Professors Lou Ureneck, Alexander Kitroeff and James Skedros talk about Smyrna's beauty before the 1922 terror that displaced hundreds-of-thousands of Christians.
In August and September of 1922, the beautiful port of Smyrna became Ground Zero for one of the greatest human tragedies... It was the last violent episode in a ten-year holocaust that had killed three million people-Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, all Christian minorities-on the Turkish subcontinent be tween 1912 and 1922. It would also serve as a marker of the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Smyrna was reduced to ashes as the Armenian quarter of the city was set fire with petroleum gasoline by the Turkish troops on September 13th according to sources. The Greek, Armenian and Levantine quarters were completely incinerated while the Turkish and Jewish sections survived.
The respected peace between Christians and Muslims was over in Smyrna. What ensued over the next months was nothing less than tragic and catastrophic.
Thousands of men died on death marches into the Anatolian desert, children were taken into slavery, women were raped then killed, while the elderly were left to die of thirst and hunger or their life came to an end at the edge of a Turkish sword
*This documentary is for educational purposes only and does not claim any right to the archival footage or pictures used in this project. Footage provided by the Red Cross, Near EAst Relief, International YMCA, British Pathe KZread, US Library of Congress, Levantine Heritage, Robert Davidian; Asa K. Jennings images courtesy Roger Jennings.
**Copyright: Mike Damergis, for all the interviews conducted in the piece.