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The Pontian Genocide 1916-1923

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  • The Pontian Genocide 1916-1923

    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.
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