal relics, loans from private collections,” comments Ms. Arapoglu. “Asking everyone we met if they had any connection with Asia Minor, we realized that four out of five Greeks have at least some distant relative.” Thus, looking through small or large collections throughout Greece and of course thanks to the archives of the Benaki Museum and the Center for the Study of Asia Minor, more than 1000 exhibits and 500 photographs were collected. It is obvious that such a multifaceted exposition could not have been carried out without the significant assistance of a large group of scientists. All researchers at the Center for the Study of Asia Minor and most of the curators of the Benaki Museum, as well as many consulting partners, supported the research, selection, documentation and collection of this voluminous material. The result is impressive, the route is about an hour, food for memory, which sees it all still active and alive.