" Pontian separatists are still active here who want to take the shores of the Black Sea from us and resurrect the ancient state of Pontus, which died 600 years ago. » Kambit Kamin Beys, Commander of the 3rd Division
The proud spirit of the Pontians and the mountainous configuration of the terrain contributed to the realization of a heroic epic that lasted from 1914 to 1923 . In this ten-year period, approximately 25,000 Pontic rebels climbed to the impregnable peaks of the Pontic mountain peaks to survive the program of genocide that had been planned first by the Young Turks Cemal , Evren and Talaat , and then by Kemal Ataturk with Ismet Inonu .
Demosthenes Kelekidis came from Amiso (Sampsouda) and from the age of seventeen he lived through the atrocities of the Turks in Pontus. He climbed the mountains, fought, suffered, saved women and children from certain death and managed to survive. He recorded his personal testimonies in his book " The Guerrilla of Pontus ", where he describes the wonderful life he lived in his childhood in the fertile lands of Pontus and his complaint about the subsequent extermination of all his relatives and friends as well as the utter destruction of their houses and fields.
Greek villages were usually separate from Turkish villages. In the entire region of Pafra, Alatsa and Amiso they numbered around 1000-1200 villages. They were rich villages with many acres of land, with large animal husbandry, with thousands of fruit trees. The population was around 400-500 thousand, of them it is question whether 90-100 thousand have been saved. All this had turned to ashes, the Turks burned them. We who were left were around 10,000 rifles and had already decided to die fighting. We managed and survived 10% of those we pulled into the mountains………..the others perished…
A Turkish soldier fired a thousand bullets and could not kill a single insurgent, on the contrary the insurgent if he fired a bullet had to kill a Turk, that is why the Turks were always at a disadvantage. For five or six days we maneuvered, once we were in front of them, once on their flanks and once behind them. And so in the woods we exhausted them. We were experienced warriors, learned through hardships, we knew the terrain, we knew all the paths and we maneuvered in a flash...
The Turkish army burned villages and to satisfy themselves they gathered men and women, put them in churches and schools and burned them alive. In this way the Turks managed to leave no stone unturned. Three hundred and fifty to four hundred villages that once flourished, where their inhabitants were prosperous and had a love for God, for work and for their neighbor, ended up being penniless, because they had nowhere to hide their heads.
Those who could, women and children and who had the strength and courage to share the struggle of their men, went with them. And so every captain began to think not only of his lads, but also of the children and women. He was now the host for the three hundred people who were in his hands."
The great tragedy was that the rebels had to defend old men and women and children who were following them on foot. Lack of food, cold, sickness and fatigue become unbearable when you have to take care of defenseless people.
" In the state, our tribe was going through the most difficult time. They sent the Romans to the dungeons, to the prisons. These good people of the village and the mountain, without being guilty of anything, lived behind the prison irons. And the worst: they had set up gallows in the meidani where the clock of Amiso Square was, all around, and every night they hung fifty! The wood was nailed and I was measuring it, I was a 14 year old kid. There were fifty hangers. They also hanged women, but mostly men, good, righteous people, for the slightest reason...
I counted and recalled in my imagination all this drama. I was saying to steal with the friends of my age or go to Russia. On the other hand, I was saying: Where is Greece? Why do we hear eulogies all the time at school? Where are the heroes, don't they know this? I thought they were immortal from what our grandmothers taught us. Pelopidas ... Molon Lave ... On the other hand, I was saying: these Consuls, who represent the Christian states, don't they see this situation?
While this was happening, my foreman took me and we went to a factory, where 3-4 Armenians and 3 Greeks were working. But the factory was Greek and the Armenians were absent. Then we learned that the massacre of Armenians took place! They killed them with knives, with rifles, it became Saint Bartholomew's night. They were taken in boats deep into the sea, stones were placed around their necks and they were drowned. They slaughtered them on the mountain and ransacked their houses. Many of them, through the mediation of the Despot and with the help of the Greeks of Amiso, managed to save them."
The Pontians lived in the hope that everything would be as before. After the end of the Great War they hoped for the protection of the Christian states mainly England and America. Many times they arrived by swimming to American warships.
Later hope shifted to Russia. The tsarist troops occupied the eastern Pontus, giving life to the Armenians and the Greeks, while supplying the rebels with weapons. Many Pontians traveled to the raging waters of the Black Sea (KaraDeniz) to procure weapons for the guerrillas or even to remain in Russia. During the period of the Russian occupation of the East Pontus, we touched upon the dream of the independence of the Pontus. Valis of Trebizond handed over power, not to the Russians, but to Metropolitan Chrysanthos, telling him that " We received Trebizond from the Greeks, and we are handing it over to the Greeks ".
