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They imposed the principle of ethnic homogeneity instead. I.e., the people who did not speak the same language, profess the same religion and did not belong to the dominant nation were identified as potential enemies and therefore were subjected to persecution. This happened throughout the Balkans. Every country had this bitter experience.

The theme of the camp on the island of Trikeri is part of your doctoral dissertation. What exactly happened there?

My research covers a subsequent period, following the one described by Sis, after 1920, when displacements of people took place on Trikeri. The reason was that they had no Greek consciousness. This happened immediately after the Anatolian disaster (the end of the Greco-Turkish War - author’s note). The people were mostly Bulgarians from the region of Western Thrace whom the Greek authorities accused of cooperation with the Turkish authorities against the Greeks. It is noteworthy that in the majority of cases these allegations were unfounded.

This population was displaced away from the border areas, not only to Trikeri, but also in other places in mainland Greece. The whole process lasted for about 2-3 months. Bulgaria submitted a complaint about the events to the League of Nations and as a result, the people returned to their villages and the Greek authorities took care of them. The events are described by already late Bulgarian historian Staĭko Trifonov.

I would like to emphasize that these events took place in 1923, much later than the time described by Vladimir Sis.

Greece submitted a similar complaint but in the period before the establishment of the League of Nations. The claim was against Bulgaria, in connection with the deportation of Greeks from Eastern Macedonia, many of whom were forcibly displaced inside Bulgaria and died.

In all cases, the practice of deportation of "suspicious" populations from the border regions was widespread during the Balkan Wars and World War II. I am firm that it is unacceptable to compare the conditions of deportation to Nazi concentration camps but the people certainly were in a difficult situation. They were considered enemies and having returned to their home places, they left them because they felt like a "foreign body" among others. Of course, there were specific cases of physical extermination of populations. These were the genocide against Armenians, the national purges against Greeks in Asia Minor.

A Greek historian describes these events as "Auschwitz in motion." I.e. the people were displaced from their homes, they were forced to walk long distances and many of them died from the harsh conditions. All this happened in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In Greece, however, there were no such events.

The memories of the Balkan populations of these events are scary. Such are the disastrous results of the nationalist hysteria and the attempt of the Balkan countries to achieve ethnic homogeneity to the detriment of minority groups that lived on their territories.

I would like to emphasize the following: Very often the Balkan countries are subject to accusations on the part of West European countries about what happened. They deserve those criticisms but we must not forget that the same, and even more violent, events had occurred in Western Europe only a few centuries earlier, during the religious wars. The settling of accounts between them had happened at that time and after so many centuries they no longer remember the crimes they had committed.

That is why I say that we should leave these things behind and not use history to draw up political arguments. What we should do is strive to help the peoples of the Balkans to have a peaceful future.