The Pontian Greek Genocide

[Ricardo Reis]

Bitter Homage





27 April 2007

The Pontian Greeks lived along the Black Sea coast of Turkey in a region loosely referred to as Pontus by many scholars. They were descendants of Ionian Greeks who settled there, beginning in 800 B.C. Like other Christians in Turkey, the Armenians and Assyrians for example, the Pontic Greeks faced persecution and suffered during ethnic cleansing at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1923, after thousands of years, those remaining were expelled from Turkey to Greece as part of the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey under Treaty of Lausanne.

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 irregulars. 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 Bafra, 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 genocide started 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 decree was the murder of thousands of the more prominent Pontians, whose names appeared on lists of "undesirables" already prepared by the Young Turk regime.

Thousands ended up in the notorious Labor Battalions. 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 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 did try to organize armed resistance. 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 an independent Pontus in the hope of help from Greece and Russia (which never arrived). The struggle was unequal. The Turkish army, assisted by the Tsets, who were of mostly Kurdish extraction, attacked and destroyed undefended Pontian villages. On May 19, 1919, Mustafa 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

In 1923, a population exchange negotiated by the participants resulted in a near-complete elimination of the Greek ethnic presence in Anatolia. It is impossible to know exactly how many Greek inhabitants of Pontus, Smyrna and rest of Asia Minor died from 1916 to 1923, and how many ethnic Greeks of Anatolia were deported to Greece or fled to the Soviet Union. According to G.W. Rendel, " ... over 500,000 Greeks were deported of whom comparatively few survived.

U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau accused the "Turkish government" of a campaign of "outrageous terrorizing, cruel torturing, driving of women into harems, debauchery of innocent girls, the sale of many of them at 80 cents each, the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to and starvation in the desert of other hundreds of thousands, and the destruction of hundreds of villages and many cities," all part of "the willful execution" of a "scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian Christians of Turkey." US Consul-General George Horton reported that "one of the cleverest statements circulated by the Turkish propagandists is to the effect that the massacred Christians were as bad as their executioners, that it was “50-50.”" On this issue he clarifies that "had the Greeks, after the massacres in the Pon*tus and at Smyrna, massacred all the Turks in Greece, the record would have been 50-50—almost." As an eye-witness, he also praises Greeks for their "conduct toward the thousands of Turks residing in Greece, while the ferocious massacres were going on.", which, according to his opinion, was "one of the most inspiring and beautiful chapters in all that country’s history."

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.

The tragedy of this village, described in all its horrific details, was repeated in other Christian villages throughout Turkey. We pay bitter homage to our dead without hate or vengeful thoughts but we should not forget their sacrifice or let the nation who murdered them forget its crime.



My Greek Odyssey: Bitter Homage

[Ricardo Reis]

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Pontian Genocide

[Ricardo Reis]

Survivors' Testimonies of the Pontian Genocide




Maria Katsidou-Symeonidou

I was born in Mourasoul village, Sevasteia/Sivas district, on August 15 1914. I remember the deportations well. In 1918, I was about four years old, when one day I saw my father in the village square. I ran to him and asked him for the pie he brought me every day from the family-owned mill. He replied: “O my child. The Turks are going to kill me and you will not see me again.” He told me to tell my mother to prepare his clothes and some food for him. That was the last time we saw him. They killed him along with another ten men.

I remember another time when a Turk warned our village, saying that all the young men should leave. This because the next day, Topal Osman would be coming. Indeed, those that left, were saved. They still killed fifteen men, including the teacher, the village president and the priest. Topal Osman had caught three hundred and fifty men from neighbouring villages. He had them bound, murdered and thrown into the river that ran through our village. I still remember the echo of the shots. They were hauling the bodies by ox-cart for nine days to bury them. Most of them were unrecognizable, as their heads had been cut off.

In 1920, around Easter, the Turkish Army came and told us to take with us everything we could. We loaded up the animals, but the saddle-bags tore open and most of us were left without food. On the deportation march, the Turkish guards would rape the women; one of whom fell pregnant. In the Teloukta area, about half our group was lost in a snow storm. From there, they took us to a place without water, Sous-Yiazousou; many died of thirst. Soon afterwards, as we passed a river, all of us threw ourselves at the water; people fell over each other in the rush; many drowned. We reached Phiratrima, which was a Kurdish area and they left us at a village near a bridge. It was here that the pregnant girl gave birth, to twins. The Turks cut the newborns in two and tossed them in the river. On the riverbank, they killed many more of the group.

