Those who didn't manage to "move"

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Mar 24, 2012 at 11:15

Dear Alexandros, you wrote in the title of your post :

> "Moved" was describing the action<

Let me with all due respect note that one doesn't simply "move" from a place where one has been living for more than 4000 years as was the case with your ancestors in Asia Minor. 1,5 mln Greeks didn't move just so, instantaneously from their forefathers' beloved homeland. They had two choices - total extermination by Kemal's Moslem hordes or flight lock, stock and barrel.One of these choices is no choice of course, so I strongly doubt we can speak of "moving" here.All we can speak of is of "being expelled" and "driven out" as in fact the Greeks were murdered, terrorized and brutally expelled from their homeland ,where they had been living more than four millennia (!) and where Homeric poetry and Western philosophy and science were all born and grew up, in one of the most horrifying and disgusting religious and ethnic cleansings the world has ever seen. Yet, what is even more outrageous and disgusting, for this crime the barbarian perpetrators have never been punished, but on the contrary they have been generously rewarded and extolled by the same powers that still pretend to be the guardians of justice and morality !

Second, your phrase reminded me unpleasantly of a recent scandal in Greece concerning the notorious history textbook for sixth graders. All the horrors of the genocide, perpetrated by Kemal against the grandparents and great-grandparents of the children who are supposed to learn history from this book, were made invisible in two infamous sentences which I can't but quote in the original «Στις 27 Αυγούστου 1922 ο τουρκικός στρατός μπαίνει στη Σμύρνη. Χιλιάδες Έλληνες συνωστίζονται στο λιμάνι να μπουν στα πλοία και να φύγουν για την Ελλάδα». Well, "crowding at the port to enter the ships" sounds so mundane and innocent,doesn't it ? An everyday occurrence in most holiday resorts in Greece in the summer, isn't it? You may well also think of hectic sports events where "Thousands of football fans are crowding at the gate to enter the stadium". Or to see the point even better imagine a history textbook in Israel's schools teaching Israeli schoolboys and schoolgirls that "Thousands of Jews were crowding before the sanitary installations of Auschwitz to have a long needed shower"!

If Turks were themselves writing or paying for writing history courses for Greek and Armenian children, they couldn't have invented a more insidious and grotesque distortion of reality than this. The Turkish army arrives at Smyrna, the Greeks are crowding at the port to "move" (exit,leave for) to Greece! Absolutely innocent, absolutely politically correct, absolutely appeasing and - of course- absolutely crooked and untrue !!! Just think of those who didn't manage to "move" to Greece from the overcrowded haven of Smyrna or from the inland like metropolitan bishop Chrysostomos - the martyr of Smyrna and hundreds of thousands of other anonymous martyrs whose desecrated bones have for ever remained there in Turkish-occupied Anatolia and whose sacred memory is being now insulted and desecrated again - this time by the most unlikely agent - an official history textbook written by Greeks, published in Greece and used in Greek schools !!!

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".