Remembering a Genocide through Klavdia’s “Asteromáta”
Between 1914 and 1923, an estimated 353,000 Pontic Greeks were killed in a campaign of persecution carried out by the Ottoman Empire and later by Turkish nationalist forces. Massacres, death marches, forced conversions, and cultural erasure marked a systematic effort to eliminate the Greek presence from the region of Pontus, along the southern coast of the Black Sea — a homeland of Greek communities for over 2,500 years.
The Pontic Greek Genocide unfolded in parallel with the Armenian and Assyrian genocides and has long been underrepresented in global historical narratives. Survivors were scattered across Greece, Russia, and the wider diaspora. In Greece, memory of the genocide was carried through oral histories, rituals, and songs, particularly in Pontic communities that sought to preserve their traditions despite displacement and trauma.
In 2025, this painful chapter resurfaced into international view through an unexpected medium: the Eurovision Song Contest. Representing Greece, singer Klavdia, herself of Pontic descent, performed the song “Asteromáta” (“Starry Eyes”) — a haunting ballad inspired by the silence of loss and the intergenerational weight of unspoken grief. Though the song doesn’t name the genocide directly, it evokes it powerfully: a mother calls out to her child lost in the stars, suspended between memory and mourning.
The song’s sparse instrumentation and poetic ambiguity allowed for wide emotional interpretation, but for many Greeks — and especially Pontic Greeks — it was immediately recognized as an act of remembrance. In interviews, Klavdia acknowledged her ancestral ties and her intent to give voice to stories often left untold.
In a time when historical trauma competes with cultural amnesia, “Asteromáta” resonated because it carried the sorrow of a people across borders and generations. It reminded Europe — and Greece itself — that the past is not buried, and that songs can speak when history is silenced.
Credit: Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons – File refugees at Aleppo LCCN2014715755.jpg
License: Public domain.(Wikimedia Commons)