The killings ended only with the agreement for the Exchange of Populations (1923). This is how we were saved. I came to Hellas in 1923. As I was an orphan, I arrived with the American Mission, at Volos (Thessaly). From there, we went to Aedipsos, to Larissa and finally to Aetorrahi village, Elassona district, where I settled. I migrated to Australia in 1968, to be with my sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren.

{Mrs Katsidou-Symeonidou passed away in November 1997.}





Vasileios Anastasiades

I was born in Kaesareia/Kayseri district, Kappadokia, in 1912, but grew up in Ak Dagh Maden, Pontus. I remember Aristotle Onassis’ father, a friend of my father’s, warning him to leave Asia Minor before war broke out. My father, however, could not leave as he had a family to look after. In 1916, when I was three or four years old, they took my parents into exile. My elder brother took me by the hand to a field where hay was grown. We cut some and ate it to satisfy our hunger. We collected wild grasses, ground them into flour, baked them like flat bread and ate. I remember searching ant nests for kernels of wheat, which we would eat.

When the Turks hit Pelemet, attacking the French, the Hellenes and especially those who worked on the railways, that is when they took us into exile, the men separate from the women, separate from the children. The children were taken to Zougoultah. Next to us was a camp for Hellene POWs, all but one of whom died as slave labourers. The sole survivor was Dimitrios Pairahtaroglou. The soldiers gave us some of their meagre food rations, so that we would not starve to death.

When the Red Cross was notified about us (about our captivity) and came looking for us, the Turks would move us around by night. One Christian prisoner, serving as a guard, told the Red Cross where we were hidden, on condition that they free him also. That is how one hundred and fifty children were saved.

I came to Hellas in 1924, with the Exchange of Populations. We went firstly to Kythera, where we stayed for about two months, and then to Larissa. There they offered my grandfather the local disused Turkish mosque as a home, since he was a craftsman (and craftsmen were highly valued), but he refused to live there because he did not want the building to remind him of the Turks, from whom he had suffered so much.

{Mr Anastasiades passed away in 1994.}





Sophia Stambolidou

I was born in the village of Tsegeri, Thermi/Thermohonta district, Pontus, in 1910. The deportations, the privations, the hardships, began in 1915-16. From that time on, we lived in the forests. I remember my mother telling me, as we hid in the woods: “You are young and without sin. Say your prayers for God’s help.”

I remember in the district of Goulouts-Teresi, where the Turkish Army had encircled us, our guerilla fighters, after battling all day and seeing that the Turks were very numerous, saw that the women and children had to be moved to a safer location. Before we left, however, our leaders agreed to smother the very young, as they feared that the cries of the babes-in-arms would betray us all and none of us would survive. One of those smothered was the child of my brother, Chrysostomos Kyriakides. The father of one little girl, Konstantinos Toutsoglides, could not bring himself to smother her, so he left her behind. A few days later, we found her alive and she was eventually brought to Hellas with us, to Oinoe village, Kastoria.

The group was moved to a large forest, near the village of Ayios Ioannis, Keris district. The Turks froze in fear when they found our smothered children. They realised our guerilla fighters were determined to do whatever it took.

We came to Hellas with the Exchange of Populations in 1923, via Romania, to Thessaloniki. After a few days there, we were sent to the village of Neo Petritsi (Serres prefecture, eastern Macedonia), about Christmas 1923. We spent a few days in the village school, and were then taken, in the depths of winter, to the Bulgarian border, to the village of Mesaia. In 1957, we moved to Hrani village, Katerini district (Pieria prefecture, southern Macedonia).

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“The Turks have decided upon a war of extermination against their Christian subjects.”

German Ambassador Wangenheim to German Chancellor von Bulow, quoting Turkish Prime Minister Sefker Pasha, July 24, 1909.

“The anti-Greek and anti-Armenian persecutions are two phases of one programme - the extermination of the Christian element from Turkey.”

