We must not let the memory and value of solidarity with refugees be erased | Refugees

I moved to Lesbos in 2001. This was nearly 80 years after my grandmother had arrived from Ayvalik on this same island as a nine-year-old refugee. She had stayed there for two years before moving to Piraeus. My grandmother was among the nearly 1.5 million Greeks forced to flee Asia Minor in the 1920s.

By 2001, the history of Lesbos as a place of refuge had been almost forgotten by the public, and yet the island continued to serve as a temporary stop for people crossing the Eastern…