Narrating the Trauma. The Greek Exodus from Bulgaria in the 1920s

This study explores the traumatic experience of the Greek exodus from the Bulgarian Black Sea towns in the early 20th century and its enduring impact on the local Greek community. Based on biographical interviews and ethnographic research conducted between 2005 and 2008, the narratives reveal how forced displacement, accompanied by persecution and cultural repression, became a defining element of both individual and collective identity for members of the local Greek population born in the 1920s and 1930s. For this generation, whose stories form the core of the analysis, the trauma of their parents’ and siblings’ exodus, the separation of families, persecution, and the denial of cultural identity remained central to their life histories. The study argues that, for them, the trauma of the exodus is not only individual, familial, and collective, but also cultural. Unlike them, the next generation perceives the exodus primarily as a historical family event rather than a defining trauma. The research shows that the trauma caused by the exodus and the memory of it were passed down within families and the community but were not publicly acknowledged, unlike the trauma of Bulgarian refugees from Thrace and Macedonia during the same period. The absence of public recognition or commemoration of the Greek exodus in the national historical narrative and cultural memory has contributed to the trauma’s gradual relegation to the background for later generations, ultimately leading to its near-erasure