Two sources on 1922–1923: family memoir versus museum placard
History exam, source comparison. Candidates get two short sources on the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the 1923 population exchange. Source A, a family memoir: «Η γιαγιά μου έφυγε από τη Σμύρνη με μια βάρκα. Πήρε ένα μπολ, μια κουβέρτα και τα χαρτιά του πατέρα της. Δεν μιλούσε γι’ αυτό για πενήντα χρόνια.» Source B, a museum placard: «Το 1923, με τη Συνθήκη της Λωζάνης, περίπου 1,6 εκατομμύρια άνθρωποι ανταλλάχθηκαν. Η έκθεση παρουσιάζει την καθημερινή ζωή των προσφύγων.» A candidate says Source A is “more reliable because it is personal” and Source B is “neutral”. The task asks them to compare the two as memory constructions and to plan a five-minute presentation for a German–Greek school project.
1. Compare the purposes and truth-claims of Sources A and B, and correct the candidate’s ranking of their reliability.
Read the worked answer
Source A (memoir) is a reconstructed personal memory. Its truth-claim is experiential: what one family underwent, and what was not spoken. The detail of the bowl, blanket and father’s papers is metonymic; the fifty years of silence is itself evidence of trauma and of family memory work. It is selective and mediated by the granddaughter’s narration, so it is not “raw” access to 1922.
Source B (placard) is an institutional synthesis. Its truth-claim is aggregate and legal: the 1923 Lausanne exchange, an approximate figure (about 1.6 million), and a theme (“daily life of refugees”). It is not “neutral” just because it uses numbers; it selects, rounds, and frames. The figure is an estimate and should be presented as such.
Correcting the candidate: “more reliable because personal” confuses authenticity with accuracy. For the question “how did one family experience displacement?”, A is more informative; for “what legal framework and scale?”, B is more reliable. Neither is reliable for the other question. The candidate should ask “reliable for what?” rather than rank the sources globally. A personal source can be mistaken about dates; an institutional source can be accurate about treaties and silent about grief.
2. Outline a five-minute presentation for a German–Greek school project that uses both sources without flattening either.
Read the worked answer
Structure (5 min, two slides, audience aged 16–17):
- 0:00–0:40 - Hook: show the object from Source A (a bowl) and ask: “What can an object remember that a treaty cannot?” State thesis: family memory and institutional history answer different questions.
- 0:40–2:00 - Context: one timeline slide: 1922, September 1922 Smyrna, 1923 Lausanne exchange, approximate 1.6 million. Flag the number as an estimate. Keep it to three dates.
- 2:00–3:20 - Close reading of A: read the bowl/blanket/papers sentence and the fifty-year silence. Ask what the silence does: it is not empty; it is a form of memory.
- 3:20–4:20 - Close reading of B: show how the placard turns experience into a category (“refugees”) and a number. Ask what is gained (scale, legal context) and lost (singularity, voice).
- 4:20–5:00 - Synthesis: return to the hook. Conclude that using both is not “mixing emotion and fact” but triangulating; end with one open question for the audience.
Avoid: do not call A “authentic” and B “bureaucratic” as a moral hierarchy; do not use the 1.6 million as exact; do not let the family story stand for all refugees. The presentation should name the selection in each source.