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By Theodoros Giannitsopoulos, Lieutenant General (retd.) and member of ELISME 

May 19 is for the Greeks a day of mourning and national remembrance of the Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus and their uprooting. It is the day that Mustafa Kemal, the so-called Ataturk, landed in Samsun on May 19, 1919, supposedly to pacify the region and instead of protecting the Greek residents from the murderous fury of the Chetniks, he allied himself with them and their instigator Topal Osman and with the slogan "Turkey to the Turks", he put into effect the plan of the Young Turks, for the final extermination of the Greek population throughout Pontus.

When we hear the word Genocide, our thoughts automatically go to the two tragic events of the 20th century, the Armenian genocide in 1915 by the Young Turks and the genocide of the Jews by the Germans.

In our century, however, crimes of genocide have been committed against other peoples, which were either overshadowed by the volume of the two tragic cases I mentioned above, or were silenced by governmental and political imperatives, in the name of interstate agreements and interests. One of the peoples that has suffered all forms and methods of genocide, even by the same massacrer of the Armenian people, is the Hellenism of Pontus.

Pontic Hellenism failed to test all the categories of acts mentioned in the Convention on the Prevention and Suppression of the Crime of Genocide, exactly as it was voted on December 9, 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The documents found in public and private libraries, but mainly in the official archives of various states, reveal the satanic goals of the Young Turks and the Kemalists.

The historical events

Based on the recorded events, the Genocide was essentially carried out in three phases:

 The first phase began in 1908 and lasted until the start of World War I.

The second phase began in 1914, when the conflicts of World War I escalated the policy of genocide. The order of the head of the Ottoman army, German commander Liman von Sanders, to evacuate areas of Greeks, under the pretext of military needs, is characteristic.

The period 1919-1923 constitutes the third and final but also the most intense phase of genocide, when Mustafa Kemal's movement with the National Assembly in Sebasteia (September 1919) decided and proceeded with the final phase of extermination of the Pontic Greeks.

The labor battalions, as a result of the 1909 law on the conscription of Christians, the 1914 conscription and the displacements in the depths of Anatolia, led to the physical extermination of the Greeks. Greek men and women were murdered, dishonored, exiled or fled en masse to the forests and mountains. Terrorism, labor battalions, exiles, hangings, burning of villages, rapes, murders forced them to abandon their ancient homes. By March 1924, the number of Pontic Greeks who had been murdered was 353.000.

Memory and Forgetfulness

As Professor Mr. Costas Photiadis states in his study on the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks, the Greek-Turkish friendship treaty of 1930, the simultaneous accession of Greece and Turkey to NATO in 1952, as well as the so-called rapprochement of the two states, were milestones (and) for the Pontic issue.

However, after many years of struggle and efforts by second-generation Pontians and associations at home and abroad, the Greek parliament recognized the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks in 1994, establishing May 19 as a day of remembrance and honor.

The law on the recognition of mass crime is in itself a milestone in modern Greek history, perhaps the most valuable thing the Greek state had to offer to the victims of the purge from their historical homeland and to their descendants, the refugees, who arrived in Greece in rags and yet contributed to Greek political, economic, social and cultural developments.

We do not forget, of course, that the Genocide of Pontic Hellenism is the third act of Genocide against the Greeks by Turkey, having been preceded by the Genocide of the Greeks of Ionia and Eastern Thrace, which was sealed with the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the greatest Catastrophe of Hellenism after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, one of the darkest pages of our History, which this year marks 100 years since its commission. 

I will point out, however, that unfortunately similar acts seem to be happening today in the war in Ukraine, with millions again uprooted from their ancestral homes, among them the over one hundred thousand Greeks of Mariupol, the Greeks of Odysseus, uprooted again after a hundred years from their homes, like their ancestors from Pontus. Research by international organizations with official data will show the magnitude!

The historical debt

I am certain that the Pontic Hellenism scattered throughout the world, an irrefutable evidence and a living part of Ecumenical Hellenism, will fight in a coordinated manner and by every legitimate means for the international recognition of the genocide of our 353,000 ancestral victims. The high spirit and Greek consciousness of the Pontians, despite living cut off from the national core in the north of Asia Minor, proves that it is our responsibility and duty to transmit the historical memory and to fight for the international recognition of the Genocide.

I call on you all and all together to come and save the memory of the Genocide, the most heroic hope of our History, and to fight for it. This act of ours constitutes the best memorial and the greatest rendering of due honor and reward to our ancestors, for their spirit of freedom, independence and disobedience to the labor battalions and forced conscriptions of the Ottomans.

At the same time, it constitutes the best legacy of principles and values, as well as forging the strength and morale of future generations, which are so necessary in our days, with the difficulties we are experiencing as a country, but also the tendencies towards the repetition of revisionism, authoritarian behaviors, and genocide of peoples on the part of Turkey.

Pontus and the Genocide of our Pontian ancestors show us the way. IMMORTAL!!!