Metropolitan Karavangelis. Photo: Albert F. Baubin
Germanos Karavangelis (1866-1935) was the Metropolitan of Amasya and Samsun from 1908-1922. He was a first-hand witness to the genocide. On October 15, 1917, the governor of Amasya ordered him to quit his diocese at once for not handing over Greek deserters. He was subsequently escorted by police to Constantinople where he was imprisoned. He was released the following day after protests from the Patriarchate and influential people on the condition that he not leave Constantinople. He returned to his diocese after the Armistice. In a letter dated December 29, 1918 addressed to Konstantinos Konstantinidis, president of the Pan-Pontic Council of the Greeks of Pontus, he wrote:
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. [...]
On January 6th, 1917 (the day of the Epiphany), and the following days, the police commissioners tore some away from our church, others from the arms of their wives, all the merchants without exception, all the men of science, artisans, and any man of mark, and sent them one after another into the interior. At Bafra no adult male remained, all having been sent towards Castamouni; only the women and the children of the towns were left, for the male population of Charshamba, Oenoe (Uniah), and of Therme (Thermoxdon), had likewise suffered the worst, but these city women and children were left without food or protection, money or bread; every village was evacuated and burned. The whole region of Bafra suffered this fate. This destruction continued until even the lost soul of Rafet Pasha, the notorious assassin of Hellenism, at last got tired of it all. [...]
... during the months of November and December[1917], in the depth of the severest winter the surrounding country had ever known, all the villages of Bafra without exception were evacuated. The people moved towards the middle of Anatolia, where the remainder perished, after more than a third of them had found death on the road.
The same misdeeds were repeated in the regions of Tripolis (Tirebolou), of Kerassunde, and of Kara-Hissar. At the beginning of October, 1916, a population of 25,000 souls were sent towards the region of Sevastia (Sivas), and beyond. The town of Ordou (Cotyora) was entirely destroyed as well as the surrounding region. I went to Sevastia and to Kara Hissar during the winter of 1916, and there I saw the most tragic and heartbreaking of sights; a multitude composed of thousands and thousands of women and children, who were trudging along over the mountains and water-courses, like cattle driven to the slaughter. I tried to come to their aid at Sou-Chehir, to ease their situation at Sevastia, but that murderer of Armenians, Mouamer Bey, Prefect of Sevastia, would not even let me distribute a little money among them under the pretext of getting them used to laziness. He was merely planning thus their extermination by hunger. And of course that was what happened.
Believe me, my dear Mr. Constantinides, that out of 160,000 people of Pontus deported, only a tenth and in some places a twentieth have survived. In a village, for example, that counted 100 inhabitants, five only will ever return; the others are dead. [...]
Such is, in short, the situation in Pontus; as for the wrecks that come back to us from the catastrophe, having no means of subsistence they are predestined to death by famine, for in spite of the subscriptions we have organised at Samsoun, individual initiative is powerless to bind up such wounds. There is urgent necessity to take measures, rapid and efficacious measures, so that sufficient money may be sent, never mind whence, to construct huts and shelters, to provide bread, clothes, and other objects of first necessity.
Delegation of the Pan-Pontic Congress, 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.
