100 Years Later: The Greek Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1923
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) officially recognized the Ottoman Greek Genocide as genocide in 2007, almost one hundred years later [...]
Our time has come to disperse like wildflower seeds in the wind. We are the last storytellers and children of the Ancients, their legacy and their accomplishments.
The men and women have been separated. Many men were sent to the interior. Women clutching their babies, even in death, have walked miles. The elders have fallen by the roadside. The children, oh, the sweet children, their eyes are glazed with fear, their words lost, and, yet, they see a butterfly and for one moment, they smile. If only … well, the time has come to share our secret.
Our secret is one of western civilization, we protected the legacy of the Ancients. It is their spirit, their legacy that demonstrates human accomplishments defy the ages and that in a democracy, people thrive and achieve.
The legends of the Ancient Greeks of Asia Minor and Pontos which we protected so honestly and devoutly include legends in mythology – the Amazon women fighter and the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece; and legends in expanding the knowledge of humankind – the first philosopher, Thales; the first scientist Anaximander who showed us the sun and the system of stars and planets and who was even the first to create a map of the world; Anaximenes who explained air; the world traveler, Hecateus; Hippodamos, who showed us how to build villages with wide straight streets with a city center and even how to reward inventors for their ideas; the architect Isidoros who helped build the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and who identified the the T-square and the string parable; and, wise Heraclitus, who right now is so important, Heraclitus shared the understanding that change is constant.
Change is constant. Our culture has been destroyed. I don’t know where we will go – if we survive. I hope some of us will, and, like a seed taken by the wind, I hope our culture will be reborn, revitalized and blossom once more.
We are at the quay in Smyrna. The waters boil as though Poseidon is angry. Yet, he is prepared to carry as many of us as possible to safety. The fires are burning. The wind is hungry. One lashes at the other, feeding on the fear and destruction, until there is only one, with only one outcome, death.
The fires are closer now. The smell of burning flesh is overwhelming. Our humanity is disappearing before my eyes. I write faster so that perhaps our story will reach another shore, another day to tell the world who we are, our legacy.
I close now. My time is near to either die or survive. I wrap this story in a bottle and hope you understand that it is not one individual who does evil, it is many. To ward off this evil, one must make noise and take action to protect the higher knowledge and achievements of every culture and society.
I feel the fire now. The soldiers are shooting those who attempt to seek shelter in the water, to calm their burns or even those seeking to break free of the quay for surely there is cool air not far away.
We will survive. This I do know. We will live another day to share our story, our culture, our ancestors – the Ancients.
“By 1923, out of approximately 2 million Greeks living in Asia Minor at the beginning of World War I, more than 700,000 perished, and over 1.1 million were uprooted prior and during the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey.”
The Greek Christians who survived, almost 1.5 million people, were relocated to mainland Greece or became refugees in Europe, Russia and the United States.
Included in the public dialogue are Ronald Levitsky, an award winning teacher and the recipient of the 2006 Aharonian Award from the Genocide Education Project; Dr. Constantine Hatzidimitriou, Queens Director of School Improvement for New York City’s Department of Education and an Associate Professor at St. John’s University; and Dan Georgakas, Director of Greek Studies Project, Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Queens College, City University of New York. A significant contributor who has since passed is the late Dr. Harry J. Psomiades, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Queens College and the Graduate School of the City Univeristy of New York.
AMPHRC now has two teaching guides available: The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks 1914- 1923 and Hellenism of Asia Minor and Pontos. Each is presenting history documented through countless personal testimonies, diplomatic notes, archived letters and photographs that are providing a window into what is known quietly as the Great Catastrophe or the Greek genocide for scholars.
The teaching guides are appropriate for elementary school students to adults answering the questions:
Who are the elders shining a light on man’s inhumanity to man?
How could such a tragedy be forgotten?
Included in the AMPHRC teaching guide The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks 1914-1923 is a poem, by an unknown author, who wrote of Smyrna, one of the most cosmopolitan multicultural dynamic cities in the Ottoman Empire before and after its destruction.
“The Martyred City”
Glory and Queen of the Island Sea
Was Smyrna, the beautiful city,
and fairest pearl of the Orient she –
O Smyrna, the beautiful city!
