LA MORT DE SMYRNE
(The Death of Smyrna)
René Puaux
Edition de la Revue des Balkans, Paris 1922.
The GGRC would like to fund the translation of this book to English. If you are a capable French to English translator, please contact us.
René Puaux (1878-1937) was a French historian and journalist who worked for the French newspaper Le Temps. He arrived at Smyrna (today İzmir) in 1919 and was able to collect vital eye-witness testimonies and information from the Smyrna Holocaust following the Kemalist Army's entrance to the city in September 1922. A year later, he published Les derniers jours de Smyrne [The last days of Smyrna] in which he used additional documentation and testimonies which weren't available to him at the time of writing this publication.
In 1919, he published La déportation et le rapatriement des Grecs en Turquie [The deportation and repatriation of the Greeks in Turkey] describing the deportation/relocation of Greeks in Turkey before and during WW1 and attempts to repatriate these Greeks at the conclusion of the war.
On page 10 he wrote:
Le rapt des femmes et des jeunes filles est une vieille tradition chez les soldats turcs et les témoignages à ce sujet sont aussi nombreux que révoltants. Des femmes furent violées sous les yeux de leur mari ou de leur père, assassinés s'ils tentaient d'intervenir Un Grec, employé dans une maison anglaise, et qui avait réussi à se cacher, assista au meurtre de son père et au viol de sa femme et de sa fille. Un Levantin naturalisé Américain, se suicida après avoir subi le même spectacle.
English translation:
The abduction of women and girls is an old tradition among Turkish soldiers, and the evidence on this subject is as numerous as it is outrageous. Women were raped in front of their husband or father, murdered if they tried to intervene. A Greek, employed in an English house, and who managed to hide, witnessed the murder of his father and the rape of his wife and daughter. A naturalized American Levantine, committed suicide after undergoing the same show.
By the same author
Les derniers jours de Smyrne
La déportation et le rapatriement des Grecs en Turquie
Le déclin de l'hellénisme
Further reading:
Smyrna 1922, M. Housepian Dobkin
Smyrna 1922, L. Ureneck
American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces
The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom: A File of Overwhelming Evidence, Denouncing the Misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and Showing Their Responsibility for the Horrors of Smyrna.
