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The Pontian Genocide 1916-1923

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  • 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.
    "All truth passes through three stages:
    First, it is ridiculed;
    Second, it is violently opposed; and
    Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

  • #2
    No, I won't apologise - YOU apologise!





    Jenny Mikakos
    Attached Files
    "All truth passes through three stages:
    First, it is ridiculed;
    Second, it is violently opposed; and
    Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

    Comment


    • #3
      Armenia Has Not Recoggnized The Greek Genocide

      A1+
      [04:16 pm] 19 May, 2006

      In 1922 the Turks killed about 300 thousand Greeks but Armenia has
      not yet recognized the Genocide which causes the confusion of the
      Greeks living in Armenia.

      The Greek Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Armenia
      refused to speak about the non-recognition of Armenia of the Greek
      Genocide. Ambassador Panayota Mavromikhali mentioned that the question
      must be given to the Armenian Parliament. As for the Armenian Genocide,
      he said, "History is a fact which cannot be erased. Genocide is a
      fact and the only thing we can do is to speak about it loudly and
      struggle so that it won't be repeated again."

      Head of the Greek community in Yerevan Frontik Nikolaidi thinks that
      in case of uniting the Armenians and the Greeks can be a power against
      the denying policy of Turkey. "We have had the same history. Both the
      nations have suffered from the blood-thirsty Turkish yataghan. So
      every year on May 19 we come to Tsitsernakaberd to pay tribute to
      the victims."

      According to Nikolaidi there are about 1800 Greeks in Yerevan,
      and about four thousand in the whole republic. Many of them came to
      Tsitsernakaberd today together with the staff of the Embassy.
      "All truth passes through three stages:
      First, it is ridiculed;
      Second, it is violently opposed; and
      Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

      Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

      Comment


      • #4
        Greek community of Armenia commemorated victims of Pontic Greek Genocide





        19.05.2007 14:01 GMT+04:00

        /PanARMENIAN.Net/ February 19, 1994 the Greek parliament proclaimed May 19 the Remembrance Day of Pontic Greek Genocide perpetrated by Turks in 1916-1923.

        The Greek community of Armenia and representatives of Armenian NGOs laid wreaths to the memorial to the Armenian Genocide victims. Some thousand people took part in the event.

        353.000 Greeks were systematically exterminated in Asia Minor. The survivors left for Greece and Russia.

        Greeks from Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh fought during in the national liberation war in Artsakh.

        Presently, some 6000 Greeks live in Armenia and some 300 in Artsakh. They mostly reside in Aleverdy Canyon, Lori plateau, Yerevan, Noyemberyan and Gyumri.

        source

        Comment


        • #5


          Elias Venezis


          A number of Pontians wrote about their experiences and recorded in memoirs or simple testimonies the nightmarish events that they had lived through. The most famous of these was Elias Venezis with his book entitled: "The Number 31328," which chronicled his servitude in a Labor Battalion . One eyewitness who survived the genocide and settled in Greece was Savas Kantartzis. The following is his vivid description of the massacre of the inhabitants of his native village of Beyeilan in the region of Kotyron in Pontus, by a paramilitary unit led by Topal Osman, now honored as a national hero of modern Turkey. The tragedy of this village is the tragedy of hundreds of other Greek villages and thousands of Greeks, in Chios in 1821, in Pontus in 1916, in Asia Minor in 1922, in Constantinople in 1955 or in occupied Cyprus in 1974...

          “At daybreak, on Wednesday, the 16th of February, 1922, a nightmare begins. News spread that Tsets (Kurdish irregulars) lead by Topal Osman are coming to our village. Everyone is frightened and apprehensive. Some men hurriedly escaped into the surrounding forest, others hid in special hiding places in their homes or stables, all well camouflaged. Women, children and the elderly locked themselves in their homes, hearts pounding and awaiting their fates. More than 150 Tsets, entered the village yelling and shooting. followed by villagers bent on plunder from the neighboring Turkish villages.


          As soon as they entered the village, the atmosphere was electrified and the horizon darkened as if a storm was approaching. They screamed curses and kicked doors in, ordering the inhabitants out into the village square. They threatened to set fire to the houses unless everyone came out. In a short time, women, children and the old ones found themselves crying and trembling in the streets. They sensed what would happen to them and many attempted to escape. The Turks and Tsets had foreseen such an eventuality and had blocked every avenue of escape. No one could leave. A few were shot and fell dead or limped back wounded.

          These men revealed, once and for all, their criminal intent and it was now apparent to the entire terrorized group of women and children that had been thrown into the streets, their cries rising in despair.Nothing they did now could soften the hardhearted cruelty of the henchman that had been chosen by Topal Osman for this “patriotic” expedition. These sadists began to enjoy the great fun of inflicting pain and torturing their victims. They kicked, struck, and yelled, pushing them toward the village square.

          The mothers, stood pale and disheveled in the bitter cold, trembling with fear while holding their clinging infants in close embrace. The young girls, some with their old parents and others with old women or holding up the sick, were herded like sheep, ready for slaughter, into the middle of a pandemonium punctuated by heart-breaking cries and lamentations. Then they ordered their victims to enter two pre-selected houses in the vicinity of the square where they could complete their crime. They herded this unwilling flock into the houses with kicks and shouts. There was no doubt now about the fate that awaited them. The Tsets crammed over three hundred into those houses, anxious to finish their macabre enterprise. When they were sure that no one remained outside, they locked the doors oblivious to the cacophony of cries and supplications for mercy that reverberated in the surrounding mountains and forests.

          The final phase of this tragic event needed only a few handfuls of dry grass set alight to create a firestorm that engulfed the two houses in bloodcurdling screams through the pungent black smoke. What followed during the next hour cannot be adequately described…

          Crazed mothers clutched tightly, with the all the force of their souls, their crying babies to their bosom. Children cried for their mothers. The girls and the other women with the elderly, the children and the sick, screamed and seized each other as if they wanted to take and give the other courage and help until their hair, clothes and bodies were engulfed by the flames. Piercing cries, maniacal screams and thunderous, wild howls of people, overcome by terror and pain. They beat and flayed the air and the walls to no avail. Hell on earth!

          Some women and girls, in their despair and pain, threw themselves out of windows, preferring death from the bullets to the blazing inferno. Osman's men who looked on smiling, enjoying the spectacle before them, were more than happy to accommodate these poor women by shooting them dead. The screaming began to dwindle, replaced by the noise of the crackling timbers and the crumbling walls falling on the smoldering bodies. Nothing remained but the ash and ruins of what used to be two homes in the town of Beyialan.


          source

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          • #6
            Pontian Freedom Fighters






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            • #7



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              • #8




                Pontian Life



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                • #9






                  Pontian Women

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                  • #10






                    All The Pictures Above Was Taken From This Source

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