On 1922-08-30, the great massacre in Smyrna began. According to the information provided by El. Venizelos with his memorandum at the Paris Peace Conference, 1,694,000 Greeks lived in Asia Minor. In Thrace and the area of Constantinople 731,000. In the area of Trabzon 350,000 and in Adana 70,000. A total of 2,845,000 Greeks, who made up 20% of the region’s economically dominant population, had managed to preserve their cultural heritage despite being a minority in a hostile environment.
Around 1,200,000 people arrived in Greece. So almost 1,000,000 souls were left behind. Men, women, children, babies …. A genocide that was never recognized even by Greece itself. To hide all this bestiality even from the books of our history – see crowding.
And the biggest disaster happened afterwards. Because after the murder came the uprooting.
For the first time in human history, not only were people expelled from their place of birth and origin but they were barred from returning.
They could not go to get their things, to see their houses again, to look for their own, to bury their dead.
They tried to remove anything reminiscent of those who lived in these places.And the worst thing is that the whole supposedly civilized world not only did not speak but rallied with an uncivilized and uneducated people like the Turks.A people responsible for the genocide of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians. A people that years later is responsible for the atrocities in Cyprus, where genocide took place there as well.
But we do not forget. We know the story from the parents from the grandparents. Who were the lucky ones who came here and rebuilt civilization. They passed their culture on to us.
A century since the genocide of Pontus and Asia Minor and we do NOT FORGET !!!!! And we will pass on customs, traditions and culture to our children.
“The Great Fire of Smyrna is the name commonly given to the fire that ravaged Izmir/Smyrna from 13 to 17 September 1922. Turkish armed forces systematically burned the city and killed Greek and Armenian inhabitants. This is based on extensive eyewitness evidence from Western troops sent to Smyrna during the evacuation, foreign diplomats/relief workers based at Smyrna and Turkish sources.” – www.Wikipedia.org
The resulting 35mm edited nitrate film was hidden in my grandmother’s apartment in NYC for 60 years. I was lucky to transfer it to digital before it completely disintegrates. -Robert Davidian 5 March 2008
In this illustrated lecture, Prof. Richard Hovannisian discusses the important role of Smyrna (Izmir) in modern Armenian history and the inferno that engulfed the city in September 1922.
