Customer Reviews

Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City

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A moving account of the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 that ended with the expulsion of the Greek and Armenian populations of Asia Minor. The book documents that the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 was not really a war between the Greeks and the Turks but a conflict between the British (using the Greeks as proxies) on one hand and the French and Italians on the other (using the Turks as proxies). The prize was the oil of what is now Iraq. (That country did not exist then; its area was still part of the Ottoman empire.) The author does an excellent job in documenting the role of the outsiders in stirring up trouble amongst the local populations. The competition between the Western European powers resulted in enormous suffering not only amongst the Greeks and Armenians but also amongst the Turks themselves.

I bought this book based on the fact that the SUNDAY TIMES of London deemed it the "Book of the Year" while THE NEW YORK TIMES called it one of the notable 100 books of they year. When it comes to judging a book's value, I'd trust them over any source with an axe to grind. Dobkin's book is not a history, per se, and unless it's a crime to be a writer and an Armenian, I think most readers will understand what a highly emotional issue this is for Armenians and Greeks (who would begrudge any ethnicity that bemoans the genocide of their forefathers?). What it all comes down to, and what absolutely can't be denied, is that the book contains first hand quotes, at length, from people who were actually there. Not only quotes from the victims, and the perpetrators, but also from those who seemingly have no stake in the matter, like US Sailors and servicemen. Dobkin names these people who agreed to give testimony, so this is not a case of anonymous sources. This is as real as you can get. It's sheer blindness to deny these voices.

The first thing I want to say about SMYRNA 1922 is that I am of neither Greek nor Turkish descent so I have no vested interest in the "truth". Secondly, I have an Armenian friend who once told me in a sad but offhand way as we were trading confidences over coffee, that her grandparents had been buried in the sand up to their necks and had their heads lopped off by Turkish soldiers. Thirdly, I had an occasion once where I met with a Turkish delegation as part of my job and listened to them for two hours while they talked about "Armenian lies." Two things struck me about this rather bizarre meeting: 1) Why did they care what I or anyone else in my agency thought about something that happened many years ago? 2) Why did they go on for two hours denying something no one had accused them of, at least no one in my office?

Marjorie Dobkin's insightful book is about the failure of the Great Powers, including the U.S., to facilitate a peaceful outcome in Anatolia in the period following WWI. SMYRNA covers the subsequent destruction of the city by the forces of Kemal Attaturk (although he apparently lay the blame for the massacre at his predecessor's door). Following the destruction of Smyrna, almost two million Greek and Armenian Christian refugees fled what is today Turkey and was then the Ottoman Empire.

At the Cannes film festival this year, "Ararat" has won all sorts of praise. The film by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) tells the story of the Armenian holocaust in 1922. I don't know if Dobkin's book is the basis of the film, but it certainly would make great background reading. I suspect 'Ararat' will become to the Armenians what 'Schindler's List' has become to the Jews. Since Turkey is apparently vowing to fight its distribution (New York Times, Arts, 6/7/02) it remains to be seen whether the film will make it to the states.

Dobkin has assembled a huge amount of information for her book and provides copious footnotes so you can check the sources. However, many of the U.S. sailors and other eyewitnesses have died since the first edition was published about 30 years ago. Following the initial publication, Dobkin became aware of much more material, and she incorporated much of the new material in the book. Dobkin writes well--like an excellent investigative reporter, which she very well may be. Earnest Hemingway covered the disaster as a Toronto news reporter, and Dobkin's writing is comparable his, as well as being very scholarly.

I've spent most of my life reading about genocide and inhumanity in one form or another, but SMYRNA has to be one of the most harrowing tales I've ever read. Think Dachau. Think Auschwitz. Think the worst. To bad CNN wasn't filming, although believe it or not someone did film the event--and Dobkin obtained a photo of the quay lined with over 200,000 people which is shown on the cover of the book. Smyrna makes Kosovo look like a picnic.