But that Bolshevik revolution spelled doom for Pontus independence. Lenin, taking power, withdrew the Russian troops from the eastern Pontus, turned against the Greeks and supported Kemal by all means. The Communists now handed over any Pontians who asked for help to the Turks, and the Pontians lost all the material aid previously provided by the Tsarist regime. New despair!
"There was a crowd of people coming from the opposite side of the street. Badly dressed in yellow rags. They were ragged, exhausted and looked like corpses. Women and children walked barefoot. As soon as the crowd saw that our military detachment was not Turkish, they began to cry louder and beg for help. The silence of the Soviet mission will surely go down in the historical record as a guilty silence."
From the notes of Soviet general Frunze .
Then hope shifted to the Greek army that was advancing as a liberator on the lands of Asia Minor. In my opinion, Venizelos did not help the Pontians at all in the drama they were going through, especially in 1919 when the Greek army was powerful. Venizelos could help, if not in men, at least in gold and munitions . All the reports from the reserve lieutenant Chrysostomos Karaiskos , which were sent to the government of Athens, fell on deaf ears. The Pontians were again left to their own devices, and when the Greek army collapsed, the Pontic rebels came to new despair. But they never gave up their arms. They continued to fight until the Treaty of Lausanne was signed .
Coming out of Amiso, Topal Osman 's people wanted to teach us a strong lesson. Topal Osman wanted to take a walk to our mountains, because he considered the conflict with us as a walk, to such an extent he did not pay attention to us. Osman's men while weighing in our forests held their rifles like glitzes. They thought they would face women and children. With our long experience, with the glances we cast at them through the foliage, we weighed their fighting ability....
We sparred sparingly and they thought we were few. We did the 'D' where it was like a lentil. In the meantime we collected 2,000 rifles from everywhere, and we had reinforcements from Karaperchin as well. They did not escape because there were mountains, forests and those evergreen trees where it was impossible to escape. These remnants of Topal Osman were thus exterminated. But they had done too much. They put the Christians inside the churches and inside the schools and burned them alive."
The most important leaders of the Pontus guerrilla groups were: Vasil Agas, Antonios Hatzielephariou (Anton Pasha) with his wife Pelagia, Papadopoulos Anastasios or Kotsa Anastas (the Kolokotronis of Pontus), Stylianos Kosmidis (Istil Agas), Hippokratis Dedeoglou, Nikoun Anastas, Tatsoglou Savvas, Aslanidis Savvas, Megalomystaks George, Tsakir Agas, Kara Ilias, Alekos Terloglou, Nikolas, Papadopoulos Sokratis, Anton, Kallinikos, Captain Euclid Kourtidis, Charalambos Lazaridis, Tagal Giorgis Papazoglou, Antik Giorgis, Ates Konstantinos , Arapoglou Anastasios, Michal Agas, Ioannidis Evangelos (Elvan Beys), Michail Goutzoglou, Stavridis Simeon, Kyrilidis Lazaros (Lazaragas), Karipidis Efstathios, Amiros Charalambos (Kourtos), captain Isaac Aga, Lefter Khotza, Melik Aga, Tsousidis Pavlos (Pauli Aga), Savvidis Periklis, etc. a.
“… The bullets of the defenders of the cave defended by the warriors with more than six hundred women and children were running out. There was no other solution but surrender.
"There is another solution," shouts leader Karavasiloglou Giorgis. " We will hand over our bodies to the Turks. They will kill each other to save the women and children ."
They look the lads straight in the eyes. The decision is hard, it is a decision of supreme sacrifice. He gives the revolver to Tagal Giorgis. " You will kill us all and after raising a white flag you will be killed too . "
The fierce warriors embrace and kiss with tears in their eyes. "For our faith and country," shouts the captain. Tagal Giorgis shoots. The first defender falls. Then another, and another, and another. It reaches his two children. He looks them in the eye and drops them. He doesn't understand anything. It keeps pouring. And when the Turks enter the cave he stares down the barrel of the revolver and fires..."
Achilleas Anthemidis – The liberating troops of Pontic Hellenism 1912-1924.
