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CHAPTER 9 – THE GREEK CASE: VENEZIS 
280 
 
 
Elias Venezis 
Elias Venezis (the pen name of Elias Mellos) was born in Ayvali in 1904
1
, the fourth 
of seven children. At that time Ayvali (Ayvalık of modern Turkey
2
) had an almost 
exclusively Greek population with only few Turks in administrative posts.
3
Both 
Ayvali and the neighbouring Moschonisia, modern Cunda or Alibey, were 
unfortunately among the areas whose population was among the greatest victims of 
the war and the uprooting which followed. Conditions had been disturbed since 
before the First World War and pressure on the Christian populations had led to a 
large proportion of them taking refuge in the offshore islands which were already 
under Greek control. The whole of Venezis’s family except for his father and his 
sister, Agapi, moved to Mytilini in 1914 where Venezis studied in the High School. 
Although he was born into a comfortable middle class family, the hardships, which 
followed the exile of the family, obliged him to work in a bakery while still at 
school. In 1919 the family was reunited in Ayvali where Venezis completed his 
secondary education. As soon as he finished school he was appointed assistant 
1
Karvelis, ii, 33-34. Venezis is not an invented name as the author’s paternal grand father was called Dimitris 
Venezis, a native of Cephalonia who had established himself in Ayvali after 1821. Mellos was a nickname given 
to the author’s father. Venezis’s mother was from a landowning family originally from Mytilini. There are doubts 
about the date of birth of Elias Venezis. He was probably born in 1898 but when he arrived in Greece he had no 
papers with him like most of the refugees. 
2
Ayvalık was known as Ayvali in colloquial Greek but was ‘translated’ into Kydoniai officially (kydoni being 
the Greek for a quince). It had been established as an exclusively Christian settlement in the late eighteenth 
century and was widely known for its cultural institutions and more specifically the Academy of Kydoniai. 
Extensive bibliography on the history of Ayvali in Tenekidis, 93 
3
Tenekidis, 93 

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