Elementary schools in smyrna ga: Uh oh. We’re very sorry.

Massacre and fire

On September 9, the Turkish army led by Mustafa Kemal entered Smyrna. Kemal solemnly announced that every Turkish soldier who harmed the civilian population would be shot. According to the testimony of the American consul George Horton, on September 9, when the Turks entered the city, it went relatively calmly: in the morning the Greek gendarmerie maintained order in the city, which transferred its functions to the Turkish troops that entered. However, in the evening, robberies and murders began, in which local Muslims and partisans took an active part. Then the Turks cordoned off the Armenian quarter and began the systematic extermination of the Armenians. On September 13, Turkish soldiers doused and set fire to many buildings in the Armenian quarter, waiting for a time when strong winds were blowing from the Muslim quarter. Then they began to pour gasoline on other places in the Christian-European part (in particular, in front of the American consulate). Massacres and fires were going on throughout the city and were accompanied by brutal tortures: for example, the girls’ breasts were cut off after repeated rapes. Fleeing from the fire, most of the Christian residents crowded on the embankment. Turkish soldiers cordoned off the embankment, leaving the refugees without food and water. Many died of hunger and thirst, others committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea. To drown out the screams of perishing Christians, a Turkish military band was constantly playing. All this happened in full view of the Allied navy, which stood in the harbor without interfering.

Hieromartyr Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Smyrna

Among those killed by the Turks was Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna. Chrysostom, who refused to leave the city, was handed over to the Turkish crowd by the commander Nureddin Pasha. He was beaten, poked with knives, his beard was pulled out, his eyes were gouged out, his ears and nose were cut off, until he died (according to other sources, he was shot out of pity by a certain Cretan Turk). All this happened in front of the French soldiers, whom the commander forbade to interfere. Subsequently, Chrysostomos was canonized as a saint. Of the two elders who accompanied Chrysostom, one was hanged, while the Turks killed the other, tying his legs to a car and dragging him around the center of Smyrna.

Some sources blame the fire on Greeks and Armenians. On September 17, Mustafa Kemal sent a telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs with instructions on how to “comment” on the events. The telegram states the following version: the city was set on fire by the Greeks and Armenians, who were encouraged to do so by Metropolitan Chrysostomos, who claimed that the burning of the city was a religious duty of Christians. The Turks did everything to save him. The same Kemal said to the French admiral Dumesnil: “We know that there was a conspiracy. We even found in Armenian women everything necessary for arson … Before our arrival in the city, in the temples they called for a sacred duty – to set fire to the city. The French journalist Bertha Georges-Gauly, who covered the war in the Turkish camp and arrived in Smyrna after the events, wrote: “It seems reliable that when the Turkish soldiers were convinced of their own helplessness and saw how the flames engulfed one house after another, they were seized by insane fury and they destroyed the Armenian quarter, from where, according to them, the first arsonists appeared. This version has since become official in Turkey. However, the well-known Turkish historian Falih Ryfky Atay names the Turkish commander Nureddin Pasha as the culprit of the fire, resolutely rejecting the official Turkish version. Mustafa Kemal himself, watching the fire, said:

“We have before us a sign that Turkey has been cleansed of traitors and foreigners. From now on, Türkiye belongs to the Turks. »

Evacuation of Christians from Smyrna

1922. Burning Smyrna

The Turks first blocked the harbor of Smyrna with warships, but then, under pressure from the Western powers, they allowed the evacuation, except for men from 17 to 45 (according to other sources from 15 to 50) years old, who were declared interned and subject to deportation to the interior to forced labor, “which was seen as a sentence of lifelong servitude to abusive masters, ending in mysterious death.” The deadline for evacuation was given until September 30th. After that day, all those who remained were also subject to deportation for forced labor.

Despite the fact that there were many ships of various allied powers in the harbor, most of the ships, referring to neutrality, did not take the Greeks and Armenians, who were forced to flee from the fire and the Turkish troops. Asa Jennings, an American pastor and employee of the YMCA, played an important role in organizing the evacuation. It was thanks to his efforts that on September 23, 1922, a hastily assembled Greek flotilla arrived at the port under the protection of American ships. Japanese ships dumped all their cargo in order to take on board as many refugees as possible. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, some 400,000 refugees from Smyrna were registered as receiving Red Cross assistance.

