AT LAST WE UPROOTED THEM
THE GENOCIDE OF THE GREEKS OF PONTUS, THRACE AND ASIA MINOR THROUGH THE FRENCH ARCHIVES.
Harry Tsirkinidis.
Kyriakidis publishers 1999
332 pages..
Available at Amazon
This publication - which was originally published in Greek - is the result of research by Harry Tsirkinidis into the French archives. Tsirkinidis is a law graduate and a former military Attaché at the Greek Embassy in France. He is also the author of a number of books on the Greek Genocide.
In regards to the title of the book, according to a report by French military colonel Mougin, on August 13, 1923 in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Turkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisi) in Ankara, Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938) declared:
"At last we've uprooted the Greeks ..."1
In 2019, the television series The Red River (Το Κόκκινο Ποτάμι) aired on Greek TV. The series is set during the Greek Genocide and is based on a book of the same name written by Tsirkinidis, titled 'Το Κόκκινο Ποτάμι: Η Τραγωδία του Ελληνισμού της Ανατολής (1908-1923).'
On page 204 (of the Greek edition), he writes:
The French General Staff, in a report dated October 13, 1921, mentions:
"New Turkish violence against the Christians of Pontus. The villages of Santa [Tr: Dumanli] and Kromni [Tr: Kurum] have been pillaged and burnt."
On October 5, 1921, the newspaper Yogovourt, wrote:
"It's been confirmed that on September 32, 1921, 63 Greek decision-makers were executed at Samsun. The relocation of the women and children continues."
On September 14, 1921, the newspaper Yerguir wrote:
"Five-hundred Greek residents of Bafra were relocated to the interior of Anatolia. Those of military age were sent to Sivas to be tried at the Independence Courts.
- In 1921, the city of Amasya in Pontus accommodated, in its prisons and its old fort, which it once used as a sanitarium (Tr: Timarhane), hundreds of Greek and Armenian detainees. The gallows were permanently erected, because the sentences of the court martial which was headquartered there, were one after the other and on most occasions were in groups.
This court martial was abolished and the Independence Court took its place.
The Turks, under the pretext that certain Greeks were supposedly conspiring to create an "Independent Pontus" arrested all the prominent Greeks, the cream of Hellenism in Pontus and locked them up in the Timarhane.
The President of the Independence Court in Amasya was a certain Turkish lawyer from Samsun. From the 20th of August until the 21st of September 1921, he sentenced to death and executed 177 Greeks. Among them was Efthimios [Bishop of] Zile, the assistant of the Bishop of Amasya, who died in prison from Typhus. However the hatred of "Emin Aga" was such, that he ordered for them to hang him with the others, even though he was dead."
1. Tsirkinidis, Harry, At last we uprooted them… The genocide of the Greeks of Pontus, Thrace and Asia Minor, through the French archives, Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis Brothers, 1999, p. 300.