"Better to go back and the Turks kill us than to hear such words."

Asia Minor refugees in Athens. Photo of the Red Cross, 1923
(source: Library of Congress)

In September 1922, the Turks invited the women of Livisi to prepare to leave supposedly for a few days. They allowed them to take from a single bundle a few things, only the essentials. Their men from twelve to sixty-five years of age were led to the depths of Turkey for extermination.

Theodora made her pack with some food and some essentials, got Anastasia, who was only forty days old, George, four years old, Jacob two years old, and together with grandmother Despina, the other women and children and the elderly people of the village. They were headed to the waterfront of Makri. They were put on an American cargo ship, which took them to Piraeus.

"I was a two year old child," Elder Jacob recounted, "my mother covered me in her dress and with my grandmother and aunts we went aboard for Greece, while my father was held captive by the Turks. When we landed at the port of Piraeus, despite my early childhood, I remember that we heard for the first time in our lives that someone was cursing God. Then my grandmother said: "From where did we come from? Better to go back and the Turks kill us than to hear such words. In Asia Minor we did not know such sin."

Grandma Despina and Doroula were very kind women. A saint was named after his mother. He learned from his mother and grandmother to respect the Priests, to pray, to repent, to fast, to do alms, to love God and people.

Source: Book "Saint David, the" Elder, the Euboean, the miraculous ". Version of the Holy Monastery of Saint David Gerontos, Lake Euboea 1996.