In the mountains of Pafra, the chieftain Anton Pasha acted with his companion Pelagia . They were both excellent marksmen and fearless warriors. Their exploits were sung throughout Pontus. Guerrilla songs were usually in Turkish, because the Pontians of the area where the guerilla operated were also Turkish-speaking. Our Orthodoxy, however, was the one that kept their national consciousness unquenched and they fought like lions against the barbaric Muslim conquerors.
Anton Pasha, with the reputation of being invincible, in 1916 was proclaimed in Trebizond as General Commander of the Rebel Groups of the Western Sea . The tsars of Russia supplied him with weapons and he often went down to the beaches to collect them. In 1917, with 400 rebels, he surrounded the town of Chidik and threatened the prefect of Amasias with the immediate burning of the town, in order to free his wife Pelagia, which was achieved. In the battle of Palik Kioli he humiliated entire regiments of the Turkish army. Anton Pasha's toughest battle was fought when the Turkish authorities, determined to exterminate him, decided to beat him in his own lair. The situation was more difficult now, because the Turks were attacking from all sides and Anton Pasha saw that he was surrounded. The battle lasted for many days and in the end the Turks, unable to withstand the rush of Anton Pasha's lads, gave up and left in shame, giving him another great victory.
The Turks, when they don't succeed with weapons, resort to babbling. Through Despot Germanos Caravangelis they offered him amnesty and surrender. Anton Pasha, whom he knew from a Turkish besa, refused the amnesty and as a result was awarded the sum of 50,000 golden pounds. We have experienced the result countless times in Greek history. Traitors, after an ambush, killed the hero commander, cut off his head and handed it over to the Turks who never paid them.
In 1921, Liva Cemil Javit Pasha promised Kemal that he would root out the gyauris from the Turkish mountains. On Kemal's personal order, he organized a powerful Turkish army to completely exterminate not only the rebel groups but also the women and children of Pontus. And yet the Pontic rebels, poorly armed, since the Russian Bolsheviks supported Kemal, successfully faced even this bloodthirsty general. Liva Pasha was at his worst for his failures, because after all, he was not fighting with the regular Greek army, but with a few Giauri fighters, who not only dared to resist him, but also defeated him.
Strong battles were fought in the area of Tsarsamba, ancient Themiscyra, kingdom of the Amazons. The following are accounts of the warriors Savvas Aslanidis and Pavlos Tsousidis:
" Liva Pasha once again attacked against the front of Tsopo Deresi. About 500 warriors rushed to help us under the leaders Giorgon Tsakirin and Deli Sokratin, also the captains Anastasis Karipidis, Mavrokostas and Efstathios arrived. The battle was awesome. The Turks attacked from four points. Liva Pasha, taking advantage of a quarrel between the leaders Tsakiris and Deli Sokratis, who abandoned the battle, captured many of the emirates, whom he mercilessly slaughtered. Most of the women and children fell into the hands of the bloodthirsty Turkish general, of whom the virgins and women were humiliated by his hordes and then exiled to Harput, killing the young women on the way, and the men were brutally mutilated. We managed to rescue the others at night, with the help of other Bogalik rebels, crossing the river Irin. But many drowned while crossing the river. Half of them, afraid of the current of the river, which was then rushing, turned towards Mount Ak Dag where, due to the severe winter, they suffered all the time. Arrested after a day by the Kemal hordes, they were brutally slaughtered.
General Javit Pasha led an entire regiment to a regular siege of Dazli. With his army, all the unruly Turks of the districts of Erpaa, Amaseia, Tokatis and Neo-Caesarea were in league. Our Circassian friends, who informed us of the arrival of the Firka commander, raised his force to 10,000 men, both army and irregulars. Our leader captain Giorgis Megalomystakas asked for the help of the famous commander Anastasis Papadopoulou.
As soon as our leader received the message, he sent immediate messengers to all the groups, and in a few hours there was a gathering of about 200 men-at-arms and as many unarmed men, which he always took along as auxiliaries and to show volume. Anastas Kotsaa himself was again at the head of the force, as well as the deputy leaders Theofilos Hatzipoulidis, Michael Kiourtsoglou, Meletios Pairakhtaridis, Anastasis Megalommatis and myself, Pavlos Tsoushidis. We set off at dusk and, walking all night, reached Tazli Teresi at dawn, took up positions on a part of the mountain and notified Captain George Aga of our arrival.
In the meantime the population that had abandoned the huts remained hidden in the caves of the mountain, which were located, in precipitous places, very high, where one could not easily reach except in those moments when man acquires superhuman powers, in order to save his life. As we later found out, the army managed to enter the huts, after the population fled, ransacked them and destroyed everything they found, food, clothing, etc. Very quickly, however, they paid dearly for it, since they dared to climb the dangerous ones points.
