Aimilia Kamvysi, the last survivor of the famous three “grannies of Lesvos”, passed away at the age of 93, it was announced on Sunday. She was one of the three “grandmothers of Sykamnia,” whose picture in the summer of 2015 amid the refugee crisis went viral worldwide.
The three grannies were taking care and feeding with a bottle a baby, the child of a refugee woman from Syria, who had just landed on the shore of the island of Lesvos together with thousands of other war refugees.
All three grannies, children of refugees from Moshonisi, Asia Minor, became a symbol of the solidarity of the people of Lesvos with the hundreds of thousands of Syrians refugees.
The “grannies of Lesvos” were visited and honored in November 2015 by the then President of the Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos and in August 2020 by the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou.
“Why do you say bravo, my son? What have we done?” they had told reporters who interviewed them on the day their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, in January 2016.
Of the three grannies of Sykamia, Maritsa Mavrapidou died in 2019 at the age of 92, followed by Efstratia Mavrapidou in 2022 at the age of 96.