THE TURKISH ATROCITIES IN THE BLACK SEA TERRITORIES:
COPY OF LETTER OF HIS GRACE GERMANOS, LORD ARCHBISHOP OF AMASSIA AND SAMSOUN.
Norbury, Natzio and Co, Manchester 1919.
A 7 page letter dated December 1918 by Metropolitan of Amassia Germanos Karavangelis to M. Constantinides the President of the Pont-Euxin Unredeemed Greeks Committee based in Marseilles, France.
Excerpt:
Towards the middle of December, 1916, began the deportations from Amissos (Samsoun). First of all the army reduced to ashes all the region round about. Nearly all the villages rich in tobacco plantations, civilised, friends of progress and possessing a lively national sentiment, were first pillaged and then set on fire.
A large number of women and children were killed, the young girls of the nation outraged, and immediately afterwards driven into the interior. Where? Into the vilayet of Angora to Tchoroum, to Soungourlou, and still farther. The winter was of the most rigorous kind; these girls had to march 30 or 40 days across snow-covered mountains and sleep by night in the open. For several days they were without food, for they were not even allowed to buy bread for money; they were continually beaten by the gendarmes and stripped of any money they might have on them; and when they got to the towns they were brutally pushed into the hot public baths on the pretext of hygiene and cleanliness, and just as quickly dragged out. Thus, an easy prey to the rigours of the cold, they were driven on farther. The majority of course died on the road, and none of the dead at all being buried, vultures and dogs feasted on human flesh. - Metr. Germanos Karavangelis.
