The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey: Survivor Testimonies from the Nicomedia (Izmit) Massacres of 1920-1921"The booklet of originally sixty print pages in the Greek language, published by the war correspondent Konstantinos Faltaits as early as 1921 makes a very depressing reading, for it comprises episodes which seem to come directly from hell: from the hell of human suffering, and from the hell of human capacity to commit crimes that are otherwise known as crimes against humanity. The crime scene is the scenic peninsula and its hinterland, situated at the Marmara Sea between the towns of Yalova and Gemlik, south of Istanbul. In the hinterland lies the large Iznik Gölü, or Lake Iznik, with ancient Iznik at its eastern shore, once known in Europe as ... Nikaia (Nicaea), a Bithynian city where during the years 325 and 787 two Christian ecumenical councils took place. The area belongs to the province of Nicomedia, with the city of Nicomedia (Izmit in Turkish) as its metropolis. Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox population of this area had partly succumbed to linguistic assimilation and had become Turkophone. It was in this classic setting where the Hellenic citizen and correspondent for the Athens newspaper Embros, Konstantinos Faltaits, gathered the accounts of some Greek Ottoman nationals who had scarcely survived the extermination of their villages and towns after repeated onslaughts in the years of 1920 and 1921"--Prologue. |