In a brief defense of Marjorie Housepian Dobkin's report, you must realize that in historical events you are a better historian when you can solve historic questions. Unearthing the grave of Hitler, there's the question from Nazi groups that it was a double, while other Nazis say his suicidal death was honorable as it traditionally followed the values of spousal suicide followed by acultists.

Who started the fire?
This question is limited to Smyrna, as we know that data has been rewritten after the allies suddenly became Kemal Ataturk's friend instead of enemy. At a time when secret treaties divided Anatolia. As Ataturk entered Smyrna, the allies had already scetched an Italian province ruling all of Anatolia and the French ruling Cilicia. The questions are left open at Smyrna, but the answers are documented in the United States Library of Congress.

When I began to research the thousands of documents in the Library of Congress, the Smryna ones follow newsarticles, briefings from Western Ambassadors, and thousands of eye-witness accounts.

What the Turks love to neglect from their fight of independence are the stories of Thessalonica, Pergamon, Phocaea and Constantinople. Even on this forum the Turks ponder why wasnt Constantinople burned? Greeks classified as the Rum Millet no doubtable out numbered Turks in Constantinople, as today they are only 2,000 and were exempt from the population exchange of the Treaty of Luisanne.

Kemal Ataturk invited the Greek and Pontic refugees of Pergamon to return home after he led a campaign of genocidal terror. The city of Pergamon is in the province of what the Greeks regard as Troas (English: Troy) or better known as the Dardanelles. When the Greek refugees from Mytilene (Lesbos) returned to Pergamon, their homeland, their were executed. Parts of the city were burned.

In France riots broke out over the fires that killed 200,000 Greeks in Phocaea. Hundreds of reports show that the Turks pillaged the city. Near the city is a Salt Factory that the Ottoman Empire account owned and still services today to produce Sea Salt. Further down are the cities: Smyrna, Ephesus, Miletus and Halicarnassus. The archeive of evidence that shows that the Turkish campaign was in name a revolution, yet as an operation targeted the ultimate goal of exterminating the infidels (Orthodox Christians: including Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks/Rums, Pontic Greeks, and Nestorian Christians).

Dobkins report is not skewed as a bases of racism or choosing sides. People dont believe in the Jewish Holocaust because it is anti-Nazi. The report of the Turkish Nationalist Revolution led by the Young Turk party is in no doubt an atrocity that focused on Genocide. Turkish Nationalism harolded the slogan, "Turkey is for Turks Only!" The Republic of Turkey today is founded on Kemalism, so dont be fooled that anyone believes that the current Turkey sees this event as historical. To the Turks, this is a political event, their independence day is based off of the day Kemal Ataturk entered Smyrna.

In my opinion, a solution will not bring gains to either Greece nor Turkey. This stalemate serves a purpose to leave both our countries in fear and wastefully speand our money on military build-ups in which the Western Powers continue to profit off of.

By the way, some Turks took cheap blows towards the Orthodox religious leaders of Smyrna who are reported in the archives as not supporting the Asia Minor Hellenic State, yet Turkish history books serve slander to Orthodox bishops as they are seen as ethnic leaders and not religious leaders. Christosomos' brutal killing by the Turkish Army was accounted for by a Turk who freed Greek prisoners in Smyrna to escape the pillage. The account written by a Turk states that Christosomos had his eyes gauged out by a small number of Turkish troops. As the bishop continued to pray he repeated a prayer and asked for God to forgive the troops as they were blinded and did not know what they were doing. As they dragged the bishop's body through the streets and beat him one soldier cut his hands off while he prayed for their forgiveness. Soon after, the Turkish narrator said that he could see light around the bishops head like a crown and that his body did not drag on the ground but was levatated in mid-air. This report stands besides the final speeches of Christosomos that he told his congregation as he denied safe exile from the allies so that he would not suffer from the onslaught Ataturk warned them about on September the 10th.

September 11, 1922 Christosomos died with his congregation as the Turkish troop shot him dead blank in the head to end his misery. The horrid joy of the Turkish Massacre on the Christians of Smyrna is the most repeatual eye-witness theme amoung the tousands of accounts that sit in the Library of Congress.