At the first fire and our contemporary dashing, the Turkish advance guards abandoned their posts, and running in panic to join the main body of the army. A second attack followed from the other groups, and the mountains were repulsed by our rifles. The soldiers at first answered with a very heavy fire also, but when they saw that they were fired upon not from one but from three sides, and not knowing what our forces were, they began to retreat for fear of being surrounded, and indeed in places so dangerous where it was impossible to ' grow. One after the other they left their trenches in front of the impetuous attacks of ours, until George Agas, rushing out with grenades, took the last of his area out of the trench, the so-called Chin Tuz.
The losses of the enemy were great in this triple attack of ours, but the Turkish soldiers suffered the greatest calamity mainly in the area of the huts, where the steep places stood the doom of many. Because while our people were familiar with the terrain and learned to walk on it like deer, they, completely strangers in such precipitous areas, were lost and did not know where to protect themselves, from our volleys or from the collapse. And the truth is that more people were killed by falling into ravines and cliffs than by our rifles, which nevertheless did their job.
As the battle had begun late in the afternoon, the battle did not last long, night quickly came and the Turks took advantage and left, so the brave pasha who came "to cut the root of the Gyauris from the Turkish mountains" stopped boasting. The losses of the Turks in that battle were about 100 dead and many wounded. We remained in our posts that night and in the morning hastened to the caves where our civilian population was in danger of suffocation. Tired, old men, women and children, came out of their hiding places and wept for joy, hugged and kissed us, because this time too we had saved them from certain death."
Land of the Sea - Dimitris Psathas
Pantelis Anastasiadis (Pandel Agas) was a student of the Samsountos High School when World War I was declared. He joined the guerilla and received the baptism of fire in Agios Tepe , where 47 guerillas and 2,500 women and children were surrounded by thousands of Turkish soldiers. They managed to escape in the night to Karaperchin. All the Roman villages were set on fire by the Turkish army and this forced the group of Dimitris Charalambidis, to which Pantelis belonged, to move towards Tsarsamba. The losses of the rebels were 4 dead – including the son of the leader Demosthenes – and 3 wounded, while the Turks lost 119 dead. Pandel Agas returned to Agios Tepe and there he punished all the Turkish gangs that committed crimes against Roma villagers.
" At that exact time we were informed that a senior officer named Kemal Pasha, coming from Constantinople via Samsund, advanced towards Ankara, passing through the cities of Tokaz, Sevaz, Amasya, and announcing the organization of the Turkish army...
We see things confused. Inaction of the English. Already in Ankara, Kemal Pasha's government was formed with Ismet Inonou. In view of all this, with arms in hand, we partially continued our works, awaiting with one hope the intervention of the allies and especially the English troops. But all hopes were in vain, no intervention... After 2-3 days, the Venerable Zelon Euthymios, the Protosygelos Agios Platon Aivazides and other prerogatives, doctors, etc., were arrested.
During the month of April, Amisos was closed off by strong army and gendarmerie forces, and no one from 15 to 65 was allowed to leave. They began from inside the city, from house to house, to round up all the men in a concentration camp. Wailing, moaning and despair prevails everywhere. Literally panic, because everyone knew the atrocities of the barbaric Turks. As soon as we rebels learned the facts we were notified by link to be on the lookout. They launched the first expedition with strong forces from the barracks of Eleskioi. As soon as the people reached a certain point, they were fired upon. It was now night and the firing stopped, the bloodthirsty soldiers armed with lances entered the dead to strip and finish off the wounded...
Following the above barbaric events, after the government of Kemal Pasha was relieved of the men of the cities, they thought of exterminating the villages and the rebels. For this purpose they gathered in Samsuda, Charsamba, Pafra, Erpaa a body (ortu) of 12,000 soldiers. They also established an independent rebel battalion under the Kerasundian bloodstain Topal Osman and Pin Pasha and in May 1921 they raided from all points against the villages and the rebels. With the first raid they made on us, we resisted in the village of Tunik Andreanton. We resisted for two days without letting them advance. The enemy was fighting with cannons, howitzers, machine guns and plenty of material. We not only with weapons. After two days of battle, seeing the exhaustion of our material, together with Apantzoglou Hatzichristos, Papoul Aga, Istyl Aga and other captains, we held a meeting to withdraw...
