Lessons from the 1922 Smyrna Catastrophe: The Tales We Tell Ourselves
An old house in Mitiline on the Island of Lesvos, Greece, reminiscent of the grandeur that was once Smyrna.
The human capacity for willful blindness seems never to diminish. Understandably, we want to believe that what we love and value most cannot and will not be taken from us in an instant. Naturally, we fear and resist change.
Ever polyanna-like creatures, we want to believe that we’re somehow insulated from unwelcome changes. Our sanctuaries, we tell ourselves, will never be violated. We might even allow ourselves to believe that our sincere efforts to be good humans in this world will inoculate us from undue disruption and suffering.
Most of our news is filtered, and only small snippets of multiple unfolding tragedies seep into our everyday lives. Listening to snapshots of the famines, wars, and weather events that rage on as I write can make us feel utterly helpless and overwhelmed and can lead to multiple emotions, including intense sadness. Ever more sensitive energetically, many of us feel deeply the unfolding of these catastrophic events, and then we wonder why emotions within us rage in tandem with the chaos playing out in the external world.
Intense emotions and spikes of anxiety should not surprise us. We’re observing our species continue to lose its humanity, as world leaders justify the sale of arms, perpetuating endless spirals of violence.[1] We have every reason to despair. Our overwhelm signals that part of ourselves is desperately soul-searching and trying to imagine a better reality for all human beings on the planet. We can and should expect a great deal more of ourselves as members of this brilliant but lost species that learned during the Second World War how to destroy itself with nuclear weapons that pose as much of a threat now as they ever have.[2]
A telling of the catastrophe in Smyrna in 1922 showcases what can happen when human beings are willfully blind and unable to face the truth of what’s really happening in their “neighborhoods” and beyond. This largely forgotten piece of history, moreover, reminds us that human beings have not evolved for the better, for the 1922 Smyrna Catastrophe sadly set the stage for the bloody atrocities to follow during the remaining years of the twentieth century and beyond.
As I write this, the violence in the middle east is accelerating. Tens of thousands of human beings have been indiscriminately displaced, maimed, widowed and orphaned, while many others in Gaza and now Lebanon are buried under the rubble that once was the substance of their homes.[3] Medicines Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) has put out the following statement in a video. The government in Israel, it states, has “forcibly displac[ed] tens of thousands of people, blocking essential supplies and bombing entire neighborhoods. The North is being turned into an unlivable wasteland, emptying it of Palestinian life. And where should these people go? To a tiny place, where there is one million people in overcrowded and inhumane conditions that is regularly bombed. Its heath infrastructure is dismantled. This is collective punishment. And the dehumanization of a whole population. We have been saying this for one year and we will continue to say this until we are heard. This must stop now.” The World Food Program reports that 2.5 million people in Palestine are at crisis levels of hunger, and the images of these starving human beings are rarely shown on mainstream news outlets. Doctors and other humanitarian personnel in these regions are currently trapped in situations where their lives are threatened at this very moment, but are we truly absorbing this information, or are we dismissing these ongoing and devastating reports?[4]
The humanitarians who are risking their lives all over the world have been telling their stories and appealing to “something greater than our small selves,” but are we listening?[5] Other wars rage around the globe. Geographical distance cannot protect or blind us to the untold suffering that is created by the very bombs that we manufacture in our country and export to the world. Haiti and many African countries are enduring devastating conditions caused by political upheaval and climate-related disasters, and it’s time that we wake up to the violence and displacement that is occurring all over our globe with an eye to taking responsibility for how powerful empires have contributed to the phenomenon of an ever-increasing number of displaced human beings.
Rather than thinking about how much we don’t want to invite the presence of displaced peoples into our borders, why don’t we wonder why these human beings became displaced in the first place? Having worked with refugees, there is no greater sadness than to see the heartbreak they feel because they have been forced to leave their homelands behind. The tales that we tell ourselves about people wanting to migrate to more prosperous areas of the world are a reflection of our own ignorance and arrogance. My friend Hana, who was born in Somalia, remembers how beautiful the country of her childhood was before she was forced to flee. She doesn’t understand what happened to this once peaceful and beautiful land, where she can return only in her dreams. If you would see the tears rolling down her face as she remembers her homeland as it once was, it would be abundantly clear that the heartbreak of displacement weighs heavily on the human beings who have been forced to live this nightmare.
For the purposes of this little piece of writing, let us imagine ourselves into an historical drama that caused massive human displacement. Let’s imagine that we’re inhabitants of Smyrna, the fabled city in Anatolia (now Turkey) that in 1922 was a thriving, cosmopolitan trading port.
