THE MIRACLE:  A TRUE STORY Book authored by Leonidas Koumakis 3rd English Edition Literary Review by Eleni Sakellis Published in The National Herald, August 3, 2019 ------------------------------ I am excited that  The National Herald  has given Hellenic Genealogy Geek the right to reprint articles that may be of interest to our group.  ------------------------------ The Miracle: A True Story by Leonidas Koumakis is a compelling memoir and history of what the Greek minority in Turkey that has endured from the end of the 19th century to the present day. As noted in the book’s description, “The purpose of this book is to communicate, through both historical evidence and personal experiences, the Turkish policy against Hellenism and beyond.”  With an impressive bibliography of over 200 sources, the book was originally published in Greek in 1993 with its fourth edition printed in 2008. The first edition English translation by the...

GREEK ORTHODOX ORPHANAGE, EUROPE'S LARGEST WOODEN BUILDING, AWAITS SALVATION OFF ISTANBUL ISTANBUL - Agence France-Presse - May 28, 2018 Looking up at the giant wooden edifice looming over him, Erol Baytaş shakes his head. “I don’t think it will survive another winter,” he says, broken tiles and boards strewn at his feet. Built at the end of the 19th century on an island off Istanbul, this unique six-storey structure once served as a home for Greek Orthodox orphans until it was shut down in the early 1960s. And more than five decades later, the now dilapidated Prinkipo Greek Orthodox orphanage is at risk of collapse...... Situated atop a hill on Büyükada, one of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, it is about 90 minutes by ferry from central Istanbul. Originally conceived as a luxury casino hotel, the building was commissioned by the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, the travel firm which historically operated the Orient Express. The aim was to att...

Şişli Greek Orthodox Cemetery (Turkish: Şişli Rum Ortodoks Mezarlığı), also known as Şişli Eastern Orthodox Cemetery, is a Christian cemetery in Istanbul, Turkey. The burial ground is the final resting place of people professing the Orthodox faith in Istanbul. The cemetery is located in Şişli district of Istanbul just across the Cevahir Mall. The cemetery was founded in 1859, and consists mostly of Greek graves as well as other Orthodox nationalities and ethnoreligious groups such as Russians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Arab and Turkish/Turkic Christians. The burial ground occupies 52 acres (21 ha), and since its opening,a total of roughly 85,000 individuals have been interred at the site with 3-4 burials taking place weekly. In September 1955, during the anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom, the cemetery was vandalized and desecrated by fanatical mobs. Crosses and statues were knocked down, sepulchers and vaults opened and the remains of the dead removed and dispersed.  (wikipedia.org) T...

POST-BYZANTINE GREEK MERCHANTS OF THE FIFTEENTH-SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES By Andronikos Falangas Published in the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Year 2007 Pages 7-21 ----- You can read the entire article for FREE by CLICKING HERE   "The centuries that followed the spread of Ottoman domination throughout the Greek world, which culminated with the fall of Constantinople, are generally considered one of the darkest periods in the history of Hellenism. Nevertheless, many historical sources from the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries reveal the beginnings and growth of a merchant elite of Greek origin, their economic and cultural development, and the emergence of a Greek patriotism within this same group." ----- ANDRONIKOS FALANGAS received his PhD from Paris I, PantheonSorbonne. He is the author of forthcoming books on the humanist and prince of Moldavia, Jacob Vassilikos, and on Greek-Romanian relations of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries. He most r...