The Miracle Pages 1--32

Translation by Pat Tsekouras,
based on the 3rd Greek edition.

Copyright © 1993 Leonidas Koumakis ---------------------------------------
1993 1st Greek Impression, 4,000 copies
1994 2nd Greek Impression, 4,000 copies
1995 1st English Impression, 4,000 copies
1996 3rd Greek Impression, 4,000 copies
1996 2nd English Impression, 4,000 copies
--------------------------------------- 1st English edition was translated

by the Association for the Protection of
National Heritage, with final revision by
Kathy Spiliotopoulos
--------------------------------------- The 2nd English edition was translated by Pat Tsekouras

In memory of my father, Gerasimos L. Koumakis, who died in Athens
on 5th March, 1991.

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Acknowledgments
I should like to thank two people without whose help
I would have been unable to complete this book:

Firstly, Dimitris Kaloumenos, journalist until 1958 at
the Patriarchal Court at Fanari, Constantinople, who
devoted endless hours and patience in providing me with
important details of the last 80 years as he experienced
them; he also gave me copies of his extremely valuable
books entitled "The Crucifixion of Christianity" (Athens,
1975) and "The Contraction of the Hellenic Nation" (1985).

Secondly, my mother Irini, who helped me to recall
memories that had lain dormant and added many details
and facts.

Finally, I should like to thank the Association for the
Protection of National Heritage for the photographic and
other material which it so generously provided, and for
its assistance in producing the Second Edition of the
book in English.

THIRD EDITION
With an impression of 4,000 copies, "The Miracle: A True Story" was
first published in September, 1993 and presented to 1,200 Greek journalists,
all the members of the Greek Parliament, the members of the Academy of
Athens, 80 metropolitan bishops in the Greek Church, Greek ambassadors
and consuls around the world and eminent figures in Greek intellectual and
social life.
The response to this first edition was so encouraging that I decided to
go ahead with a second impression of 4,000 copies in 1994, and with the
help of the Association for the Protection of National Heritage the book
was translated into English.
The second Greek edition was read out on a 5-hour radio broadcast,
divided into ten half-hour episodes interspersed with Byzantine music. The
programme was broadcast in 1994 by 80 radio stations in Greece, the
USA, Canada and Australia and since then has been offered free of charge
(as always) by the Association for the Protection of National Heritage to
radio stations in Greece and to Greek communities overseas.
Simultaneously the book began to be published in instalments by
newspapers and magazines (for example, "Elefthero Vima" in Komotini,
"Nigrita" in Serres, the periodical "The Greek Restaurant Around the World",
and a monthly newspaper produced by Sapes Primary School, in the
Rodopi region of northern Greece). In 1995, after approval had been
obtained from the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, the book
began to be distributed free of charge to 8,000 primary school libraries.
This process will continue with the publication of the third edition in 1996.
4,000 copies of the book's first English edition appeared in 1995. These
were sent, accompanied by a personal letter, to the 626 members of the
European Parliament, 439 members of the American Congress, 100 members
of the American Senate, 659 members of the British Parliament, 575
members of the French Parliament, 591 members of the Canadian Federal
Parliament and 223 members of the Australian Federal Parliament.
I am well aware that amid the vast array of enormous problems facing
the world and the clashing interests of the so-called Major Powers, a small
voice such as mine has an infinitesimal chance of being heard. But faith in
Truth and Justice is a timeless human "shortcoming". I believe that even
today, this "shortcoming" is worth fighting for!

L. Koumakis
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1 Constantinople, September 1964
Her eyes darted about nervously. She turned round and
looked anxiously behind her and when she was sure we
could not be overheard, admonished me in a voice that
betrayed her distress:
"You're practically grown up now! How many times
have I told you not to speak Greek in the street? Haven't
we got enough problems? Isn't this disaster bad enough
already? Do you want someone to hear you and give us
more trouble, now your father's gone? Have you already
forgotten what happened to Uncle Sideris?"
She was right. Ever since my father had left in such a
hurry, she had made herself hoarse warning my sister
and me, over and over again, that when we were out in
the street or any other public place, we should keep our
mouths shut -out of necessity, because our lives were in
danger. To speak Greek in the street or other public place
in Turkey was more or less the equivalent of committing
suicide. It was akin to crossing a national highway on
foot with your eyes closed, because of a special law which
had come into effect in Turkey in 1932 on the "vilification
of Turkism". The law had been introduced to terrorise
and oppress the country's non-Turkish population. It was
sufficient for two Turks to give false testimony and make
vague claims that you had insulted Turkey or the Turks,
for you to be sent to prison without bail. So we were
afraid to utter a single word in Greek in the street, lest
we were accused of insulting Turkey.
What had happened to Uncle Sideris about four years
earlier, when he was lucky to have escaped with his life