Smyrna was an ancient Greek city located on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, and it was comprised of Turkish, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, American, and European quarters. Pre-1922, Smyrna was a great Ottomon Empire city of tolerance, where many cultures peacefully prospered and co-existed as they do presently in places like the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City.
Smyrna was a truly international city. As one former resident remembered it, “You’d hear every language under the sun on the quayside . . . and see ships from everywhere in the world”: “The waterfront was lined with lively bars, brasseries and shaded café gardens, each of which tempted the palate with a series of enticing scents. The odour of roasted cinnamon would herald an Armenian patisserie; apple smoke spilled forth from hookahs in the Turkish cafes. Coffee and olives, crushed mint and Armagnac: each smell was distinctive and revealed the presence of more than three dozen culinary traditions. Caucasian pastries, boeuf a la mode, Greek game pies, and Yorkshire pudding could all be found in the quayside restaurants of Smyrna.”[6]
The American George Horton claimed that in “no city in the world did East and West mingle physically in so spectacular a manner.” Smyrna boasted international banks, postal systems, and multiple newspapers from around the world. It was also a city noted for its ethic of hard work and devotion to indulgent merrymaking: “The imposing banks and clubhouses that lined the quayside were tangible symbols of Smyrna’s prosperity,” and evenings were spent enjoying theater, live music, and dancing in quayside establishments or in private mansions. Frank Street was the place to shop, and the two largest department stores, Xenopoulo and Orisdiback, imported goods from across the globe. The city was dominated by the Greeks, “who numbered 320,000” and who not only owned many of the city’s flagship businesses but also had a “virtual monopoly on the trade in the sticky figs, sultanas and apricots from which Smyrna was so famous.”[7] The young Aristotle Onassis and his family were prosperous members of the Smyrna community before they were forced to flee.
In Dido Sotiriou’s novel Farewell Anatolia, the sixteen-year old narrator, Manolis, describes what it was like to see and explore the famous city for the first time: “For hours I wandered through the covered market and the back alleys of Smyrna, until night finally fell. Workers with long poles were lighting gaslights. Horse-drawn carriages carried exquisitely dressed matrons to their social clubs or dinner parties. Vivacious dark-skinned girls with daring decollates strolled by laughing flirtatiously. Happily chattering couples were buying flowers. From the coffeehouses came the strains of popular songs. Waiters rushed back and forth carrying trays stacked with little carafes of ouzo and plates of finger foods. The whole waterfront was redolent with the smells of ouzo, baby cucumbers, fried meats and seafood. Even in the remote areas the houses were inviting, friendly. Entire families were sitting at their doorsteps, chatting good-naturedly. I didn’t have the heart to turn in. I had just met Smyrna and it already seemed as though I had been born here, lived here all sixteen years of my life. When I finally went to bed I lay awake, twisting and turning, whispering her name like a lover. ‘How beautiful you are, how beautiful. . .’ Here in Smyrna I could dream all the dreams I had ever imagined. . .”[8]
It’s no wonder why the inhabitants of Smyrna did not want to acknowledge the looming catastrophe waiting to unfold in September of 1922. On the 9th of September, the residents nervously observed from perches and balconies the Turkish cavalry’s entrance into the city, hoping that that the magnificent spectacle of this new army would result in a smooth transition of power from Greek to Turkish rule. As Giles Milton, author of Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 explains it, the “Turkish cavalry’s triumphant entry came at the end of a brutal, three-year war with Greece—a war fought on Turkish territory in which Britain and other Western powers, had aided and armed the Greeks.”[9]
Now a backlash was feared. Smyrna was a predominantly Christian city, and there were well-founded fears that the Turkish army would unleash its fury upon the inhabitants. The city’s Christian population included Greeks, Armenians, Levantines (of European descent) and Americans. These thriving residents did not want to believe that the battles that had raged on the outskirts of their city would encroach upon their paradise.
And why would they? After all, the American section of the city had been named Paradise because it was so beloved; it was unthinkable to imagine that this celebrated port city could be violently destroyed at the conclusion of a long and bitter war between the Greeks and the Turks, a war that had been encouraged and supported financially by the great powers who wanted to control and manipulate this oil-rich region of the world.
There were other reasons as well for the residents of Smyrna to embrace the illusion that the Turkish army would peacefully replace the Greek government, recently rendered powerless. The Greeks were losing badly their three-year long war to recapture lands they’d held during the glory days of the Byzantine Empire and had hoped to regain. The Turkish army’s entrance into the city, combined with the refugees streaming into Smyrna from the countryside, made the reality of defeat as clear as day. The Big Idea, (or in Greek the Megáli Idéa), was the notion that the Greeks would again triumph in this part of the world; this fantasy, encouraged by Lloyd George of Britain, had come to an abrupt end. And yet, when the residents of Smyrna looked out upon their waterfront balconies, they might have counted at least twenty-one British, French, and Italian battleships. In addition, there were three American destroyers.
