The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey

*Το βιβλίο

*Survivor Testimonies 

From The Nicomedia (Izmit) 

Massacres of 1920-1921

          In March of 1921, journalist Kostas Faltaits arrived in Asia Minor (today's Turkey) sent by newspaper "Embros" to cover Greece's movements in the Greco-Turkish War. By the time he arrived in the region of Nicomedia (today's Izmit)- a region inhabited by a large number of Greek, Armenian and Circassian communities- Kemalist forces had set fire to many of the villages, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. Faltaits came face to face with the fleeing survivors of these massacres, and was able to collect these valuable and graphic eye-witness testimonies which were published in both Greek and French at the time.

          Translated for the very first time in English and with a prologue by Tessa Hofmann, this edition will shed some light into just one of the many chapters of the Greek Genocide, a genocide which claimed the life of approximately one million Greeks living in the former Ottoman Empire.

          "The accounts by Greek survivors in These are the Turks (original title), of massacres, torture, rape, theft, and the destruction of villages, and the brutalizers' sheer pleasure in inflicting such suffering on fellow humans, attests to the depths to which humans are capable of descending. However, these accounts by survivors also attest to human courage and the shear will to survive, even after enduring and witnessing such unspeakable depravity. That this kind of depravity has been repeated around the world since this blight occurred in Ottoman Turkey almost100 years ago, reminds us how important it is to record these heinous crimes against humanity, demand acknowledgement from the responsible governments, and bring the perpetrators to justice. It also reminds us that powerful nations that stand by and witness these genocides without taking meaningful action to stop them should also be denounced as complicit in the genocides. Such was the case in Ottoman Turkey when the Allies knew of the depravity taking place against the Ottoman Greeks and Armenians, but chose to silence relief workers and missionaries in order to ensure future trade with Mustapha Kemal's emerging Nationalist government. This pattern of silence by the most powerful nations is more recently reflected in the Rwanda genocide. Countless other examples can be found since the Ottomans and Kemal destroyed the three and four millennia old Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian communities of Asia Minor between 1914 and 1923."

Υστερόγραφο:

Το κείμενο που προηγήθηκε για τους αλλοδαπούς φίλους, είναι για το βιβλίο του δημοσιογράφου Κώστα Φαλτάϊτς με τίτλο "Αυτοί είναι οι Τούρκοι- Αφηγήματα των σφαγών της Νικομήδειας" (1921) μεταφρασμένο για πρώτη φορά στα αγγλικά Mόλις κυκλοφόρησε σε ΗΠΑ, Ελλάδα και εντός των ημερών και στην Αυστραλία