My own great-aunt Calliopi spoke of this as I interviewed her about World War One. On her final day at Smyrna she spoke of the streets leading to the quay being filled in panic and horror. As she took a wrong turn, men on horses ran through the crowd shooting and screaming. When the crowd was overwhelmed by panic, she and her husband were crushed to the dirt where she held her 3 boys under her coat. After what seemed like eternity and as the streets ran rivers of blood that she can still taste and smell, she watched as a soldier shot her husband in the head and his eyes opened to look at her once more but were drenched in his own blood that flowed out from his head so fast. She hid under her coat. The soldier stabbed her husbands neck with the sword of his gun. Her youngest son passed out in her arms in shock, while the others clenched her like adolescent infants. Soon the noise of panic faded. You knew that a majority of people were dead. And still you heard gunshoots. They were shooting corpses and laughing. The one word that she felt controlled them was not nationalism, not Islam, but HATE. Satan himself was there that day, and she heard him laughing in the joy of massacre. She was so afraid to move, because even well into the night the soldiers went back and forth shooting dead bodies. And when the ran out of bullets, they used their guns. They would bash heads in with the bunt of their guns. Or simply cut people to pieces.

She escaped at Nighttime with the 3 boys. The Aegean was filled with dead bodies. She described them to me. Their pale colored skin and white ghostly eyes. She saw the flagged ships off the shore. But as she was a resident, she found her way to the beach, and some Greeks rescued them in a small ship that took her to Chios. No Westerns went into Smyrna to step through the massacre. Instead they watched from their boats, a theatrical sight and sound. The city burned, well only the Greek and Armenian parts of the city burned. Only the Turkish section was left untouched. The YMCA and all the restaurants on the shore all burned. She never went back to Smyrna. She died in March 1993.

As a Smyrnean and Greek on my father's lineage, I read the book in one shot yesterday. Having lived half of my life in Smyrna, among the now non-existent Greek community, I have met many elders in my youth, who were witnesses to the atrocities documented in the book.
It was really though reading through the pages and pages of fisthand accounts of this once beautiful city, now a place of cement blocks, immigration and a vast monument of genocide at the center that Turks call Kültürpark (Cultural Park) where once stood the Armenian quarter and some of Inetnetional/Greek neighborhoods.
The tragedy of the city under Temurlane and Turks were identical hence the centuries of time interval between them.
Although I hate to put the blame on a nation (or on several for that matter; the British, French and to an extend the Americans were also to blame as well as Turks) the denial of the historical facts of 1890-1925 in Asia Minor by modern Turkey makes one to linger in angst.
Housepian-Doubkin is an intersting read although greater emphasis was given to the Armenian population living in the city in 1922 in the book. And although the aim of the Turks primarily to get rid of the Armenians in Asia Minor when torching the city, they hardly discriminated the vast Greek population of Smyrna. On the contrary, the atrocities that followed the Lausanne Agreement and throughout the modern history of Turkey puts a special emphasis on the Greek population of Asia Minor and Constantinople so that now only 1500 Greeks live in an area where more than 2.500.000 lived in 1919.
Visitors to Northern Aegean region (Troy) can visit the graves of Greeks and Armenians who fought with their Turkish brothers against the British and Anzacs just a few years before their mothers and sisters were raped and killed after their noses, ears and eyes were cut out.
I also strongly suggest to anyone who wish to reply to this post with Greek atrocities of the time, first to research the number of Turkish causalties during the so called Turkish Independence war.

