THE PONTIAN GENOCIDE 1916-1923
Greek News, New York
May 15 2006
May 19 has been recognized by the Greek parliament as the day of
remembrance of the Pontian Greek Genocide by the Turks. There are
various estimates of the toll. Records kept mainly by priests show
a minimum 350,000 Pontian Greeks exterminated through systematic
slaughter by Turkish troops and Kurdish para-militaries. Other
estimates, including those of foreign missionaries, spoke of 500,000
deaths, most through deportation and forced marches into the Anatolian
desert interior. Thriving Greek cities like Pafra, Samsous, Kerasous,
and Trapezous, at the heart of Pontian Hellenism on the coast of
the Black Sea, endured recurring massacres and deportations that
eventually destroyed their Greek population.
The opening bell of the genocide came with the order in 1914 for
all Pontian men between the ages of 18 and 50 to report for military
duty. Those who “refused” or “failed” to appear, the order provided,
were to be summarily shot. The immediate result of this firman
(decree) was the murder of thousands of the more prominent Pontians,
whose name appeared on lists of “undesirables” already prepared by
the Young Turk regime.
Added thousands ended up in the notorious Labor Battalions (amele
taburu). In a precursor of what was to become a favorite practice in
Hitler’s extermination camps, Pontian men were driven from their homes
into the wilderness to perform hard labor and expire from exhaustion,
thirst, and disease. German advisors of the Turkish regime (what a
surprise!) suggested that Pontian populations be forced into internal
exile. This “advise” led directly to the emptying of hundreds of
Pontian villages and the forced march of women, children, and old
people to nowhere. The details of this systematic slaughter of the
Pontians by the Turks were dutifully recorded by both German and
Austrian diplomats.
The Pontians, unlike Greeks elsewhere in Asia Minor, did try to
organize armed resistance against their butchers. Pontian guerrilla
bands had appeared in the mountains of Santa as early as 1916. Brave
leaders, like Capitan Stylianos Kosmidis, even hoisted the flag of
independent Pontus in the hope of help from Greece and Russia (which
never arrived). But the struggle was unequal. The Turkish army,
assisted by the blood-thirsty Tsets, cuthroats of mostly Kurdish
extraction, attacked and destroyed undefended Pontian villages
in revenge.
On May 19, 1919, chief butcher Kemal himself disembarked at Samsous
to begin organizing the final phase of the Pontian genocide. Assisted
by his German advisers, and surrounded by his own band of killers —
monsters like Topal Osman, Refet Bey, Ismet Inonu, and Talaat Pasha —
the founder of “modern” Turkey applied himself to the destruction of
the Pontian Greeks. With the Greek army engaged in Anatolia, a new
wave of deportations, mass killings, and “preventative” executions
destroyed the remnants of Pontian Hellenism. The plan worked with
deadly precision. In the Amasia province alone, with a pre-war
population of some 180,000, records show a final tally of 134,000
people liquidated.
The memory of the Pontian Genocide is dedicated to all those in Europe
and the U.S. who shamelessly advocate admitting Turkey into the EU and
describe it as a “democracy.” They are all blind as they are shameless.
AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN ARCHIVES REVEAL THE CRIME
24 July 1909 German Ambassador in Athens Wangenheim to Chancellor
Bulow quoting Turkish Prime Minister Sefker Pasha: “The Turks have
decided upon a war of extermination against their Christian subjects.”
26 July 1909 Sefker Pasha visited Patriarch Ioakeim III and tells him:
“we will cut off your heads, we will make you disappear. It is either
you or us who will survive.”
14 May 1914 Official document from Talaat Bey Minister of the Interior
to Prefect of Smyrna: The Greeks, who are Ottoman subjects, and
form the majority of inhabitants in your district, take advantage
of the circumstances in order to provoke a revolutionary current,
favourable to the intervention of the Great Powers. Consequently, it
is urgently necessary that the Greeks occupying the coast-line of Asia
Minor be compelled to evacuate their villages and install themselves
in the vilayets of Erzerum and Chaldea. If they should refuse to be
transported to the appointed places, kindly give instructions to our
Moslem brothers, so that they shall induce the Greeks, through excesses
of all sorts, to leave their native places of their own accord. Do
not forget to obtain, in such cases, from the emigrants certificates
stating that they leave their homes on their own initiative, so that we
shall not have political complications ensuing from their displacement.
31 July 1915 German priest J. Lepsius: “The anti-Greek and
anti-Armenian persecutions are two phases of one programme – the
extermination of the Christian element from Turkey.
16 July 1916 German Consul Kuchhoff from Amisos to Berlin: “The entire
Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of
Kastanome has been exiled. Exile and extermination in Turkish are the
same, for whoever is not murdered, will die from hunger or illness.”
30 November 1916 Austrian consul at Amisos Kwiatkowski to Austria
Foreign Minister Baron Burian: “on 26 November Rafet Bey told me:
“we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians . . . on
28 November. Rafet Bey told me: “today I sent squads to the interior
to kill every Greek on sight.” I fear for the elimination of the
entire Greek population and a repeat of what occurred last year”
(meaning the Armenian genocide).
13 December 1916 German Ambassador Kuhlman to Chancellor Hollweg in
Berlin: “Consuls Bergfeld in Samsun and Schede in Kerasun report of
displacement of local population and murders. Prisoners are not kept.
Villages reduced to ashes. Greek refugee families consisting mostly
of women and children being marched from the coasts to Sebasteia. The
need is great.”
19 December 1916 Austrian Ambassador to Turkey Pallavicini to Vienna
lists the villages in the region of Amisos that were being burnt to
the ground and their inhabitants raped, murdered or dispersed.
20 January 1917 Austrian Ambassador Pallavicini: “the situation for
the displaced is desperate. Death awaits them all. I spoke to the
Grand Vizier and told him that it would be sad if the persecution of
the Greek element took the same scope and dimension as the Armenia
persecution. The Grand Vizier promised that he would influence Talaat
Bey and Emver Pasha.”
31 January 1917 Austrian Chancellor Hollweg’s report: “. . . the
indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element
as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The
strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the
interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them
to death, hunger and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted
and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being
repeated with the Greeks.
Thus, by government decree 1,500,000 Armenians and 300,000 Pontian
Greeks were annihilated through exile, starvation, cold, illness,
slaughter, murder, gallows, axe, and fire. Those who survived fled
never to return. The Pontians now lie scattered all over the world
as a result of the genocide and their unique history, language
(the dialect is a valuable link between ancient and modern Greek),
and culture are endangered and face extinction.
A double crime was committed – genocide and the uprooting of a people
from their ancestral homelands of three millenia. The Christian nations
were not only witnesses to this horrible and monstrous crime, which
remains unpunished, but for reasons of political expediency and self
interest have, by their silence, pardoned the criminal. The Ottoman
and Kemalist Turks were responsible for the genocide of the Pontian
people, the most heinous of all crimes according to international
law. The international community must recognise this crime.