Early 20th Century
In 1890, there was a small community of Armenians in Athens and in Piraeus of about 150 people which turned into 600 after the incorporation of Thessalonica and some cities of Macedonia after the Balkan Wars. During the Hamidian massacres, Armenians that managed to escape and who were saved from the slaughters were given shelter at the harbour of Piraeus. More than 1,000 Armenians enjoyed the hospitality of the Greeks. At that time the Prime Minister of Greece, Theodoros Deligiannis, showed fatherly affection to them. After the genocidal campaign of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians and Greeks, Greece welcomed a large influx of refugees consisting of about 80,000 Armenians and 1,500,000 Greeks into its country. The refugees mostly came from Cilicia, Smyrna, Ionia, Constantinople and other regions of Asia Minor. The Greco-Armenians were very active in art and commerce producing painters like Edouard Sakayan.
Read more about this topic: Armenians In Greece
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or century:
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“The general feeling was, and for a long time remained, that one had several children in order to keep just a few. As late as the seventeenth century . . . people could not allow themselves to become too attached to something that was regarded as a probable loss. This is the reason for certain remarks which shock our present-day sensibility, such as Montaigne’s observation, “I have lost two or three children in their infancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow.””
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)