Consequences

Refugees from Smyrna

The fire destroyed the entire city except for the Muslim and Jewish quarters. Hundreds of houses, 24 churches, 28 schools, bank buildings, consulates, and hospitals were destroyed in the fire. The number of those killed in different sources varies from 60 thousand to 260 thousand. According to Rudolf Rummel, the average figure is 183,000 Greeks and 12,000 Armenians. According to Gilles Milton, 100,000 people died in the massacre, and another 160,000 men were deported to the interior of Anatolia. Most of them died along the way. Winston Churchill wrote in connection with the fate of Smyrna:

“Kemal celebrated his triumph by reducing Smyrna to ashes and exterminating the entire local Christian population. »

In Greece, these events caused a political crisis: there was an uprising in the army, and King Constantine was forced to abdicate. By the verdict of the tribunal, five ministers were declared the main culprits of the defeat and shot. In October, during the negotiations in Mudanya, a truce was reached between the Kemalists and the allies. After the war, in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne, a Greek-Turkish population exchange was carried out, and almost all Greeks left Izmir. The destruction of the indigenous Christian population of the city and the exchange of population became the final phase of the process of liquidation of Christians in Asia Minor, carried out in the Ottoman Empire during the last decades of its existence.

Read more here

Massacre in Smyrna | it’s.

.. What is the Massacre at Smyrna?

Fire in Smyrna on September 14, 1922

September 13-14, 1922 Buildings on fire and people trying to escape

Massacre in Smyrna (the event is also known as Great Fire in Smyrna ) – the final episode of the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922 that took place in September 1922. On September 9, Turkish troops under the command of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk entered Smyrna (modern Izmir), after which the massacre of the city’s Christian population (Greeks and Armenians) began ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]} . On September 13, a fire broke out in Smyrna, which lasted several days and destroyed the Christian part of the city. Some 200,000 people died in the massacre and subsequent events. The remaining Christians were forced to leave Smyrna. After that, the traditional Hellenistic appearance of the city changed, it became almost completely Turkish and Muslim.

Prehistory

Smyrna in the late 19th — early 20th centuries

Main article: Smyrna

Embankment of Smyrna at the beginning of the 20th century

Smyrna is one of the ancient cities of the Mediterranean basin. In the Ottoman Empire, Smyrna was the capital of a special pashalik, and since 1864, the Aydin vilayet. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Christians continued to make up the majority of the city’s population, so Muslims called it “Gyaur Izmir” (“Unfaithful Smyrna”) ^{[7] [8]} . In 1890, the population of Smyrna was 210,000 people, of which 107,000 Greeks, 52,000 Muslims (no nationalities defined), 23,000 Jews, 12,000 Armenians, 6,500 Italians, 2,500 French, 2,200 Austrians, 1,500 English (mostly from Malta), etc. There were more than 40 mosques in the city, 13 Orthodox, 4 Catholic, 3 Protestant and 3 Armenian churches, 6 synagogues, several Christian monasteries, there were many schools founded by Christians, of which the Evangelical School was the most popular »Greek learned society, which had a library and a museum of antiquities. Smyrna was divided into two main parts: the Frankish (upper) city, distinguished by cleanliness and well-being, and the Turkish (lower) city, distinguished by neglect. Between them was the Jewish quarter. The best part of Smyrna was its embankment (Marina), built up with rich houses of European architecture ^[9] .

Data on the ethnic composition of Smyrna in 1922 before the massacre are contradictory. According to various sources, Greeks made up half or more than half of the population ^{[10] [11] [12]} . The second largest ethnic group was the Turks. In addition, Armenian and Jewish communities and citizens (subjects) of European states lived in the city.

Greco-Turkish War

Main article: Second Greco-Turkish War

As a result of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, on May 15, 1919, Smyrna was occupied by Greek troops in accordance with Article 7 of the Armistice of Mudros. According to the Sevres Peace Treaty of 1920, she was to withdraw to Greece. However, Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal did not recognize the treaty. The occupation of Smyrna is considered the event that started the Turkish War of Independence. After the victory at Dumlupinar at the end of August 1922, the Turkish army broke through the Greek positions. On September 6, the retreating Greek army entered Smyrna. A day later, she completed the evacuation, which required all available ships. Meanwhile, in Smyrna, in addition to the local Greek and Armenian population, a large number of Greek refugees from the regions of Ionia occupied by the Turks accumulated.

