"The Forgotten Hellenes of the Middle East" - published in HellasFrappe-blogspot.com by Iason Athanasiadis When I  moved  to Iran, hearing there were Greeks in the Islamic Republic of Iran was bizarre enough. Finding out that it boasted a splendid Greek Orthodox church, just metres away from the infamous US embassy that dominated the international media throughout the 444 days of the American diplomats' hostage crisis in 1979-80 was even stranger. But Iran's Greek community has been in irreversible decline since the early 1980s when many fled a socially restrictive Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Today, two monuments in Tehran stand testament to the crumbling Greek community: a church and a cemetery. As they escaped  a new  communist government in Moscow in the late 1910s that had branded them undesirable capitalists, many Pontic Greeks, such as my grandfather, sought  to return  to Greece via the southern route, across Iran, and avoid a hostile

The digital collections of the Greek State Archives offer a wealth of information to those of us interested in Greek genealogy.  As part of their online collection is the "Election Material From the Collection of Vlachoyiannis" .  This includes "General Election Lists" for each Municipality; recorded by community (city, village, settlement, etc.). You can view a scanned copy of each list, printed in the Greek language.  This is a GREAT resource, but very difficult to navigate for those who do not read Greek.  Each row includes:  Line # -  Given Name, Surname - Father's Name -  Age - Occupation. I have translated these pages and made them available in both Greek and English, doing my best to transcribe the information accurately.  I would always recommend viewing the original scanned copies (link below).    - To the best of my knowledge, these lists include all Males who were eligible to vote in the elections.   - Names can be listed in a

" Ancient Greek Dialect in Black Sea - Related to Days of Socrates and Plato " published in Hellas Frappe on Oct. 12, 2012. An isolated community near the Black Sea coast in a remote part of north-eastern Turkey has been found to speak a Greek dialect that is remarkably close to the extinct language of ancient Greece. As few as 5,000 people speak the dialect but linguists believe that it is the closest, living language to ancient Greek and could provide an unprecedented insight into the language of Socrates and Plato and how it evolved. The community lives in a cluster of villages near the Turkish city of Trabzon in what was once the ancient region of Pontus, a Greek colony that Jason and the Argonauts are supposed to have visited on their epic journey from Thessaly to recover the Golden Fleece from the land of Colchis (present-day Georgia). Pontus was also supposed to be the kingdom of the mythical Amazons, a fierce tribe of women who cut off their right breast

The digital collections of the Greek State Archives offer a wealth of information to those of us interested in Greek genealogy.  As part of their online collection is the "Election Material From the Collection of Vlachoyiannis" .  This includes "General Election Lists" for each Municipality; recorded by community (city, village, settlement, etc.). You can view a scanned copy of each list, printed in the Greek language.  This is a GREAT resource, but very difficult to navigate for those who do not read Greek.  Each row includes:  Line # -  Given Name, Surname - Father's Name -  Age - Occupation. I have translated these pages and made them available in both Greek and English, doing my best to transcribe the information accurately.  I would always recommend viewing the original scanned copies (link below).    - To the best of my knowledge, these lists include all Males who were eligible to vote in the elections.   - Names can be listed in a