Preceded as the vanguard of a band of rebels, the population set out with tears and curses in the mouths of the people, when we reached Saltuch, abandoning our villages. What to see! Human storm…….More than 4,000 women and children always following the rebel families closely lest the rebels abandon them. At dawn the next day, what shall we see? Fire in all the villages, smoke conquered the sky and we couldn't see anything with the telescopes... The army looted and then set fire to all the villages, houses, warehouses, barns..."
In June 1921, Pandel Aghas found himself in the location of Saltuh surrounded by thousands of Turkish soldiers and Topal Osman's 400 vazibuzuks. There, with the chieftains Papoul Aga, Hatzichristos Apatzoglou, Kavaslis, Vassilakis, Tahtatzis, Neophytos Telis, he faced the stubborn attacks of the enemy. The losses of the civilian population who were protected by the rebels were great, while the women and children found by the Turks in caves and hiding places in the forest were massacred.
"Then we learned that the army was completely withdrawn and other captains and a multitude of people went to their burned villages to see what happened to those who remained hidden. But what can we see? Despair everywhere, the fires are still burning in the houses, and panic among those we met, fear and terror, crying, evil. We were told about the orgies of the barbarians. They had tracking dogs with them and in the woods they discovered the hiding places of the world within the earth. They were caught and after robbing them, they dishonored them. In the end, they killed them with great suffering.
Among those discovered and killed in this way were the families of the brothers Apatzoglou Hatzichristou and Athanas Aga, blessed Papa Efstathiou, Tserkezoglou Miltiados and many others. After many others were arrested, around 150 people gathered them in the houses of Chai Savva and Hadjifotis Stavrou and brutally burned them. Our villages are now completely deserted. And the animals and everything that was found were taken away as booty. No houses, no clothing, no food.”
"In September 1922, the Lausanne conference was held and it was decided, among other things, the exchange of populations. The Turks who were in Greece should go to Turkey and the Greeks of Turkey should leave their land and come to settle permanently in the land of their ancient ancestors. But which Greeks? How many were left from the carnage of their planned annihilation and where were they? A few were left in the cities and others, human rags, spent their tortured days in the depths of the East, remnants of the caravans that were pushed by tens and hundreds of thousands towards the endless roads of destruction. They were only those who were "lucky" to escape the massacre, from disease, from hunger, from prison, from the gallows, from the thousand and two sufferings that the Turkish civilization provided them with help of European diplomacy.
It is the part of the Greek tragedy that is least mentioned in our modern history, usually with the phrases "Turkish atrocities" and "exchange of populations", but not the least. Behind these phrases hides the immense drama of an entire Greek people, with a history of 25 centuries that had a trial in the iron and the fire of Turkish barbarism, endured, fought, became the main economic power of the Ottoman Empire and was now being uprooted violently, definitively and finally, forever.
At first the message seemed unbelievable. Should they go to Greece? A faint smile crossed the stricken faces, because Greece shone in their souls like a magical place, like a dream . However, how dearly paid was that touch of the dream!... They had to leave their ancestral lands, the land they watered with tears and sweat of centuries. But they did not have the right to vote.
Thus arose the remnants of the population, from the distant places of exile, human remains, men who had lost their wives, women who had lost their husbands, children who had lost their mothers and fathers, thousands of orphans, a skeleton crowd of the hardships and sufferings, shadows of tyrannized people, who were reforming again into caravans impoverished to once again take on foot the endless, multi-day roads of the return. From Tokati, from Erzerum, from Erzigian, from Diareverkir, from Hunus, from Kastamona, from Adana, from Sebastia, from Iconio, from all its distant villages inland of Turkey, from the cities and towns, where the shadows of the exiles survived, hidden and lost behind the towering mountains, they again saw the gendarmes rousing them.
Lost their homes. Their villages burned. Their lives stolen. Scattered the bones of their loved ones in the mountains, in the valleys, in the strata, in the rivers. However, those who remained had to start, mothers with their children, women with their husbands, and others deserted and alone. Often out of ten in a family there was only one left. And not infrequently, no one. Many descriptions exist of the tragedy of the return. But since we have followed the Santai to the places of their exile, let us see their return – representative is the description of what began and continued at that time throughout Pontus.
"In November 1922, the Turkish authorities notified the exiles that they were free to return to Trebizond or wherever else they wanted, as long as they submitted declarations about the place of their preference. All the Saints made statements about Trebizond, so their return became a group. Most of Santa's women and children were in Erzigian, and others in Hunus. These had the most adventures in filming.
