The Aristotelis Orphanage

The Asia Minor catastrophe and the violent uprooting of hundreds of thousands of refugees from their homes in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace caused significant economic and social problems. One of the most urgent issues that the Greek state had to deal with the day after the arrival of one and a half million refugees was caring for tens of thousands of orphans. The Aristotelis Orphanage in Kalamaria was founded in 1926 and housed twenty thousand orphans in its almost sixty years of operation (until 1983). Most of the children were refugee children from Asia Minor or orphans from towns and villages in northern Greece who experienced the horrors of war in the turbulent decades that followed. In 1950, the School of Professions and Arts started operating within the institution with mechanical, carpentry, furniture, and electrical engineering departments. This school developed into one of the best in the country and offered countless children the supplies for a prosperous professional career.