Heiress of countless storied ages,
Mother of poets, saints and sages,
Was Smyrna, the beautiful city!
Silent and dead are church bell ringers
Of Smyrna, the Christian City,
The music silent and dead the singers
Of Smyrna, the happy city;
And her maidens, pearls of the Island seas
Are gone from the marble palaces
Of Smyrna, enchanting city!
She is dead and rots by the Orient’s gate,
Does Smyrna, the murdered city,
Her artisans gone, her streets desolate –
O Smyrna, the murdered city!
Her children made orphans, widows her wives
While under her stones the foul rate thrives –
O Smyrna, the murdered city!
(From The Blight of Asia, by George Horton, Consul-General of the United States, 1926)
The teaching guide then instructs the students to write their own poem after reading the historical material. The power of storytelling illuminates human accomplishments and human suffering while demonstrating through the creative process how to live, despite the horrors.
Coinciding at the same time, there is a newly released exceptionally well done documentary film of the disappearance of the people and cosmopolitan culture of Smyrna by filmmaker Maria Iliou, Smyrna: The Desruction of a Cosmopolitan City 1900 – 1922 that is now available on DVD.
As one explores this rarely mentioned history, there are remarkable tales of resilience and success among the Greek diaspora of Asia Minor and Pontos.
A son of a shipping entrepreneur of Smyrna, later a refugee in Greece became one of the wealthiest shipping magnates in the world and later married the iconic American Jacqueline Kennedy. Who is this man? Aristotle Onassis.
Mavropoulos hopes that people will study and learn the history and contributions of the Greeks of Asia Minor and Pontos – especially their Ionian dialect that was preserved; their resilience after years of hardships and slavery; and, even the dances, connecting the villagers together.
When asked to explain the meaning of the dance, Mavropoulos says,
“They danced the ancient ways in the circles, under the Turkish occupation. They danced in small circles, protecting each other. Everybody is together, close and together. They do the same thing. It goes back to the birth of Zeus.”
Marvropoulos explained the story of the birth of Zeus. Kronus, the father of Zeus, knew that his wife Rhea was to give birth and knew that the child would one day take over the leadership. Kronus wanted to kill Zeus. So Rhea went to Crete to escape. The Ancients knew they needed to hide the cries of childbirth to protect the baby from the omniscient Kronus. So they danced a war like dance and made so much noise with their spears, arrows and shields that Kronus couldn’t hear the cries during the birth of Zeus.
Mentioning the importance of dance, brings a new perspective to the dance of Zorba, the Greek.
One person, one protector of a past culture, legacy, language or truth killed unjustly is one too many. Trying to erase an entire culture, a faith, an ethnic community by wholesale massacres, starvation, or forced migration is beyond human comprehension.
Yet, it is the spirit of the contributions made by humans with both good and evil intentions to civilization that are impossible to erase. Perhaps the story of Kronus and Zeus leaves behind an important message.
The Greeks of Asia Minor and Pontos are beginning to tell their story, thanks to their resilience, drive to survive, and finally, peace of mind to be able speak of the tragedy of the Greek genocide.
In life there are constant hardships, threats, and, injustices. Yet, there are just as many legacies of human accomplishments and justice to show how to overcome the hardships and be courageous enough to shine light on the truth and in the end, like the Ancients, dance.
By Keri Douglas, writer/photographer, Washington, DC. Copyright protected.
All rights reserved.
For more information on AMPHRC and to order the teaching guides, please visit their web site at www.hellenicresearchcenter.org.
Note: The art work on the cover of the teaching guide The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks 1914-1923 is done by Efi Mavridis of Kozani, Greece. The painting is an illustration of the stories her grandparents, survivors of the Pontian Greek genocide, shared with her when she was a child.
* One of the assignments in the teaching guide is to write a poem. A Message in the Bottle, One Hundred Years Later is a fictional story in response to reading historical records of the Greek genocide and especially the destruction of Smyrna. Readers are welcome to share their poetry and prose below after reading about the Greek genocide.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!
