The Greek Pontians thrived and prospered in Norhtern Turkey by the Black Sea for over three thousand years. However, very few people even know they existed today. They survived through the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and for most of the Ottoman Empire. However, about 100+ years ago, cataclysmic series of events occurred during the that whipped out most of this great Pontian people.
This cataclysmic was caused by one set of humans over another. I herd about this event as a child from my father, mother, and later first hand form m grandmother. However, there was a biog disconnect in the US schools. The event I’m talking about is the Pontian Genocide.
As a youngster, I thought, maybe it’s because it occurred, far away. But, we covered USSR, China, etc. Why not about this event? Sure, there seems to have been some local reporting in newspapers in the US as the one below in the Lincoln Daily Star article of October 19, 1917, but not much beyond that.
It seemed this event was a well kept secret. Why? We studied the Holocaust but not this?
Millions of Christians were killed and displaced by this systematic Genocide. How could crime against humanity have been kept such a secret? I bet, if you are reading this and are not
Greek, you probably have not herd about it either!
Many believe there was a conspiracy by the Turkish
government to hide the embarrassing truth. Well, some kind of concerted effort must have been responsible fro keeping it quiet. Especially since we know details of events that
occurred thousands of years ago, yet we don’t know about an event that took
place only 100 years ago? How else can this
be explained?
Well, in either case, it's clear that we need to begin documenting this event as most Pontians involved probably have passed and we will lose their stories. I'd like to document my Grandmother Despina's story as told to me when I was in college so that my kids, family, and anyone else interested can read her first experiences.
My Grandmother Despina at 80 yrs. old.
I spent countless hours talking to her about her life when she came to the US before she passed away. She told me in half Pontian and half Greek the stories of the death marches when she was 12. "One day, Turkish soldiers
came and knocked on our door. They told us
we have five minutes to grab our stuff and leave our house or we'd be shot! Most of us thought this
was some sort of exercise and that we’d be coming back to our homes. After all, we built these homes and lived here for 1000's of years in peace with the Turkish people. When, the soldiers started shooting at us, it was pretty clear this was different.” My grandmother had no idea why they had to
leave, where they were going, or why. “Many
people took only a few things with them.
Others quickly loaded wagons. Those that
didn't take much eventually starved on the death marches after 6 to 8 months.”
It was incomprehensible as the Pontians had
great relations with the local Turkish people. Many of the Turkish people living around them were nomads. They came well after the Greek Pontians were their. They taught them to farm, trade, build homes, and thrive. This event was totally out of place. "Of course we’d be able to come back when all this is over," many thought. Little did they know they would never see
their homes again. My Grandmother Despina family
lived in Trapezounta. My Father’s was
from Surmena.
Map of Pontos early 1900s
While the genocide was still going on, the Ottoman Turkish minister of war, Ismail
Enver, had declared to a German Military attaché that, “He wanted to solve the
Greek problem during the war in the same way he solved the Armenian problem!” (If this sounds familiar, it was! The Nazi's used the same argument later to kill the Jewish people in WWII.). Recall Germany and Turkey were allies in WW I.
“The time is near for Turkey to be finished with the
Greeks as we were with the Armenians in 1915,” said, Talaat Bey, minister of Internal Affairs, in January 31,
1917.
There are many, many more quotes; I believe the motivation
of the Turks during this time period is clear, all Christians must go, one way
or another!
Pontian Hanging
The Turks, with the guidance of German military, rounded Greek
men of military age and force them into labor camps (precursor to Holocaust
camps used by Nazis in WWII); mistreating them and eventually killing them if
they didn’t die of starvation first.
Then, without any men to defend themselves, the Turkish soldiers would
surround unprotected villages and start killing women, children and the elderly. Other villages would be forcefully deported
out of Turkey, as both of my parents families were.
Most of the Pontians from the north eastern part were forcefully
deported to the Russian Empire. My grandmother,
on my mother’s side, lost her 2 and a half year old sister and her mother and
was left an orphan as a young teenager. Her
little sister was playing and fell into a river. Men tried to save her, but the soldiers
wouldn't allow them. She never saw her
little sister again. She walked for months
with minimal food available. Her mother
died of starvation soon thereafter.
Death Marches” Pontian families forcible removed from
their homeland. Many starved, hung or shot to death.
According to American novelist, Edward Hale Bierstadt,
“Official testimony states that the Turks, since 1914, slaughtered 500,000
Greek men, women and children without the slightest provocation,” in his book, The killing Trap.
Can you imagine this happening to you? Today? What would you take? Will you be able to come back to your home? How long would you be gone? You'd walk 100s of miles for months on end. Where would you find
food on the Marches? How would I survive, feet bleeding while carrying
my belongings? It’s really
unfathomable.
Pontian dances
This is why my father could never forget where we
came from or his heritage. He would
always get up and dance to Pontian music, no matter how old he was. These are thousand year old dances, some, like Sera, mimicking
acts of war; a soldier is wounded, his head, shoulder and body shake as he
starts to fall, then he finds the strength to rise up and defeat his enemy then
lifts his hands above his head in victory.
This dance was used by armies to prep their troops for war 1000's of years ago!
The Russian Years –
“We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, it landed on us” – Malcolm X
The “lucky” Pontians who suffered through the death marches, starving to death, barely alive made it on board Russian boats and had the pleasure of landing in a
strange country, speaking a strange language, with nothing more than the cloths
on their back (if that). malnourished, they had no
place to live or food. They were
refugees. Somehow, months of starvation on death marches
just wasn't enough suffering; they now had to quickly gather themselves and
find basic necessities to survive.
There was no time for healing, recovery, or resting. It was either hard work or continued pain of starving to death!
My father’s family ended up Tuapse, (on the coast north of Sochi), on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. My grandmother Despina ended up in Novorossiysk, further north of Tuapse on the coast. The Pontians
were treated like dirt in Russia. They
were taken advantage of. There was no
“entitlements” or handouts. Somehow, my grandparents made it, married, and had Children; 10 on my father's side and 5 on my mother's. However, they quickly found out, they'd be chased out of the USSR soon.
By 1929, Stalin became the sole leader of
the Soviet Union. Stalin had organized secret police and spies. They would gather a bunch of men periodically,
claim they were enemies of the state throw them into concentration camps before
shipping them to die in concentration camps in Siberia. It didn't take much to get arrested. One day, my grandfather on my father's side was arrested and put into this camp. Knowing this would be the last time my father would see his father, he gave him some bread to eat through the camp’s fence. That was the last time he saw his father.
The Stalin paranoia and violence continued throughout his
reign. In 1937, things started to get
worse for the Pontian Greeks. Talks
broke down between the Pontian leaders and Stalin’s goons; it became too risky
for Pontians to stay. Many were thrown
into the infamous Russian Gulags. So,
most given the opportunity to leave the soviet union did so. Both my father’s and mother’s families fled to Greece to start all over again as refugees, but this time, in their homeland. Twenty six years later, we arrived on the shores of the greatest country on earth, the USA! It was a long arduous journey but somehow we survived and prospered.
Today, the Turkish government still denies this genocide committed against their Christian minorities in early 1900s. In doing so, they claim that the genocide that brutally killed 1,500,000 Armenians, 750,000 Assyrians and 500,000 Pontic Greeks is a "fabrication of history". The overwhelming evidence and eyewitness accounts of this tragedy is testimony that these horrible crimes were committed and continuing to deny the crime only makes today's Turkish government an accomplice to the crime.
For more information click on the video below. Peace!
