Paolo Scagliarini, from Bari, spoke about his family’s history on the program “Our Global Voice” with Dimitris Kontogiannis. His family fled Smyrna during the Smyrna Catastrophe, later moved to Rhodes, and eventually returned to Italy in 1946–1947, following the Dodecanese incorporation into Greece.
Mr Scagliarini, whose grandmother was Greek from Smyrna and who serves as a board member of the Institute of Greek Culture in Bari, shared lesser-known aspects of this history. Among them, he referred to the rescue of 3,000 Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna by an Italian Catholic pastor, as well as to Italian refugees from regions of the Ottoman Empire who later settled in refugee housing in Bari and still speak Greek.
He also spoke movingly about the disappointment of his 92-year-old father, who, during a visit to Rhodes περίπου ten years ago, was not even allowed by the current tenant to see the courtyard of the house where he had lived for several years.