Course of events

Massacre and fire

Bodies of Greeks killed in Smyrna

On September 9, the Turkish army led by Mustafa Kemal entered Smyrna. Kemal solemnly announced that every Turkish soldier who harmed the civilian population would be shot ^[3] . According to the testimony of the American consul George Horton, on September 9, when the Turks entered the city, it went relatively calmly: in the morning the Greek gendarmerie maintained order in the city, which transferred its functions to the Turkish troops that entered. However, in the evening, robberies and murders began, in which local Muslims and partisans took an active part. Then the Turks cordoned off the Armenian quarter and began the systematic extermination of the Armenians ^[13] .

Turkish soldiers pose with the heads of their victims

On September 13, Turkish soldiers doused and set fire to many buildings in the Armenian quarter, waiting for a time when strong winds were blowing from the Muslim quarter. Then they began to pour gasoline on other places in the Christian-European part (in particular, in front of the American consulate) ^[13] . Massacre and fire went on throughout the city and were accompanied by brutal tortures: for example, after repeated rapes, the girls’ breasts were cut off ^[14] . Fleeing from the fire, most of the Christian residents crowded on the embankment. Turkish soldiers cordoned off the embankment, leaving the refugees without food and water. Many died of hunger and thirst, others committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea. To drown out the screams of perishing Christians, a Turkish military band was constantly playing. All this happened in full view of the Allied navy, which stood in the harbor without interfering ^{[14] [15]} .

Hieromartyr Chrysostom, Metropolitan of Smyrna

Among those killed by the Turks was Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna ^[13] . Chrysostom, who refused to leave the city, was handed over to the Turkish crowd by the commander Nureddin Pasha. He was beaten, poked with knives, his beard was pulled out, his eyes were gouged out, his ears and nose were cut off, until he died (according to other sources, he was shot out of pity by a certain Cretan Turk). All this happened in front of the French soldiers, whom the commander forbade to interfere. Subsequently, Chrysostomos was canonized as a saint ^[16] . Of the two elders accompanying Chrysostom, one was hanged, while the Turks killed the other, tying his legs to a car and dragging him around the center of Smyrna ^[17] .

Some sources blame the fire on the Greeks and Armenians. On September 17, Mustafa Kemal sent a telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs with instructions on how to “comment” on the events. The telegram states the following version: the city was set on fire by the Greeks and Armenians, who were encouraged to do so by Metropolitan Chrysostomos, who claimed that the burning of the city was a religious duty of Christians. The Turks did everything to save him ^[18] . The same Kemal said to the French admiral Dumesnil: “We know that there was a conspiracy. We even found in Armenian women everything necessary for arson … Before our arrival in the city, in the temples they called for a sacred duty – to set fire to the city. The French journalist Bertha Georges-Gauly, who covered the war in the Turkish camp and arrived in Smyrna after the events, wrote: “It seems reliable that when the Turkish soldiers were convinced of their own helplessness and saw how the flames engulfed one house after another, they were seized by insane fury and they destroyed the Armenian quarter, from where, according to them, the first arsonists appeared” ^[19] . This version has since become official in Turkey. However, the famous Turkish historian Falih Rifki Atay names the Turkish commander Nureddin Pasha as the culprit of the fire, strongly rejecting the official Turkish version ^[20] . Mustafa Kemal himself, watching the fire, said:

Before us is a sign that Türkiye has been cleansed of traitors and foreigners. From now on, Türkiye belongs to the Turks [3] .

Evacuation of Christians from Smyrna

1922 Burning Smyrna

The Turks first blocked the harbor of Smyrna with warships, but then, under pressure from the Western powers, they allowed the evacuation, except for men from 17 to 45 ^[21] (according to other sources from 15 to 50 ^[3] ) years, who were declared interned and subject to deportation to the hinterland for forced labor, “which was regarded as a sentence of lifelong slavery to cruel owners, ending in mysterious death” ^[21] . The deadline for evacuation was given until September 30th. After that day, all those who remained were also subject to deportation for forced labor ^[3] .