Father J. Lepsius, German clergyman, July 31, 1915.

“...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.”

Herr Kuchhoff, German consul in Amissos in a despatch to Berlin, July 16, 1916.

“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.” (referring to the Armenian Genocide)

Herr Kwiatkowski, Austro-Hungarian consul in Amissos to Baron von Burian, Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, November 30, 1916

“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.”

German Ambassador Kuhlman to German Chancellor Hollweg, December 13, 1916.

Herr Pallavicini, Ambassador of Austria-Hungary to Turkey, writes to Vienna, listing the villages in the region of Amissos that were being burnt to the ground, their inhabitants raped and either murdered or exiled, December 19, 1916:

“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 Armenian persecution. The Grand Vizier promised that he would influence Talaat Bey and Enver Pasha.”

Austro-Hungarian Ambassador Pallavicini to Vienna, January 20, 1917

“The time is near for Turkey to be finished with the Greeks as we were with the Armenians in 1915.”

Talaat Bey as quoted by an Austro-Hungarian agent, January 31, 1917

“...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.”

Chancellor Hollweg of Germany, February 9, 1917.

[Ricardo Reis]

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DISY calls on EU to recognise Pontian genocide


DISY yesterday called on the European Union and the international community to recognise the Pontian Greek Genocide of 1916-1923.
“Historic events such as these must always remain in our memory,” read a statement released by the party.

Today, May 19, is Pontic Greek Genocide Day. Pontic Greek Genocide is a controversial term used to refer to the fate of Pontic Greeks during and in the aftermath of World War I. Whether the events were a genocide or not is hotly debated between Turkey and Greece.

The term is used to refer to the persecutions, massacres, expulsions and death marches of Pontian Greek populations in the southeastern Black Sea provinces of the Ottoman Enpire, during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration. It has been argued that killings continued during the Turkish national movement led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk which was organised to fight against the Greek invasion of western Anatolia.

Greece and the Republic of Cyprus officially recognise it as a genocide. The US states of South Carolina, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Illinois also passed resolutions recognising the events, although since states within the United States do not have foreign-policy authority those statements are not legally binding on a federal US level.

The Turkish government, on the other hand, rejects the term genocide, and the selection of the date of May 19, which is a national holiday in Turkey, is considered by some Turkish politicians to be a provocation of Turkish national feelings.
Ankara also denies the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917, or the lesser known massacre of hundreds of thousands of Assyrians (Syriac Christians).

The United Nations, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have not made any relative reference.
According to the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, between 1916 and 1923 up to 350,000 Greek Pontians were killed in massacres, persecution and death marches. The events were attested to by eyewitness accounts reported in contemporary newspapers.

At the time The New York Times and its correspondents made extensive references to the events, recording massacres, deportations, individual killings, rapes, burning of entire Greek villages, destruction of Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries, drafts for "Labour Brigades", looting, terrorism and other "atrocities" for Greek, Armenian and also for British and American citizens and government officials.

The paper subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the war.
According to a German military attache, Ismail Enver, the Ottoman Turkish minister of War, had declared in October 1915 that he wanted to “solve the Greek problem during the war…in the same way he believe[d] he solved the Armenian problem.”
And British historian Arnold J. Toynbee noted that it was the Greek landings that created the Turkish Nationalist Movemet led by Mustafa Kemal and it is almost certain that if the Greeks had never landed at Smyrna, the consequent atrocities on the Turkish side would not have occurred.

Toynbee added: “…The Greeks of ‘Pontus’ and the Turks of the Greek occupied territories, were in some degree victims of Mr Venizelos’ and Mr Lloyd George’s original miscalculation at Paris.”

In 1923, those Greek Pontians remaining were expelled from Turkey to Greece as part of the population exchange between the two countries defined by the Treaty of Lausanne. In his book Black Sea, author Neal Acheson writes:
“The Turkish guide-books on sale in Turkey today offer this account of the 1923 catastrophe: ‘After the proclamation of the [Turkish] Republic, the Greeks who lived in the region returned to their own country.’ Their own country? Returned? Pontians had lived in that area for over 3,000 years. The Pontian dialect was not understandable to 20th century Athenians.”

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