Donate to Support Us
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
Save SaveOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
The sad reality about the United States of America is that in a matter of a few hundreds years it managed to rewrite its own history into a mythological fantasy.The concepts of liberty, freedom and free enterprise in the “land of the free, home of the brave” are a mere spin. The US was founded and became prosperous based on two original sins: firstly, on the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their land by European colonialists; secondly, on slavery.This grim reality is far removed from the fairy tale version of a nation that views itself in its ...
During World War II, Japan’s imperialist military invaded Northeast China and afterward spread throughout Southeast Asia, then on to an ill-fated attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese crimes were many during the war and included the coerced services of ianfu (comfort women) for Japanese troops, slave labor, and experimentation on living humans.Today Japanese right-wingers clamor for a re-expansion of Japanese militarism; prime minister Abe Shinzo pays visits to a shrine venerating Japanese dead — among them war criminals; the Diet demonstrates belligerence toward North Korea, a country Japan had formerly occupied; Okinawans’ (Japanese living on the southern archipelago) call for the removal of ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
The West has a black history in the middle east that must be recognised. In 1916, Arabs joined the allied forces but deceived.The victorious western powers divided the region as they wished without any consideration to the peoples’ will. Then completed this crime by planting the state of Israel, which since day one spread state terrorism throughout the region.The West supported Israel and defied the international law set by the West. Our part of the world continued to live in a climate of war, militarisation and tension because of this. In this respect, the West practised and still the most ...
Unfathomable as that may appear, yes, it was quite possible for the second-ranking slaughterhouse in Europe in recent memory to have slipped off the radar screen. Even such a renowned authority as Professor Gideon Greif is having an exceptionally difficult time of it in trying to put it back on.Precisely because it has not been the theme of any Hollywood spectaculars, Jasenovac does not attract any school excursions and textbooks are largely silent about it. Some background information on Jasenovac therefore seems like a good place to start.The Jasenovac death camp (1941 – 1945) is inextricably bound up with the ...
Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis points out the latest travesty of the Western media: 59,000 stories on Auschwitz, three on Jasenovac. As if the third-largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Europe simply never existed. Franjo Tudjman certainly thought so, and it appears the current Croatian leadership shares his "historical" perspective.Contemporary German estimates of Serbs murdered by the Ustasha (in Jasenovac and elsewhere) ranged as high as 750,000. Wiesenthal center uses the number of 600,000. Serbian researchers have spoken of up to 700,000 victims. Modern revisionists, Croat and otherwise, talk of 30-100,000, at most. Among them is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which ...
Israel’s Maariv newspaper has revealed that the government of the Zionist state is planning to drop a political bombshell in the coming weeks by presenting a bill in the Knesset (parliament) calling for the annexation of land occupied since 1967. It is likely to have the support of the majority of Knesset members. The newspaper added that the right wing has chosen this time for the move ahead of the US presidential election; America, it is believed, will be too preoccupied to care about what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories.Preliminary talks about a first stage have been held, ...
Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
Over the past several years, analysts and commentators have noticed a rising tide of domestic support for the Croatian homegrown Nazi movement of the Second World War, the Ustashe, which actively exterminated Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the territory it controlled from 1941-45. Far from condemning this alarming development, the Croatian government, the European Union, and non-state actors within it have tacitly and actively supported the rising tide of sympathy towards the Ustashe.This disconnect between the ostensible “European values” of human rights and tolerance that the European Union claims to represent, and its tacit support of trends towards extremist politics ...
The world has suddenly realised that there is a “refugee crisis”. There are more refugees now than at any time since World War II. The number has grown three-fold since the end of 2001. The problem is treated as if it arose just recently, but it has been a long time coming. The pressure has been building and building until it has burst the dams of wilful ignorance.Death and despair has migrated to the doorsteps of Europe. But tens of millions of people do not simply abandon home and native land for an insecure dangerous future of desperate struggle. The ...
The current Greek population in Turkey is estimated at fewer than 2,000. But this population decline was not due to natural causes; the Greek community has become nearly extinct due to many state-sponsored attacks and pressure.The largest attacks took place during the last years of the Ottoman Empire with pogroms and discrimination continuing until the present day.In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) announced that “the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.”The destruction of Greek heritage and institutions, including schools, continued ...
