The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of SmyrnaHorton, George
History
The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of Smyrna
Horton, George
Christians -- Turkey; Fires -- Turkey -- İzmir; Greeks -- Turkey; Turkey; İzmir (Turkey) -- History
American relief workers, standing on the deck of a ship which left Smyrna
soon after the _Simpson_, related that they saw a man throw himself into
the sea and swim toward the vessel. A Turkish soldier raised his rifle,
took aim and blew the man’s head off. Another American, in relating
the same incident to me, added the detail that the Turk pointed his
rifle over the shoulder of a British Marine. Teachers and others of the
American Girls’ school told me that they saw a lady who resided in the
house directly across the street standing in the road surrounded by
Turkish soldiers, who were robbing her and tearing the rings from her
fingers. When they finished, one of them stepped back and cut one of her
hands off with his sword. The lady was never seen again and doubtless
died as the result of her injuries.
The story has frequently been told by Americans and others who were at
Smyrna that a crowd of residents, men, women and children, had gathered
on a lighter lying in the harbor but a short distance from the pier, with
the hope that some Entente or American launch would tow them to a ship
and save them. The Turks threw petroleum on them and burned them all to
death. A confirmation of this dreadful story was furnished me by Miss
Emily McCallam, directress of the Intercollegiate Institute of Smyrna.
She arrived in that ill-fated city on the morning of September 14, 1922,
after the fire set by the Turks had been raging all night, and saw a
number of charred bodies floating in the harbor, which she was informed
were the corpses of the people cremated on the lighter.
A prominent Dutch merchant of Smyrna, who had taken refuge on his yacht
during the fire, related to me at Athens that all through the night of
the dreadful thirteenth he heard fearful screams from the shore, ending
suddenly in a queer watery gurgle. He learned the next morning that a lot
of throats had been cut.
A book of great human interest could be written by any one who cared to
interview the refugees and set down the stories he would thus hear of
hair-breadth escapes and the desperate and ingenious expedients resorted
to. One wealthy woman with a large family of small children saved them
all in the crush and panic by tying a long rope around their waists, the
other end of which she attached to her own. A lady living at Vourla,
a large town near Smyrna, saved her beautiful daughter by skilfully
disguising her as a bent and ugly crone. A woman in the United States,
an American citizen, wrote me that her baby girl, four years old, whom
she had left in Smyrna with grandparents, had turned up in one of the
islands. During the massacre this little tot had crept into an open grave
where she lay as still as a mouse for many hours, until she heard people
speaking English, when she made herself known and was rescued by friendly
hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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