With the outbreak of the World War in 1914, a reign of terror descended upon the land of Pontos, a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day northeastern Turkey which had been occupied by Greeks since antiquity. In dispatches from Constantinople the Austrian ambassador Pallavicini reported the of death and destruction that swept Greek villages throughout the Pontos. He relayed that Greek women and children were detained and carried off into captivity to be converted forcibly to Islam. His dispatches also reported that the Austrian Consul in Samsoun was told by the town's mayor that "we are getting rid of the Greeks as we did the Armenians." On July 31, 1917, before Greece had even entered the war, the Austrian Chancellor Hollweg reported to his cabinet that "all indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burned or destroyed."
All Christian men between the ages of 20-50 were told to report for military service within eleven days. The Christian recruits were not assigned to regular military units nor were they allowed to bear arms, instead they were assigned to the infamous labor battalions, the Amele Taroubou. These recruits were overworked and lacking food, clothing and shelter, the life expectancy in these units was less than 4 months. Many Christians deserted and went into hiding. It was the search for the fugitives or deserters that gave the Turkish gendarmes and vigilante Muslim mobs the excuse to enter the villages and homes of the all infidels and to initiate the process of intimidation, rape, theft and murder throughout the Pontos. Between December 1916 and February 1917, the German Consul in Samsoun reported that in his region alone, on the pretext of seeking 300 Greek deserters, some 88 Greek villages were torched. Between 1914-1918 over 100,000 Pontic Greek unarmed civilians of all ages and gender perished at the hands of the Turks; and many others fled to Russia and Greece.
The Russians occupied the area in 1916 but after the fall of the Kerensky government in 1918, they withdrew not only from Pontos but also from the adjacent territories of Kars and Ardahan, which had been annexed by Russia in 1878. With this withdrawal, thousands of Pontians, some 70,000 from Kars alone, followed the Russian army into the Caucasus, fearful for their lives in the wake of the advancing Turkish troops. Their situation was so desperate that the British control authorities in Batoum, Georgia demanded that the Greek Government repatriate these destitute refugees to Greece.
In May 1919, the Greek Government created a special delegation under the leadership of writer Nikos Kazantzakis to help the Greeks of the Caucasus. Kazantakis' mission was to save thousands of destitute refugees who were trying to escape from the areas of the Caucasus that were falling to the Turkish army. In the interior of Southern Russia, thousands of other Greeks were trying to reach the cities of Tiflis (Tbilisi) and Batumi before the advancement of the Bolshevik army. Over 110,ooo refugees were evacuated resettled in Northern Greece. The following is an excerpt from Report to Greco, the autobiography written by Kazantzakis, published by his widow in 1961 and beautifully translated by P.A. Bien:
The ship was filled with human beings uprooted from their land; I was on my way to transplant them in Greece. People, horses, oxen, kneading troughs, cradles, mattresses, holy icons, Bibles, picks, shovels—all were fleeing the Bolsheviks and Kurds and traveling toward free Greece. It is in no way shame- ful to say that I was deeply moved. I felt as though I were a centaur and that this ship with the great troop on it, was my body from the neck down.
I sat at the bow on a coil of rope. Assembled around me were men and women, some from Kars, some from Sukhumi, and still other persecuted Greeks from Taigan. Their suffering had no end; each was impatient to relate it all and unburden himself. I listened, secretly admiring the endurance of the Greek race, for in the midst of their lamentations for loved ones who had perished, homes which had been burned, and the hunger and fright they had suffered, one of them would suddenly loose an indelicate joke, whereupon all the calamity would vanish, and heads would once again be lifted high. While a chubby young woman was bewailing her husband who had been killed, a colossus with a drooping coal-black mustache extended his immense paw and touched her on the shoulder.
"Stop crying, Marioritsa," he said. "Even if only two people remained in the world—you and me, let's say—the Greek land would fill up again with children!"
One man only sat off to the side and did not talk. This man did not laugh, did not relate his sufferings; he seemed reluctant to unburden himself. He had a monstrous body, bull neck, and great long paws that must have reached to his knees. His opened shirt revealed a chest covered with hair. Never had I seen a man who so closely resembled a bear.
When the others had all scattered and lain down on their tatters to go to sleep, this man remained staring at the sea, his thick neck craned forward. I went up to him, aware that a disquieting power sprang from this unmoving human bulk.
Falling silent, he rose as if wishing to go away, but then he sat down again. I felt him struggling inwardly. He did not want to talk, but his heart was overflowing. Besides, night had descended and we were alone. He softened a little.
He sighed.
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