The Pontii of Norwalk

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THE PONTII OF NORWALK
by Fotini Z. Nicholas, The Greek American, December 17, 1999

I am in a Greek Orthodox Church named for St. George. Behind me, two women are speaking Greek, but I cannot comprehend even the gist of what they are saying. They are speaking Pontiaka, an ancient Hellenic dialect that goes back perhaps 30 centuries. Were I to close my eyes, I might well imagine myself in some eparchia, some provincial town in Greece. But this church has pews and the American English of the younger members of the congregation is a reminder that I am in Norwalk, a semi-industrial city in southwest Connecticut.

A baby girl is being baptized. All the many relatives present are Pontians except for her paternal grandfather. He was born in the Florina are of Greek Macedonia to parents who spoke a west Bulgarian dialect. But by virtue of his marriage and an unequivocal welcome into a large extended family, he is now an honorary Pontian. In all probability his granddaughter Paraskeve will grow up to be a 21st century English-speaking Connecticut "Yankee." And yet I believe that she will be well aware of her roots. She may even speak standard Greek as do her American-born parents, for the Pontii of Norwalk are an enclave of Greeks whose ancestors maintained their ethnic identity through 2500 years of adversity, displacement and exile, and countless attempts at ethnic cleansing.

Pontic Hellenism in the Black Sea area now part of Georgia and the Ukraine dates back to mythology and legend of the Golden Fleece. There were Greek colonies on the shores of that sea then known as Euxinos Pontos as early as the 5th century B.C. By the 4th century the kingdom of Pontos was flourishing. Although the Columbia Encyclopedia says that ancient Pontos "was not significantly penetrated by Persian or Greek civilization, " I beg to differ. In Byzantine times a large number of the 8 million Greeks of Asia Minor were Pontians, whose homeland was guarded by Thracians assigned there by the Emperor of Byzantium. Following the tragic rape of Constantinople by Crusader in 1204, Alexios (I) and his brother David, of the imperial Komninos family, founded the Pontic state Trebizond (Trapezounta). When the Byzantines returned to the throne in 1261, Trebizond remained more or less independent, although it paid occasional tribute to Constantinople. The kingdom prospered, for it was the trade route to the Far East from Anatolia and to Europe from the Middle East through Russia. At its height the court of the Grand Komneni was the most powerful Greek state of Asia Minor and a center of arts and letters. In 1461, this last bastion of Hellenic civilization in Anatolia fell to the Turks.

Thousands of Pontians escaping the Ottomans fled to southern Russia. There, Greek merchants established churches, schools and hospitals in cities like Odessa (named after Odysseus) and Sevastopol.

In the 18th century, when Catherine the Great offered financial inducements to the Crimean Greeks, they moved on to the Donets region. There, they founded the city of Mariupol (Zhdanov in the eastern Ukraine).

At the start of the 20th century, there were still 750,000 Greeks in now-Turkish Pontos. But from 1916 on, they were under attack : Their villages were burned; their churches were looted and like the Armenians, they were sent on death marches. Some escaped by following the Russian army as it withdrew in 1918.

They were followed by others after the debacle of 1922. Yet others, like their fellow refugees from Smyrna, ancient Bithynia and Kaisaria, deep in the Anatolian interior, found refugee in Greece.

Under the Bolsheviks, however, wealthy Greeks in Russia had their properties confiscated. The Greek language became taboo. The wealthy fled en masse. Stalin continued to expand the ethnic cleansing of "enemies of the state", exiling thousands of Greeks to Siberia and to Soviet republics in Central Asia. After Hitler's defeat, some 200,000 Greeks in Russia were shipped to those areas where Moslems were in the majority.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Greeks were again subjected to ethnic violence and exile to the East. And so they dreamt of "returning" to Greece, to their unknown homeland. By 1990, more than 1,000 were arriving in Greece every month. Pontic ghettos began springing up on the outskirts of Athens and Thessaloniki. Some Pontians were helped by newly discovered relatives. The less fortunate -- many professionals among them-- were forced to take menial jobs, if they could find them. Others, encouraged by the government to settle in Thrace, were given free housing. But, having lived among Moslems in Asia, they were often reluctant to live among them in Greece. By 1996, there were some 60,000 legal Pontian refugees in Greece in addition to a possible illegal 100,000 who stayed on when their tourist visas expired. It was also estimated that a minimum of 200,000, up to a possible half million, many of whom continue to apply for Greek visas, still live in the Ukraine.

Reality usually differs from dreams. In Russia, Georgia and Siberia these people were known as Greeks. In the long-dreamed-of patrida, they are called Russians or Rossopontii. They are the subjects of hundreds of ethnic jokes. And yet: The refugees of 1922 ultimately prospered. Their descendants have assimilated and have become acculturated. They have often intermarried with other Greek "tribes," while continuing to treasure their roots.

Some 40-odd years ago, I mentioned to the director of the American Center in Larissa - an American-educated Thessalian - that my father's people were Mikrasiates (Anatolians). "Ah," he commented, "so you're the people, you Pontii and Karamanlides, who bought up all of Salonika and much of Athens."

I responded that my people, who had come to Greece from Proussa (Bursa) in northwest Turkey, were not quite that enterprising. "In any case," I added, "to continue prospering, Greece could use more of those go-getters."

And indeed it is my belief that this newest wave of refugees will enrich the country, just as their predecessors of the 1920's did.

I thought about all this at the christening that day. And at the lavish reception that followed, I watched in fascination once again as the Norwalk Pontians danced the ancient dances of Hellenic warriors. I admired their joyousness, their gracefulness and, most of all, their "togetherness" as young and old, even toddlers, danced so closely together that each stomping circle seemed like one entity celebrating life with all its vicissitudes

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