PEOPLE ARE COMING
My friends, Elefsina is a fusion of all of Greece. Just so you understand, in my family I have a son-in-law from Epirus, another from Crete, and another from Mytilene… Meanwhile, I am married to a local Arvanite woman, and my brother’s wife is from Tripoli–so, five children from five different cities.
EXCERPT FROM THE FILM "ELEFSINA" BY T. PAPAGIANNIDIS (1984)
WEDDING IN ELEUSIS
ASIA MINOR SETTLEMENT OF ELEFSINA
EMBROS | 1924
ASIA MINOR SETTLEMENT OF ELEFSINA
ETHNOS | 1926
AIGAION | 1926
What defined the industrialization of Elefsina was the workforce that arrived in the area, settled, and essentially created the city.
The first who came to work and build a life in Elefsina were islanders from Symi. “They arrived in Elefsina not as refugees or internal migrants, but as self-exiles in 1912, because they couldn’t tolerate the “italianization” imposed on them by the Italian authorities”.
After the Asia Minor Catastrophe in 1922, the arrival of thousands of refugees from the wider areas of Smyrna, Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Pontus supplied the industries with workers and created new neighborhoods as the city grew in size.
The Greeks of Asia Minor arriving in Elefsina were followed by people from the Dodecanese, Chios, Corfu, Epirus, Crete, Thessaly, and the Peloponnese.
In the 1960s, Elefsina also accommodated Pontic Greek refugees who were initially forced to flee to Kazakhstan and the Caucasus region.
This population of Pontic Greeks grew even more with the new wave of immigrants arriving in the 1980s and 1990s, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.