Pontian Genocide Remembrance Day today, a day established in 1994 by a decision of the Hellenic Parliament.
As "sansimera.gr" reports, an elite section of Hellenism lived in the north of Asia Minor, in the Pontus region, after the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire. The fall of Trebizond in 1461 by the Ottomans did not alter their Greek mentality and consciousness, even though they lived separated from the national body. They may have been a minority - 40% of the population - but they quickly dominated the economic life of the region, living mainly in the urban centers.
Their economic recovery was combined with their demographic and intellectual rise. In 1865 the Greeks of Pontus amounted to 265,000 souls, in 1880 to 330,000 and at the beginning of the 20th century they reached 700,000. In 1860 there were 100 schools in Pontus, while in 1919 there were 1401, among them the famous Preschool of Trebizond. In addition to schools, they had printing presses, magazines, newspapers, clubs and theaters, which emphasized their high intellectual level.
1908 was a landmark year for the people of the Ottoman Empire. In this year, the Young Turks movement emerged and prevailed, which sidelined the Sultan. Many were the hopes invested in the young soldiers for reforms inside the dying Empire.
Soon, however, their hopes were dashed. The Young Turks showed their harsh nationalist face, drawing up a plan to persecute the Christian populations and Turkify the region, taking advantage of the involvement of the European states in the First World War. The Greek state, preoccupied with the "Cretan Issue", was not in the mood to open another front with Turkey.
The Turks, under the pretext of "state security", are displacing a large part of the Greek population to the inhospitable interior of Asia Minor, through the so-called "labor orders" ("Amele Tambourou"). Men who did not join the army were forced to serve in the "Work Battalions". They worked in quarries, mines and road construction, under excruciating conditions. Most died of hunger, hardship and disease.
Reacting to the oppression of the Turks, the murders, exiles and burnings of their villages, the Greek Pontians, like the Armenians, rebelled in the mountains to save what they could. After the Armenian Genocide in 1915, the Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal now had the whole field open before them to exterminate the Greek Pontians. What the Sultan did not achieve in 5 centuries, Kemal achieved in 5 years!
In 1919 the Greeks together with the Armenians and the temporary support of the Venizelos government tried to create an autonomous Greek-Armenian state. This plan was thwarted by the Turks, who took advantage of the fact to proceed with the "final solution".
On May 19, 1919 Mustafa Kemal disembarks at Samsun to begin the second and most savage phase of the Pontic Genocide, under the direction of his German and Soviet advisers. Until the Asia Minor Disaster in 1922, the Greek Pontians who lost their lives exceeded 200,000, while some historians raise their number to 350,000.
Those who escaped the Turkish sword fled as refugees to Southern Russia, while around 400,000 came to Greece. With their knowledge and their work, they contributed the most to the recovery of the Greek state, which was ruined at that time, and changed the population balance in Northern Greece.
Admittedly with considerable delay, the Hellenic Parliament unanimously voted on February 24, 1994 to declare May 19 as the Day of Remembrance for the Genocide of Pontic Hellenism.
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