Emmanuel (Manolis) Lisgos
Emmanuel Lisgos was born in the small town of Istrios on the island of Rhodes in 1912 and grew up at a time when the Dodecanese islands were under Italian occupation.
With the rise of Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism, active resistance became more pronounced throughout the Dodecanese after 1926.
It was during this period that Manoli became part of a clandestine organization dedicated to the national liberation of his homeland and union with Greece.
Press censorship, secret police, exclusion of Greek labor from public works, and uncultivated land for three years or more were all given to settlers from Italy. Schools were asked to teach Italian and the Greek Orthodox faith of most inhabitants was strongly discouraged for further Italian control.
These policies caused a great deal of Greek emigration from the islands. In the mid-1930s, Manoli’s situation became extremely dangerous and he had no alternative but to leave his homeland, his wife and their two children to emigrate to Adelaide, South Australia.
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Manoli served as a cook in the Australian Army in Darwin. With the end of World War II in 1945 he returned to Adelaide and in 1949 his family was able to join him where they settled in the working class suburb of Thebarton. Soon after, their son Philip and daughter Stamatia were born in the new country.
Manoli found work at the former South Australian hotel in North Terrace and worked his way up to becoming a lead chef in charge of food service preparations and overseeing kitchen operations. In her position, she was able to help many other newly arrived immigrants, especially those from South Rhodes, to obtain jobs as kitchen helpers.
Stamatis (Stan) Itsines
Stan Itsines was born in 1938 on the island of Kos in the Dodecanese, at a time when the devastating effects of World War II and the Nazis swept through Europe. Countless thousands of people across Eastern Europe and the Balkans were displaced and forced to seek refuge in refugee camps in the Middle East.
At the time, Stan’s father had a traditional mixed farm business on the outskirts of Kos town and during one of those German bombings on the island, Stan’s mother and sister were killed and the family home was completely left. destroyed. The family took refuge in the city of Kos while other Greek inhabitants of the Dodecanese found their way to British protection in Cyprus.
In 1944, the Germans removed residents from their homes in Kos and made the area a base that forced many to flee to Turkey. Stan’s father decided to leave his youngest son John with his wife’s sister in Kos and then took Stan and his other brother Con by boat to the Turkish city of Bodrum (ancient Greek city of Halicarnassus).
The Turks then moved them, as well as thousands of other refugees, to the Gaza Strip in Palestine, where the Greeks were placed in three refugee camps.
When World War II ended in 1945, the British government helped Greek refugees return to the island of Rhodes and from there to Kos. While he was in Rhodes, Stan’s father put him in an orphanage and from there a relative took him home. Stan and his family reunited on their home island of Kos a year later.
In 1964, he emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, where he met and married his wife Anna Stiliano, who was born in the cotton town of Biloela, Queensland, Australia, to immigrant parents from Mesanagros and Lahania on the island of Rhodes, Greece.
Triantaphils Psaras
It is difficult to migrate and leave your family behind to help improve financial circumstances. There is the trauma of having to leave your family behind, move from rural to suburban life, and work hard and endure on the farms and factories of Adelaide, South Australia.
World War II and its aftermath resulted in large-scale migrations and more debilitating changes to come. Triantafilos Psaras was one of those young people who was subjected to these forces that changed his life. To ensure the financial security of his family and ensure the future of his children, he emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, while his wife Despina remained in Lahania, Southern Rhodes to continue working in the fields and raising their young children alone.
Triantafilo is a role model of the traditional, hardworking and dedicated father who wanted to give his children a good education and the best of life so that they were free from limited opportunities. He wanted them to make something of themselves so they wouldn’t have to endure the same hardships as him.
Throughout the many hard and lonely years without her family by her side, she continued to work hard and save to send money to help pay for her children’s education and help make her world a happier place.
After twenty years, Triantafilo returned to the island of Rhodes and his family. Your hard work and sacrifice has reaped the rewards you set out to achieve and opened the door of opportunity for your children to realize their dreams.