Smyrna burning, 14 Americans missing, 1000 massacred as Turks fire city...
A creditable account of one of the most critical period in the early postwar history of World War 1 in the Middle East, an epic of human tragedy. A pertinent and valuable document on the Asia Minor catastrophe.
There are enough information about Smyrna's culture and heritage before the destruction. I was impressed how the minorities were so safe and prosperous during the centuries before they had the equal rights. "The finest city in Asia" according to Strabo. Although an earthquake destroyed Smyrna it was Marcus Aurelious who built it again and soon Smyrna with her school of philosophy, her library and her orators rivalled ancient Ephesus. It was under Byzantine rule that Smyrna first estmblished her character as a commercial gateway. After lots of destructions and rebuiltings, Smyrna finally survived and turned to be one of the greatest cities in Asia Minor.
There are many details about Smyrna's history from then on until the destruction, many testimonies from the protagonists and quite important analysis.
And then 9th September came... The great fire that consummed the then predominatory Greek city of Smyrna. The author did her best in order to describe the Ataturks city ablaze after a celebratory orgy of plunder rape and massacre of the Christian inhabitants. There are so many details about the fire and there is a remarkable narrative for all those facts.
As George Horton said: "
only the destruction of Carthage by the Romans could compare to the finale of Smyrna in the extent of its horror, savagery, and human suffering. One of the keenest impressions which I brought away with me from Smyrna was a feeling of shame that I belonged to the human race."
I was totally impressed by that book which is an authoritative piece of research s vivid as a novel.
A meticulously docuented tragedy which recaptures the flavour and richness of Smyrna in itsprime.
And finally came the Laussane Treaty in 1923 and the great exchange of populations...
In fact, it was what I was looking for before I started reading that book: to find out all the details about the destruction and the reasons that led the Turks to do such a disaster. I think that new generations will find it quite informative and very explanatory.
The survivors of Smyrna fire have the advantage of a more profound insight. And my father in law is one of them.

Once again , a book bringing back memories of the past. I feel very sad to hear from fellow Turks, that no massacre happened, and the Greeks just light up in fire the city. My grandfather, lost three brothers and a sister , to the so famous called routes, that the Turks forced them to walk , thousand of miles, in the winter, without not even a coat. I recall my grandfather telling me how he was separated from his brothers, which he never heard about them. This book brought memories back, memories of the genocide that Pontiacs faced, back in 1913-1920...from the so called democrat Ataturk. Read this book, that describes in detail, the historical facts, that so many historians have wrote. I also suggets Theas Hallo book "Not even my Name", which you can found in amazon.

It took countless hours of research for the author to produce this book. Her work included interviews with survivors. If you ask an educated American about the Catastrophe in Smyrna, you will be answered with a blank stare. This book is a concise introduction and portrayl of the visciousnes of the Turks in their attempts to obliterate the much older Armenian and Greek cultures from the Anatolia. What is most disconcerting is the author's meticulous recording of the dishonesty of Amercian foreign policy following WW I. She describes how American policy was designed to assist oil exploration and secure oil concessions, all while ordinary people were killed in horrible ways on the wharfs of Smyrna, as American warships in the harbor refused to help. Cf. to Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking.

This reviewer who states that "the Greeks and Armenians began an aggression" certainly makes a sweeping statement which is unsupported by fact: There was NOT any aggression, certainly on the part of the Armenians, who were a pacifistic nation and did not even have any military forces! I predict that the reason this book lacks an account of Armenian aggression is because there is nothing to support that position (I can't speak to Greek history). When one continues to see and hear accounts of atrocities which have in common the hatred which prompts them, eventually one must conclude that these atrocities were in fact real. To think that Armenians were aggressive only proves the reviewer's lack of knowledge about Armenian culture.

Great account of a tragic time. My revisionist Turkish friends should also read the books "Ionian Vision," "Blight of Asia" and "Secrets of the Bosporus" - all written by US and UK diplomats. The fact is that the Asia Minor campaign was an utterly stupid venture promoted by a well-meaning but ill-advised Lloyd George. However, to deny that Smryrna was an etnhically Greek city (it was referred to by the Turks as "Giaour Izmir" translated as Infidel Izmir) is to promote pseudo-history that deepens wounds that are only just healing. We don't have to look far to see that conquering armies often burn down habitations of the conquered so that the expelled cannot return - the destruction of Christian towns and monuments in Kosovo provides a fairly recent example.