Despite the fact that there were many ships of different allied powers in the harbor, most of the ships, referring to neutrality, did not take the Greeks and Armenians, who were forced to flee from the fire and the Turkish troops ^[22] . Asa Jennings, an American pastor and employee of the YMCA, played an important role in organizing the evacuation. It is thanks to his efforts that September 23, 19On the 22nd, a hastily assembled Greek flotilla ^[14] arrived at the port under the protection of American ships. Japanese ships dumped all their cargo in order to take on board as many refugees as possible ^{[23] [24]} . Immediately after the massacre, about 400,000 refugees from Smyrna were registered as receiving Red Cross assistance ^[25] .

Consequences

Refugees from Smyrna

The fire burned the entire city except for the Muslim and Jewish quarters ^[26] . Hundreds of houses, 24 churches, 28 schools, bank buildings, consulates, hospitals were destroyed in the fire The number of those killed in different sources varies from 60 thousand ^[1] to 260 thousand. According to Rudolf Rummel ( English ) the average figure is 183 thousand Greeks and 12 thousand Armenians ^{[28] [27]} . Gilles Milton estimated that 100,000 people died in the massacre, and another 160,000 men were deported to the interior of Anatolia. Most of them died on road ^[14] . Winston Churchill wrote in connection with the fate of Smyrna:

In Greece, these events caused a political crisis: there was an uprising in the army, and King Constantine was forced to abdicate. According to the verdict of the tribunal, five ministers were declared the main culprits of the defeat and shot ^[1] . In October, during the negotiations in Mudanya, a truce was reached between the Kemalists and the allies. After the war, in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne, a Greek-Turkish population exchange was carried out, and almost all Greeks left Izmir. The destruction of the indigenous Christian population of the city and the exchange of population became the final phase of the process of liquidation of Christians in Asia Minor, carried out in the Ottoman Empire during the last decades of its existence ^{[30] [13]} .

Massacre in Literature

• Geoffrey Eugenides’ novel The Middle Sex begins during the massacre in Smyrna ^[31] .
• The Smyrna Massacre takes place in the final section of Edward Whitmore’s The Sinai Tapestry ^[32] .
• Ernest Hemingway, who was correspondent for an American newspaper in Europe in 1922, described his impressions of the massacre in the story “In the Port of Smyrna” ^[33] , included in the collection “In Our Time”.
• Eric Ambler’s novel The Mask of Dimitrios details the events of 1922 ^[34] .

Interesting facts

• One of the survivors of these events was the future billionaire Aristotle Onassis (he was then 16 years old).
• The Izmir International Fair ^[8] now stands on the site of the quarters destroyed in 1922.

See also

• Second Greco-Turkish War
• Genocide of the Pontic Greeks
• Armenian Genocide
• Fire in Thessaloniki (1917)
• Firestorm

Sources

Classification and review of sources

Primary

• Mustafa Kemal’s telegram
• Testimony of US Consul General in Smyrna George Horton and his book “The Scourge of Asia”
• French journalistic certificate
• Certificate of American engineer Mark Prentiss
• Certificate of the head of the insurance company Pavel Greshkovich

Secondaries

• New York Times articles of September 18 and 25, 1922
• Marjorie Hovsepyan Dobkin’s report
• Gilles Milton Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922

Tertiary

• Scottish historian Niall Ferguson
• Opinion of historians Lowe and Dokkrill
• Opinion of Turkish historians Falih Rifki Atay and Kirli Biray Koluoglu
• Opinion of former New York State Governor George Pataki
• Chapter on the fire at Smyrna in Lord Kinross’ biography of Atatürk (1965)
• Turkish historian Reşat Kasab’s Brief Outline of Turkish History
• Stanford Shaw’s ( English ) study on the Turkish War of Independence
• TV film “Onassis, the richest man in the world” (1988)

