Istanbul, 1955, 17-year-old Aliki witnesses a Turkish mob looting Greek homes, and attacking, raping, and murdering Greeks, along with Armenians and Jews. This was the beginning of the so-called “Istanbul Pogrom,” in the immediate wake of which more than 15,000 of the city’s Greek residents fled Turkey. Today, fewer than 3,000 inhabitants of Greek origin remain in Istanbul – which, in the 50s, had been home to close to 150,000.
Interviewee: Rallou-Aliki Makri
Interview by: Katerina Kasimi
Podcast creator: Maya Filippopoulou
Sound Designer: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Spyros Lymperopoulos
Translator: Steve Lever
Voiceover: Eva Kesserling
Istorima is the bigest project of recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. Over 1,000 young researchers find narrators, listen, collect and save stories of people from all over Greece : Stories of their place, stories of love, stories that changed us or defined us, stories modern or old. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could be lost in time. Istorima is the co-creation of the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of his Youth Reboot and Empowerment initiative (learn more at www.snf.org). The more than 20,000 stories are being published in their entirety in stages at www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos or written stories at www.istorima.org