The ‘mainstream’ Western media is, almost by definition, the last place to consult for honest reporting of Western crimes. Consider the appalling case of Yemen which is consumed by war and an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.Since March 2015, a ‘coalition’ of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, and supported by the US, Britain and France, has been dropping bombs on neighbouring Yemen. The scale of the bombing is indicated in a recent article by Felicity Arbuthnot – in one year, 330,000 homes, 648 mosques, 630 schools and institutes, and 250 health facilities were destroyed or damaged. The stated aim of ...
A massive destruction of the Ottoman (Orthodox Christian) Armenian population in 1915−1916 is probably the greatest atrocity committed during the WWI and for sure a first 20th century case of the genocide as up to 1.500.000 ethnic Armenians were executed by the Ottoman authorities and their collaborators (the Kurds). As a consequence, the survivors are scattered across the globe. Today it is already a century old event, but the issue of the 1915−1916 Armenian Genocide is undoubtedly still alive and divisive political issue firstly between the Armenians and the Turks[1] but also and among the western “liberal democracies” on the ...
The political situation in Turkey is clearly dramatic, but it is also equally complicated. Turkish President Erdogan has succeeded in securing levels of power unique in the nation′s history. But is this situation really unique? No – for 15 years, the father of the nation Ataturk ruled alone over the early Republic, which was a one-party nation at the time. Only his untimely death in 1938 deprived him of that power.Up to that point, Ataturk alone ruled over every conceivable dimension of domestic and foreign policy. Even clothing and music were tailored to his ideas. The aim was the creation ...
Most people have no idea of who is pictured above, but you should. The sight of this man should cause a similar revulsion to that of seeing Mussolini, Mao, Stalin or Hitler, as he committed an African genocide that resulted in the killing of over 10 million people in the Congo.His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.Most of the people never learned about him in school, and have also most likely never heard about him in the media either. This is because he’s not included in the popular narrative of oppression (which includes things like U.S. slavery and the ...
Two decades later Bosnia is still suffering the consequences. ISIS has declared the Balkans the next front for the Islamic Caliphate, and in remote mountain villages, Muslims are already flying the ISIS flag.Central Bosnia in 2015Russia Insider (h/t Maksim) The Balkans is the latest arena where the West is trying to circumcise any attempt of Russia to regainits influence. This anti-Serbian resolution and initiative is the part of the broader strategy and the latest Western attempt to demonize Serbs and delegitimize pro-Russian Republic of Srpska (Serbian part of Bosnia) in an effort to forcefully centralize Bosnia and give the driving seat to ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
What is wrong with the American people? After several years of horrific policy toward the waking world, democracy’s standard bearers seem to be drowning in a lake of selfishness. Distracted, apathetic, or simply dumbed and numbed by unrelenting propaganda, the most admired society on Earth has turned to a wriggling mush of diverging ideals. I fear that American have become what we ultimately deplored, just another despicable cultural hegemony. Here’s a short brief on the matter.A recent article by James Carden at The Nation prompted me to discuss this unsavory truth today. The title of the piece, “Trump’s Syria Policy: ...
Historical research into the Nazi era rarely throws up many surprises any more. German historian Stefan Ihrig, however, is an exception to this rule. By studying long-published sources, he has uncovered the fascination that Ataturk's modern Turkey held for the German far right, which has been seriously underestimated until now and which set an example for Hitler and the National Socialists.From a right-wing viewpoint, what Ataturk had achieved was an unattainable goal for Weimar-era Germany. Using force of arms, he had managed to reverse the Treaty of Sevres, which had been forced on his country by the Entente in 1920, ...
Marvropoulos explained the story of the birth of Zeus. Kronus, the father of Zeus, knew that his wife Rhea was to give birth and knew that the child would one day take over the leadership. Kronus wanted to kill Zeus. So Rhea went to Crete to escape. The Ancients knew they needed to hide the cries of childbirth to protect the baby from the omniscient Kronus. So they danced a war like dance and made so much noise with their spears, arrows and shields that Kronus couldn’t hear the cries during the birth of Zeus.
