Emilia Kamvysi has passed away at the age of 93. She had become the symbol of the solidarity of the Greek population in the face of the migration crisis.
She has a rather peaceful retirement, Emilia Kamvysi, in her little white house adorned with a rosebush. She likes to cook for her grandchildren, watch the news on TV and sit with her friends Maritsa and Efstratia on the village bench facing the sea. She doesn’t have a lot of money, she gets A monthly pension of 350 euros after a lifetime working on the farm, but she says she doesn’t need anything.
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It’s a retreat like so many others around the world, except we’re on Lesvos, the Greek island closest to the shores of Turkey, the gateway to Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees. So inevitably, life is not quite the same as elsewhere and in 2015 at the height of the migration crisis a photographer takes a picture that will change everything: in this photo, we see the three grandmothers on their bench with their canes, their black stockings and their floral dresses, but above all with a baby in Emilia’s arms to whom she gives the bottle. He is a Syrian refugee who arrived by boat with his mother a few hours earlier.
This image has gone around the world symbolizing a Greek population on the front line – and often quite alone – in the face of the migration crisis, also symbolizing the solidarity that always ends up emerging despite the logistical and economic problems posed by this influx of migrants in a country which was just recovering from a severe financial crisis.
A few months later, a group of Greek scholars and lawyers decided to nominate Emilia, Maritsa and Efstratia for the Nobel Peace Prize, and here are the grandmothers of Lesvos competing with the pope François or Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the end, they didn’t win (the Nobel went to the Colombian president that year for his efforts in the peace process with the Farc) but that’s almost good: what would she have done with this prize?, Emilia wonders in front of journalists from all over the world, who have come to meet her in her little white house. She tells them the story of her parents, Greeks settled on the Turkish island of Cunda who were persecuted, threatened with death when the war between Turkey and Greece broke out in 1922 and who left: “they fled on fishing boats” she says “with simple luggage of bundles of clothes and a sewing machine” and they came to Lesbos looking for a better future, just like the Syrian migrants a century later.
A few years ago Maritsa and Efstratia died, Emilia was the last of Lesbos’ grandmothers. She passed away yesterday at the age of 93 and her funeral will be celebrated on Monday March 13 on her island, of which she gave such a beautiful image. “We didn’t do much” she said, a little embarrassed by this belated notoriety, “we just offered love, because it was the only thing we had to give”.