Turkish nationalist Army entered Smyrna, set it on fire,
On occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the former Maine journalist Lou Ureneck published a new book about the events that happened after almost a decade of killings and dislocations.
The book is called “The Great Fire,” and details the efforts of an American who may have saved a quarter of a million lives, MPBN reports.
According to Ureneck, “Smyrna was the richest, most sophisticated and most cosmopolitan city of the Ottoman Empire, a city of about a half-a-million people on the Aegean coast, the west coast of Turkey. The story takes place in 1922, which is the conclusion of 10 years of religious cleansing. The Armenian Genocide fits into that. In September of 1922, the Turkish nationalist Army entered Smyrna, set it on fire, and began a slaughter of its Christian residents. Smyrna was principally a Christian city. Many different peoples lived there: Greek Christians, Armenian Christians, Jews, Turks, Europeans, but it was predominantly a Christian city and a Greek Christian city. So a slaughter was commenced and a terrible humanitarian situation developed. People were starving, they were without water, disease was rampant in the city. The Turkish Army separated men from women and they were marching the men into the interior of Turkey, not unlike what had happened in 1915 and 1916 to the Armenians during those deportations.՞
The author of the book also said: “ The great powers at the time, principally the United States, Britain, France, and Italy, all had warships in the harbor, but they all elected not to get involved. And, at that point, miraculously really, a minister, a small town minister from upstate New York who had a minor job with the YMCA in Smyrna, came forward. He felt moved to do something to save the people who he was watching suffer: Asa Jennings. And he set in motion a series of events that ended with the evacuation of a quarter million people. He first paid a bribe to an Italian ship captain and he was able to transport 2,000 people out of the city. And, I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but in time, he came to lead a flotilla of 50 ships. He was able to rescue at least a quarter of a million people from the city of Smyrna, who otherwise probably would have died.”