The first day they started they passed the graves of their dead. Most were empty because the wolves dug up the bodies. Each woman knelt at the grave of her beloved dead and began the obituaries... At last the procession moved on. The cold is terrible. It was snowing heavily. Among the crowd there were also 8 pitiful children from Zournachanton, 8-10 years old, who had been completely orphaned. Some exiles from Hunus declared that they are the fathers of these children and thus the orphans found protection near them and whenever they could not move forward they helped them.
Half-dead from the cold, the crowd continued their march in the morning and after two more exhausting days they reached another village opposite Hassan Kale. The next day they began to climb the mountain with its endless turns and from its summit they saw Erzerum covered with a thick layer of snow. Their joy was great because they knew that there they would see their friends and relatives. Indeed, when they came down to Erzerum, some of them sacrificed their children, others their wives. However, they still had the toughest 15-20 day journey to reach Trebizond. One day they were free in Erzerum and the next they were on the road again, in the snow and frost.
After a few days they arrived in Vaivourti. Beyond Vaivourti, the gendarmes were replaced by other unconscious and merciless ones who were looking for an excuse to torture the exiles on the road. After suffering for 10 days, they arrived in Czevizlik, where within a few days all Santa's women and children gathered. In Jevizlik they threw the men into the barracks which were completely unfit for the accommodation of human beings. There they suffered for another 5 days and finally they went down to Trebizond and scattered among the Greek houses of Daphnouda".
This very image is true - thousands of people being dragged towards the coastal cities where the ships from Greece would come to pick them up. And this lasted for months - until 1924 the torture continued because one and a half million people scattered all over Asia Minor were to be brought together. At the same time, the Turks of the exchange were leaving Greece with all the honors and with all their comprables, without a hair of their head being touched. Arriving, however, they also fell furiously on the Romans and above all on their properties and houses, from where they drove them out with threats and curses, so that entire crowds were homeless, on the docks, carding.
Elsewhere some order prevailed. Elsewhere, beyond disrespect of the Turkish population and the gendarmes. Kerasundios, the narrator above, gives us another picture of his homeland, which was destroyed by Topal Osman and from where those who remained were leaving: "Several families of Greeks embark from the port of Kerasundos at night. Tina of these is still tormented by the Turks, demanding back taxes and inquirers who have hidden their valuables. Tinos grab the small parcels, which the unfortunate ones hold in the struggle. But they go further. Beautiful daughters of well-known families try to prevent them from leaving. Enraged, the mothers attack the satyrs and snatch their children from their vile hands.
October 1923 arrived and the embarkation still continues. The author of the History of Santa Miltiadis Nymfopoulos starts from Trebizond together with the Saints , who describes: "At the port of Trebizond, the Greek ocean liner "Oceanos" anchored, which took all the rest of the world of Trebizond and Sampsou. We are 7-8 thousand refugees, stacked like sardines. This great overcrowding created many issues. We had two toilets for the thousands of people. Another bad thing is the water supply. Terrible crowding near the fountain, intervention of the sailors, shouting, swearing... During the first three days of the voyage we could see from the deck the shores of Minor Asia that we were leaving... Then we reached the Bosphorus... The steamer entered the bay of Kavakia and after an hour's journey we faced Hagia Sophia".
As the crowds of exiles and all the ravaged population descended to the ports, the rebels were now left alone in their mountains. They did not even think of surrendering to the Turkish authorities because it did not suit their pride and besides, knowing the Turks well, they were not sure that they would respect the terms of the armistice and amnesty, which required first of all the surrender of the weapons. Nevertheless some groups, having come to an impasse, decided against it, and surrendered a few of their old weapons, to see how the Turks would treat them, and they seemed pleased to do what they believed to be... disarmed at last, the stubborn Gyauri and thus they satisfied their pride.
Most of them, however, and above all the famous chieftains with their groups, did not intend to part with their armaments in any way and tried to slip away in secret and made contact with Turkish sailors, paying handsomely, in order to secure gasoline. for fleeing to Russia or Romania, because the passage from Polis to Greece was dangerous. This preparation took months because finding suitable persons was not easy, nor was faith in intermediaries great, so with many adventures some managed to reach Cilicia and left there, and others reached the shores of the Black Sea, where they agreed with the Turks about the future.
This is how most rebel groups left, after so many years of staying in the mountains. But even in the last hour there was no shortage of dramatic surprises, because if the military authorities kept up the pretense and did not bother the rebels who observed, even formally, the terms of the amnesty, there were always the fanatical Chets, who, having hatred for the what they had suffered, they were guarding.