Notes

1. ↑ ^{1 2 3 4} B. Sokolov. GRECO-TURKISH WAR
2. ↑ STEWART LECTURE ON SMYRNA MASSACRE DEEPENS UNDERSTANDING OF SPILEOS SCOTT’S BLOODLINES ART INSTALLATION AT ALMA
3. ↑ ^{1 2 3 900 83 4 5 Mussky I.A. M., Veche, 2002. ISBN 5-7838-0710-9page 408}
4. ↑ AT FULLER, LITTLE-KNOWN HORRORS OF SMYRNA COME TO LIFE
5. ↑ Author Marjorie Dobkin talks at Brown U. about the burning of Smyrna
6. ↑ ^{1 2} IZMIR POGROMS 1922
7. ↑ Izmir
8. ↑ ^{1 2} Lost Hellas
9. ↑ Smyrna // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). – St. Petersburg, 1890-1907.
10. ↑ Fleming, Katherine Elizabeth. Greece: A Jewish History . Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 81
11. ↑ Lowe, Cedric James. The Mirage of Power. Volume Two: British Foreign Policy 1914-22 . Routledge, 2002, p. 367
12. ↑ Adam Kirsch. The Ruined City of Smyrna: Giles Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ // New York Sun: “Above all, he coveted Smyrna, the only majority Christian city in Turkey, where Greeks outnumbered Turks by two to one.”
13. ↑ ^{1 2 3 900 83 4 GEORGE HORTON For Thirty Years Consul and Consul-General of the United States in the Near East With a Foreword by JAMES W. GERARD Former Ambassador to Germany PUBLISHERS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, INDIANAPOLIS COPYRIGRT 1926 BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY}
14. ↑ ^{1 2 3 900 83 4 5 Milton, Giles. Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London, 2008. Color by: ADAM KIRSCH The Ruined City of Smyrna: Giles Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’//New York Sun.}
15. ↑ Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, 1972. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City , ISBN 0-9667451-0-8.
16. ↑ “According to the French observers,…’The mob took possession of Metropolitan Chrysostom and carried him away,…a little further on, in front of an Italian hairdresser named Ismail…they stopped and the Metropolitan was slipped into a white hairdresser’s overall. They began to beat him with their fists and sticks and to spit on his face. They riddled him with stabs. They tore his beard off, they gouged his eyes out, they cut off his nose and ears.’ The French soldiers were disgusted by what they saw and wished to intervene, but their commanding officer was under orders to remain strictly neutral. At the point of a revolver, he forbade his men from saving the metropolitan’s life. Chrysostom was dragged into a backstreet in the Iki Cheshmeli district, where he eventually died from his terrible wounds.” Milton, Giles. Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London, 2008. pp.268-269.
17. ↑ Hieromonk Ignatius (Shestakov), Anatoly Churyakov. Hieromartyr Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Smyrna (1867-1922)
18. ↑ Bilal Şimşir, 1981. Atatürk ile Yazışmalar, Kültür Bakanlığı
19. ↑ Nicole and Hugh Pope, Turkey unveiled: a history of modern Turkey, Woodstock, N.Y. : Overlook Press, 2004, p. 58 ISBN 1-58567-581-4
20. ↑ Falih Rifki Atay, Cankaya: Atatürk’un Dogumundan Olumune Kadar, Istanbul, 1969, 324-25
21. ↑ ^{1 2} Rudolph J. Rummel, Irving Louis Horowitz (1994). Turkey’s Genocidal Purges. Death by government. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-927-6., p. 233
22. ↑ Esther Lovejoy, “Woman Pictures Smyrna Horrors”, The New York Times, October 9, 1922
23. ↑ “Japanese at Smyrna”, Boston Globe , December 3, 1922
24. ↑ The Japanese Hero, Stavros Stavridis, The National Herald
25. ↑ U. S. Red Cross Feeding 400,000 Refugees, Japan Times and Mail, November 10, 1922
26. ↑ Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 97
27. ↑ ^{1 2} Never Again: Ending War, Democide, & Famine Through Democratic Freedom Factual Supplement to the NEVER AGAIN SERIES R .J RUMMEL
28. ↑ ^{1 2} Rummel, uk. cit., p. 5, lines 315-332
29. ↑ Kemal celebrated his triumph by transforming Smyrna into ashes and by slaughtering the whole of the indigenous Christian population. Quoted from: At Last We Uprooted Them: The Genocide of Greeks of Pontos, Thrace and Asia Minor Through French Archives. Gift of Van Coufoudakis to the Program in Hellenic Studies for Firestone Library. Kyriakidis Brothers, 1999 ISBN 960-343-478-7, 9789603434788 p.287
30. ↑ Smyrna Commemorative Series: “The destruction of Smyrna was the final climax of Christian genocide for several decades, beginning with the Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontic Greeks late in the 1800s.