Important subject not coevered completely ~~"Paradise Lost Smyrna 1922"

Paradise Lost Smyrna 1922

Giles Milton
Basic Books
Sales Rank: 2470425

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 Important subject not coevered completely, 2008-05-02

An important subject has almost been destroyed by concentrating on the wrong characters. Smyrna was the capital of the Anatolian Greeks. It was wealthy. Greeks made up a majority of its population. Then one day in 1922 all that ended. It was here at Smyrna that the ideas of 'Greater Greece' were supposed to be thrust forward in order to create a new Greece in Asia Minor. Greeks had always lived here since the time of Homer and Troy. The rise of Turkish nationalism and Ataturkism however led to the destruction of Christian Armenians and Assyrians. The Pontic Greeks in North Turkey were cleansed. Thus the Greek army invaded Turkey after 1918 in order to protect its citizens and carve out part of the country for itself. But military reversal led to route and the Turkish army cleansed all the Greeks that it came across. Eventually 1.3 million Greeks would be cleansed (later 160,000 more would be cleansed in Cyprus in 1974 and in 1955 all but 2,000 Greeks would be thrown out of Istanbul). Smyrna bore the brunt of this and a great fire destroyed the city. Now it has been renamed Izmir and the Greek connection to the city has been erased as if Greeks never lived there. This book desires to remind us of this city of 'tolerance' and 'coexistence'. There were Greeks and Armenians and Turks and Jews in this city which should remind the reader of a cousin city called Thessaloniki or Salonica about which much has been written. But it is because the books on Salonica have been so good that it is a shame this book misses so much. This book looks primarily at the First World War and 1922 without giving us the rich history. In addition it relies on English sources and the English community that was there rather than giving us a rich personal history of the Greeks themselves and describing the fate of Greeks throughout Turkey.

But this is an important book and it is a quick and good read. Well written and about an interesting and important subject. Alas, the chronicler of the Anatolian Greeks has not yet appeared and it is a shame because memories that they ever existed are disappearing just as their churches have.

Seth J. Frantzman

Reviewed By A2Z4KA3EFQWZOX

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