So bad luck awaited the chieftain Anastasis Papadopoulos – the famous Kotsa Anastas – who, defying the danger, left his inaccessible lair and went down to the wasp's nests of the tsetse. The tragic incident, which Pavlos Tsousidis recounts to us, happened like this: In those days, a rumor circulated that those Greeks who wanted could sell their fields. Anastasis Papadopoulos, while on all other occasions he appeared so sane and guarded, believed the lie, and taking with him some twenty young men, went down to the Turkish village of Erzeni, with the purpose of arranging for the sale of his fields, which were nearby . In that village he had a friend Taut aga, who had helped him a lot when he was on the mountain, and now he received the chieftain with feigned joy and kindness, willing to entertain him in his house. They were all hosted at Taut agha, who, however, left the very second day, that is to find a buyer for the fields. In the meantime, everyone around knew that Kotsa Anastas was in that house, and the tsetse were properly alerted, who secretly planned to exterminate him. The chieftain was warned of the danger, but paid no heed, not believing that the Turks, who trembled at the sound of his name, would venture anything against him. But the danger turned out to be much greater than even those who were concerned had imagined. A crowd of Chets seized all the surrounding houses one night and others fortified themselves outside the village, all around, to prevent the passage of rebels who might run to the aid of their leader.
It was the fifth day he spent at the house of Taut aga. Haramata had awakened the leader and entered the great hall of the house, which was wide open and exposed on three sides. As he was advancing inside there unguarded and unarmed, rifle shots suddenly rang out from all sides. The lads shook, grabbed their weapons and ran, but their captain lay there dead, drowning in blood. They immediately ducked down to protect themselves from the fire and began to defend themselves as best they could.
The greater part of the chief's party was an hour's distance away, and from there the other men, hearing the rifles, perceived that something serious was afoot, and immediately ran for reinforcements. Among them was the leader's younger brother Giorgos Papadopoulos and when they all got together at home, they immediately took positions and the battle intensified. But the leader's brother was restless and not listening to the voice of Anastasius, he screamed:
– “Brothers, if my brother lived he would spoil the world now, with his thunderous voice. Surely the dogs ate him! Upon them to avenge their dishonorable murderers!”
And he rushed with some others towards the house, but in a little while he fell dead. The rebels hounded, but the Chets were so numerous that any hope of driving them away was in vain. With superhuman efforts, the defenders inside the house managed to break the cordon and get out, but leaving, apart from the captain, three others dead, and having with them three wounded. Thus the rest were spared, but the unjust loss of the leader and his brother in a single day – apart from the killing of the three – orphaned his family and filled all the rebels with heavy mourning.
Immediate reprisals were thought of, but abandoned, because the entire Greek population was on the roads to the ports, and of course would once again pay the fury of the tsetse. As it was learned later, the Turks triumphantly took the body of the hated Kotsa Anastas, carried it to Tokatis and hung it on a telegraph pole for their fellow men to see and rejoice. After this sad end of the lad, who for so many years terrorized the Turks and bravely resisted the biggest attacks of the army, Pavlos Tsousidis with the other lads and the captains, had nothing to do but to ensure, like everyone else, their flight. After several days of adventures and marches among the wild mountains, they managed to reach the coast, and having come to an agreement with Armenians and Greek rebels of Ungia, they boarded at night, secretly in 5 gas tanks - two hundred men with all their weapons - at the end of November of 1923.
The well-paid Turkish captains led them to the shores of Russia, where they disembarked, leaving some of their weapons as a gift to the Turkish reiz. What they kept, they also produced in the fields and in the bushes and then presented themselves to the Russian authorities. The escape attempt of Santa's rebels was equally adventurous. There, of course, the Russian border was close but the dangers were also great and two or three attempts made from time to time, by small groups of rebels, failed, each time with casualties. On the same days that the rebels of the western Pontus were leaving, the Santai continued fighting, the entire population of Trebizond and the villages embarked, and even the chieftains of Santa remained in their mountains. February 1924 came and only then do we find Captain Euclid Kourtidis and the other 7 chieftains of Santa, hidden in a house in Trebizond, where they managed to slip away and hide. However, they were betrayed, caught by the Police and then many let them go.
