A letter from the Σύλλογος Προσφύγων Κοινότητος Σόμα (Μικράς Ασίας) = “Association of Refugees of the Community of Soma (Asia Minor)” — a recognized Greek society headquartered at Aspertou Street 10, Thessaloniki — dated July 4, 1927. Protocol No. 108. Addressed to “Mr. Lazaros Yannopoulos, New York.”
“We have the honor to inform you of the receipt of your letter of the 15th of last month with the [sum of] dollars therein.
The Administrative Council of our Association thanks you warmly for this generous contribution of yours, for your wishes, and for your efforts to enlighten our compatriots there [in New York] for the establishment and reinforcement of the Association.
With brotherly greetings.”
Signed by both the President and the General Secretary, over the official seal of the Association — patron feast: the Dormition of the Theotokos (August 15).
The letter places Lazaros in a previously-undocumented institutional role: US-side coordinator for the Soma refugee diaspora. Beyond his individual refugee-compensation claims and his Bronx parish church politics, he was actively organizing his fellow displaced Soma compatriots in New York to raise funds for the Thessaloniki-based Association of Soma Refugees. The phrase “your efforts to enlighten our compatriots there for the establishment and reinforcement of the Association” is a leadership acknowledgment, not a generic thank-you.
The 1927 contribution joins a broader pattern: Lazaros maintained connections to the Asia Minor refugee diaspora across multiple cities and institutions — the Soma Community Elders in Mytilene (1924); the Association of Refugees of Vryoula and the Smyrna Metropolitanate-in-exile in Athens (1924); the Eleni N. Zanni Orphanage in Piraeus (1926, also in the archive); the Thessaloniki-based Soma Refugees Association (this 1927 file); and the Pergamene Association in Athens (1925+, later carried forward by the “Attalos” Association into the late 1970s). The map of his diaspora correspondence covers all the major Greek-mainland refugee centers.