This impressive international presence contributed to the notion that these battleships would serve as a warning to the Turkish forces to remain calm and in check during this transition of power. Surely, local residents felt, Smyrna was valuable enough to save. The commanding presence of these foreign powers in the harbor was “proof” that they wouldn’t be abandoned to a band of formally attired but also ragged, beleaguered soldiers hardened and dehumanized by years of bloody encounters with Greek soldiers.[10]
It didn’t take long, however, for the locals to absorb the news that Smyrna would not enjoy protection from the military destroyers deceptively stationed in the harbor. All false hopes that their city would be preserved, and that their lives would continue on as usual, were on a dime revealed as nothing more than fairytale musings.
As Milton explains, what happened “over the next two weeks . . . must surely rank as one of the most compelling dramas of the twentieth century. Innocent civilians – men, women and children from scores of different nationalities – were caught up in a humanitarian disaster on a scale the world had never before seen . . . The American consul, George Horton, witnessed scenes of such horror that he would carry them to the grave. “‘One of the keenest impressions which I brought away from Smyrna,’ he wrote, ‘was a feeling of shame that I belonged to the human race.’”[11] Dr. Elliott of the American Women’s Hospitals, a crucial humanitarian group that served bravely during this catastrophe, remembers how little girls told “hideous, unprintable stories” about what had happened to them: “I have never seen children under ten cry while telling their tragic stories,” she wrote a few weeks after the disaster: “Their eyes grow wide, their mouths twitch, and with a look more of wonder than terror, they almost whisper, ‘I saw her killed and I ran away.’”[12]
The nations represented in the harbor embraced neutrality and a policy of non-intervention that came to represent collusion with evil in the face of a brutal slaughter and incineration of the residents of Smyrna. The men following orders in the harbor demonstrated “shocking callousness” and the impulse so common among humans to pursue a love of power over the power of love. As the Turkish army’s countryside forces raped, pillaged and burned the city, overnight creating thousands of refugees, Western governments stood by, having consciously chosen to abandon these newly-created refugees to their fate. Stationed safely on their ships, soldiers drank coffee and merely observed the unfolding tragedy. Their mission was to make sure that their governments would be able to strike deals with the victorious Turkish regime in the aftermath of this humanitarian nightmare.
Greed and indifference to indescribable suffering won the day; the Smyrna catastrophe eventually resulted in the displacement of about two million people, sending shock waves around the world: “As families were forcibly evicted from their ancestral homes – and 2,000 years of Christian civilization in Asia minor came to an abrupt end – a vibrant new country came into being. Ataturk’s modern Turkish republic arose from the ashes of Smyrna.”[13]
On September 13th, 1922, Smyrna, set fire by the Turkish army, burned mostly to the ground, killing scores of people and creating thousands of refugees who were trapped on the quayside. The sounds of laughter and merrymaking were transformed into screams of terror. The shrieks emanating from this frantic, desperate chorus of people were muffled by the soldiers upon the destroyers, who blasted their music in a vain attempt to block out the cries of over-heated humans trapped like rats on the quayside.
Smyrna, and everything it represented, was destroyed more rapidly than any human being in that city could have imagined.
It is now the modern city of Izmir.
I find myself often wanting to see the best in people and in situations but have come to understand that naïve, wishful thinking can indeed become a dangerous exercise. While living on edge and in fear can in itself produce a kind of internal violence that, if unleashed upon others, can be destructive, there is also a wisdom in embracing the reality that we’re never secure and always at risk of suffering the consequences of events out of our control and unfolding in the world at large. When empires brutalize the vulnerable, and perpetuate cycles of violence, there will be consequences for the powerful, eventually. None of us is immune from natural disasters or the laws of cause and effect.
No amount of money, power, real estate, or belongings will protect human beings when catastrophe strikes. Those most vulnerable in our world include us and not just people who are more visibly weak than ourselves.
