Yiayia & Me
Tales of the Park Manor Sweet Shop: A Greek American Experience
By George Zimmar In 1953, my parents purchased a luncheonette on the corner of 75th and South Park Avenue (later named Martin Luther King Drive) in Chicago for about $7000. Actually, for the residents in the neighborhood it was a more than just a place to eat: It was...
Child abductions during WWII
Maybe Aspasia or her descendants are among the readers of this article. Maybe not. What is certain is that this archival material gives hope to anyone trying to discover more about family members and ancestors who were abducted during the dark times of the Second World War.
Calling All Young Greeks: Why and How You Should Explore Your Family History
By Alexandra Kiritsy Learning your personal family history can be an incredibly meaningful adventure. As the saying goes, you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you have been, and there is no better time to delve into your family’s past than as a young...
Traditional Greek Dances – An interview with Nikos Bariamis
By Alexandra Kiritsy & Gregory Kontos Alexandra: Yiayia & Me is all about encouraging and helping Greeks around the world to get involved with family history to whatever degree they’d like! We know and appreciate how people connect with their family heritage...
Traditional Greek Costumes – An interview with Nikos Bariamis
By Alexandra Kiritsy & Gregory Kontos Alexandra: Yiayia & Me is all about encouraging and helping Greeks around the world to get involved with family history to whatever degree they’d like! We know and appreciate how people connect with their family heritage...
Reconnection of the Gkounelas Family – 79 Years Later
A few weeks ago, on October 28th, like every year, Greece celebrated the “OXI” day. This year, however, caught me and my family by surprise! Attention: the following story has (surprisingly) nothing to do with COVID-19.
An Unexpected Journey: Tale of “Dimitri” and his abduction
By Alexandra Kiritsy Mysteries are contained within all of our genealogies. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to crack them, but all too frequently, the nature of time and space seem to veil the truth forever. Today on Yiayia & Me, we’d like to share one of these...
Thessaloniki – La Madre de Israel
By Alexandra Kiritsy & Gregory Kontos When Jewish colonists were brought to the newly founded city of Macedonia around 315 B.C., no one could have imagined that Thessaloniki’s history would be closely associated with Jewish history throughout the centuries. About...
Finding Yiayia’s “Pirates”
By Alexandra Kiritsy and Andrew Jendrzejewski Our biggest goal with “Yiayia & Me” is to spark curiosity in family history among Greeks. We simply hope to inspire individuals to spend time with their ancestors--of both the past and present--by learning about their...
Reflections Of My Homeland: The diary of a man from Palaia Fokaia, Asia Minor
By Alexandra Kiritsy Geia sas, everyone! We are very excited to bring you another article about life in Greek villages around the turn of the century. This week’s piece takes us to Asia Minor, where a man by the name of Theodoros Kalatzoglou once lived in a village...
Reflections Of My Homeland: An Account of Village Life in Geraki, Lakonia
Foreword by Alexandra Kiritsy I have always found imagining the world of my Greek yiayia, say, around the turn of the 20th century, to be a difficult task. Looking back at old black-and-white photographs of her often tricks my mind into thinking that her world was...
Introducing “Yiayia & Me”
By Alexandra Kiritsy Geia sas and welcome, everyone! Thank you for checking out our first "Yiayia & Me" article! Read on to learn more about this new platform! What is the goal of Yiayia & Me? Greg and I have been investigating our personal family...