In this way, the saga of the armed resistance of the Pontians came to an end. Many more adventures followed of those who fled to Russia to reach Greece, where permanent Hellenistic Akrites settled on the border. Euclid Kourtidis, died in 1937, falling one night drunk from a cart and was sung by the Pontiac Muse:
And – what a tragic irony of the fate of the Greeks – his brother, also a commander, Kostas Kourtidis and Euclid's son, Stathis, were killed by Greeks, fighting against the "Elasites" in 1948. Others were killed, fighting the Bulgarians. A few of the old warriors of Pontus still live in our border villages of Macedonia and Thrace, working the land that was a dream and misery for so many generations of ancestors. And they retell like a fairy tale the martyrdom and the glory of those times..."
Land of the Sea - Dimitris Psathas
Tazlu is an inaccessible mountain, where to approach it you have to pass through gorges and steep paths. There were written the heroic pages of the Pontic guerrillas led by Karafilo, Michael Aga and Pavlos Tsoushidis. The Turkish forces were decimated while Karafilos killed their commander Cemal Cevit outside his tent. Captain Kotsagioz, dressed in the general's uniform and misleading the Turkish soldiers led them to make wrong moves as a result of which they suffered a new massacre and began to surrender crying that they were not Turks, but Kurds or Alevis whom they had brought by force to fight . Most of the prisoners were executed with knives, while only a few were released. The rebels celebrated the victory in the hut of their leader Kotzanastas, slaughtering cows, while the Turks never set foot on the top of Tazlu again.
The chieftain Savvas Aslanidis from the village of Kizoltiren in the Erpagas region, at the end of his narrative about the guerrilla struggle, says the following: " The bodies of our soldiers remain buried there. They still cry out to tragic fathers, brothers and husbands for revenge. Yes, revenge and revenge forever. We have given our word, we have sworn the most horrible of oaths never to accept an agreement and libation after the Turks. And the day of retribution will not be late .'
Not Even My Name
Thea Halo is an American citizen, of Pontic descent from her mother and Assyrian descent from her father and author of the book " Not even my name ", where she tells the unforgettable story of her mother Thymia - Sano .
At the age of only ten, Sano experienced the death march and was the only one of her family to survive. In the first part of the book, the author together with her eighty-year-old mother arrive from America in Amasia in search of the village of Sano, Aioton (Agios Antonios) south of the town of Fatsa, in Pontus.
In the second part of the book, Thymia-Sano tells her daughter the story of her life. She describes her happy childhood in the Pontic mountains and the habits and customs of the Pontians. The terrible realization that something was wrong reached the village of Ayoton when unknown immigrants began to roam the fields and forests of the area. They lingered from afar like hyenas, while Turkish soldiers were leading the men of the village to Amele Tambourou. Among those arrested was Sano's father, who managed to escape and return. But the grandfather did not have the same luck as he never returned from the work battalions. And this part closes with the order within three days for all families to leave their land and flee.
The third part describes the uprooting. Thymia-Sano walked all day and night with her family, through the inhospitable plateaus of Asia Minor and under the blows of the whips.
“I don't remember another time where mother showed such a desperate desire for something. He veered off course to run stumbling to the tap. The others stopped and watched her anxiously, ready to run too. Just before she reached the fountain a Turkish soldier on horseback approached her and began to curse. He raised his whip and gave her one, as he would whip a donkey. He fell to his knees. The father dropped what he was holding and ran to her.
– Water, please.
The soldier raised the whip again, cursing again. Did little Maria also die that day? I do not remember. I only remember her little body tied to Christodoula's back and her little head going back and forth. Maria's face had turned to ash. Her eyes were staring at us wide open like a broken doll's. The mother looked up and sobbed. She took Maria from Christodoula's back and held her in her arms, as the tears fell on the lifeless little face....
A few minutes passed. He strained and coughed to clear his voice. I was standing barefoot on the dusty road and I was looking at him too, watching the tears that had started to flood his eyes.
– Your mother touched the hand of God, last night.
My mind and body were numb. Not a single tear fell from my eyes. Only the wild heartbeat thundering in my chest I knew that I was still alive.
– He talked about you last time. He said it was better where Thymia wasn't here. She loves me very much, and she would fall to die with me.”
At the end of the march of death little Thymia had lost her entire family. At 15, she married the Assyrian Avraham Halo and thus found herself in America. In the fourth part she describes her life with her family in the new homeland. The children were slow to learn what Pontius and Assyrian mean. At school, their teachers told them that there are no such countries. In the last part we return to the present, on the path of the writer Thea Halo and her mother to Aionton, seventy years later where they finally find her mother's house.
Hellasultras.gr
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