It’s important to acknowledge this, because we imagine that we will never become displaced persons, but overnight some of the most wealthy and established residents of Smyrna had to leave within minutes everything that they had earned, owned, enjoyed and valued over their lifetimes. The humanitarian Dr. Elliott describes the plight of one refugee who had been evacuated from Smyrna and brought to the town of Mitilini on the island of Lesvos, Greece: “Our housekeeper was a woman of wealth just a few weeks ago,” she explains. “She had a home with ten bedrooms. Her family slept fifteen nights in the streets of Mitiline without so much as a blanket. Now they have a room where ten people sleep together.”[14]
This woman and her family had been forced to flee their home in order to join a madding crowd of refugees, consisting of their neighbors as well as the streams of farmers, craftsmen and rural folk that poured into the city from the countryside. Proud residents of one of the wealthiest and romantic cities in the world thus joined together with thousands of others to become one vulnerable entity together, all human beings without place, status, or resources—all refugees.
It happened to them overnight, and the loss of all that they once had carved into these displaced Greeks, Armenians, and others deep wounds that have lasted through the generations. None of these people wanted to acknowledge that they were in imminent danger, understandably, yet their privileged lifestyle had made them soft and unable to see that change was in the wind. The power struggles created by wars had finally rendered them vulnerable to the cycles of violence that had been brutally playing out in more rural areas for a long time. The residents of Smyrna, by and large wealthier and more sophisticated than villagers throughout Anatolia, were not immune to the winds of war.
The tales that we tell ourselves blind us to the truth that we are interconnected with and affected by the lives of others, regardless of the geographical distances that we like to think serve as protection. The stories that we tell ourselves also encourage us to buy into the notion that we hail from separate, distinct tribes, when a greater truth is that the empires that our ancestors lived under not infrequently coerced individuals and families to change their ethnic and religious stripes. The 16th century mystic and saint, Teresa of Avila, for instance, was born into a family of conversos, or Jews who were pressured by the Spanish crown to convert to Christianity. These stories of conversion, and of the intermingling of peoples during the Byzantine and Ottomon Empires, to give a few examples, should make us pause when contemplating ideas about religious and ethnic purity. Owning up to the fictions we’ve embraced might release us from the arguments we’ve used historically and presently to justify the never-ending spirals of violence that render us a species oriented toward power struggles, tribal one-upmanship, and self-destruction.
We can depart from the usual, suspect arguments used historically and presently to justify the violence that annihilates others, even as it makes the perpetrators of that violence more vulnerable. We can choose to recognize the children under the rubble as our own. We can stop perpetuating convenient fictions and mythologies, and we can hold ourselves and our governments accountable.
We can also accept in our blood and in our bones that practically, and mystically-speaking, what we do to others, we ultimately do to ourselves. Acknowledging the vulnerability in others, and the reality of their suffering, opens the door for us to embrace with courage our individual and collective fragility.
By refusing to accept leaders who continue the cycles of brutality that makes us forever unsafe, we begin to revive and reclaim our humanity.
If we want to hear the peels of laughter from children that make life worth living, then we need to peel off the layers of illusions that prevent us from embracing the deep inner knowing that tells us that we are intimately connected to everyone on our fragile planet. We must, once and for all, learn that our safety is dependent upon creating a climate of peace for all.
For there must be an end to the cycle of“Smyrnas” continually unfolding in different regions of the world, whether or not we choose to open our eyes to these realities, or we choose to keep our eyes conveniently, but dangerously, closed.
[1] See Archbishop Don Helder Camara’s classic work on the Spiral of Violence: https://www.liberationtheology.org/library/spiral-of-violence-camara.pdf
[2] See Bishop Swing’s book about nuclear weapons: https://www.amazon.com/God-Nuclear-Weapons-Meditations-Atomic/dp/B0D82CDLSF?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
[3] See the sermon “Christ in the Rubble” given last Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md_hw_A-oIs
[4] https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/our-response-israel-gaza-war. See also https://www.wfp.org/countries/palestine.
[5] https://www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/2006-3rd-firebones.htm
[6] See Giles Milton’s Paradise Lost Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance. John Murry Publishers, Great Britain, 2015 (reprint from 2008). Pg. 10, 8. See also on you tube an excellent documentary entitled Smyrna, 1922: The End of a Cosmopolitan City. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKOoQ5cJxKI
[7] Paradise Lost pgs. 8,9.
[8] See Dido Sotiriou’s Farewell Anatolia. Kidros Publishers, Athens, Greece, 1991. Pgs. 40, 41.
[9] Paradise Lost, pg. 4.
[10] Paradise Lost, pg. 5.
[11] Paradise Lost, pg. 6.
[12] See Esther Pohl Lovejoy’s Certain Samaritans. Reprint, see www.literary licensing.com). pg. 180.
[13] Paradise Lost, pg. 7.
[14] Certain Samaritans, pg. 180. For more information about how the peoples of the region are hardly racially or religiously pure, see Marc David Baer’s The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs.