Lountemis was born to a Greek family as Dimitrios " Takis " Balassoglou either in 1906 in Agia Kyriaki in Asia Minor or in 1912 in Constantinople . He was the only son among the five children of Grigoris Balassoglou ( who after fleeing Turkey and finding refuge in Greece changed it to Valassiadis ) and Domna Tsouflidi . His family came as refugees from Yalova after '' Greek genocide '' , and they initially settled in Aegina , then in Edessa and finally in the village Exaplatanos of Pella , where he lived from 1923 to 1932 when he moved to Kozani . He lived for a while in the state boarding house of Edessa . His family was wealthy , but bankrupted in the Greco-Turkish War ( 1919 – 22 ) and Lountemis had to work hard in his adolescence as a scullion , shoeblack , cantor , and teacher in villages of Almopia , and even as a foreman at the then under construction Gallikos river infrastructure works . In the 10th grade – of the six-grade secondary school of that time – he left school due to political reasons and he was expelled from all secondary schools of his country . ( His engagement in left-wing politics and his political activities from inside the lines of the Communist Party of Greece cost him his expulsion from the entire school system . ) Through an odyssey of successive resettlements , from Edessa to state boarding house in Kozani and then to Volos , following a wandering group of that time , he finally reached Athens and became a close connection of Kostas Varnalis , Angelos Sikelianos and Miltiadis Malakassis . The latter helped him to be appointed to the " Athenian Club " as a librarian in 1938 and financially recover . At the same time his friendship with professor of Philosophy Nikolaos Veis , would allow him to attend courses at the School of Philosophy of Athens . A lot of literary successes followed and he became a member of the Hellenic Association of Litterateurs , under the presidency of Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek genocide
Greek genocide
Menelaos Lountemis