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by handing over all his savings to the "right" people, was
absolutely typical of the times.
Sideris Vafias, a distant cousin of my mother's, ran a
grocer's store in the commercial centre of Constantinople,
at the upper end of the Kapali Carsi, or covered market.
His shop, which he kept spotlessly clean -this was one
reason why he was so popular both with the Greeks and
with the Turks -was filled to the brim with cheeses,
olives, butter and other foodstuffs. Uncle Sideris was a
very stingy man. He had amassed a considerable fortune
through his hard work and his miserliness and was known
throughout his circle of friends by the nickname "fat
hen". He was a philosophical person and remained faithful
to his goal of making lots of money, so he was not at all
bothered by the nickname.
One day, on 30th August 1960, he was in his shop,
tidying up and arranging goods on the shelves, despite
the fact that it was a public holiday when the Turks were
celebrating the beginning of their campaign that ended
in victory over the Greeks in the Asia Minor disaster of
September, 1922.
Suddenly, a Turk appeared in the doorway and pointing
his finger at my uncle said in a challenging voice:
"Hey, giavour (infidel)! How dare you work today? Have
you no respect for Turkish public holidays?"
With little heed to the risk he was running, Uncle
Sideris smiled and answered:
"Holidays are for lazy people! There are no holidays
when there's work to be done!"
That was enough. His eyes blazing, the Turk gave an
odd smirk and disappeared without saying a word.
In less than an hour, three men from the Turkish police
appeared at the shop. One of them barked rather than
said:

"Drop everything, close the shop and come with us to
the police station!"
Uncle Sideris looked at them in surprise and asked:
"Why should I go to the police station?"
"You'll find out when we get there!" was the sharp
retort, which left little room for argument.
My uncle's surprise gave way to a vague feeling of
foreboding. Taking off his apron, he locked up the shop
and followed them.
On arrival at the police station, they entered a room
just as someone was coming out. It was the Turk who
had appeared at the door of my uncle's shop a short
while before and reprimanded him for working.
As soon as the door was shut, one of the three Turks
suddenly began, without saying a word, to punch my
uncle in the face and stomach and beat him around the
head. When my uncle passed out, they dragged him to a
chair and threw a bucket of cold water over him.
After some time, he started to come round. He gradually
realised where he was and what had happened when he
heard a voice swearing at him spitefully.
"Isidoros Vafias, you are a filthy infidel who dared to
insult the sacred Turkish flag! We should have killed you
on the spot for such a crime -but your life is over
anyway. These worms, the Greeks, have to learn that this
is Turkey and they can't insult the Turks and the Turkish
flag without expecting to pay for it with their life! You
still don't seem to have grasped that you are living in our
land, which belongs to us! And as if that were not enough,
you even insult the Turks! Like you, you filthy infidel,
who dared insult the sacred Turkish flag!"
"No, no!" stammered Uncle Sideris, in protest. "I didn't
insult the Turkish flag! I haven't the faintest idea what..."
His words stopped abruptly when two of the policemen

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pounced on him and began to beat him up again until,
totally defenceless and quite unable to put up any
resistance, he lost consciousness. When he came round,
several hours later, he found himself in darkness on the
damp floor of a cell.
Time began, torturously slowly, to trickle past. His whole
body was a mass of open wounds and the pain was
unbearable. "It's all over!" he thought. "That's it, I'm
done for ... I'll die in this place!" Twenty-four hours
passed, then forty-eight hours, then seventy-two. The
monotony of his squalid prison was relieved only once or
twice when a dirty plate of what was supposed to be food
was thrust noisily into the cell.
Meanwhile Uncle Sideris' family was making frantic
endeavours to find out what had happened to him. Neither
his parents, nor his five brothers and sisters, nor his
friends could explain his sudden disappearance. On the
third day after he failed to return home, they went to the
police station where they learned that Isidoros Vafias was
being held on charges of vilifying Turkism, in accordance
with the Law passed in 1931.
Things looked very black. The Turks never missed an
opportunity to exterminate an infidel -unless, of course,
he had money. Then the scales of justice in implementing
the Law were known to tip in favour of the accused in
direct proportion to the amount of gold placed on his
side. And Uncle Sideris had plenty of gold. Thus began
the battle to save him, a battle based on the unfailing
Turkish "weakness" of widespread corruption which
permeates the whole of Turkey from top to bottom.
First, it cost a small fortune for his file to be "removed"
from the "current" cases and placed at the bottom of the
pile so as to gain time. Then a huge sum was handed over
as "bail", guaranteeing his release by the date set for the

trial. Finally, more money was needed for his escape to
Smyrna on the day he was released so that he could cross
to the island of Chios and free Greece.
When he arrived in Smyrna, Uncle Sideris was a mental
and physical wreck. He went to Çes ¸me -Krene in Greek
-which lies just across the water from Chios, so close
that at night the lights of the town are visible from the
mainland. There he found a small ship that plied between
Chios and Çes ¸me and posing as a tourist, he boarded the
boat ready for the journey to freedom and a new life.
However, as they were approaching their destination the
captain received a wireless message instructing him to
return to Çes ¸me, whereupon he turned the ship around
and headed back to the Turkish port. My uncle was scared
out of his wits, convinced that he was the reason for the
ship's return to Turkey; but he was powerless to do anything
except wait calmly and patiently for the reason for the
about-turn to be announced.
The ship returned to Çes ¸me, remained there for three
hours and fifty minutes -to my uncle it seemed like
three centuries -and then weighed anchor again for Chios.
Uncle Sideris never learned the reason for the sudden
return to Turkey, nor did he want to, even when he
finally set foot, alive and safe, on Chios to start his life
afresh.
All this went through my mind as we walked in silence
down the street. We were on our way to Sirkeci, my
mother, my sister and I. Ten weeks earlier, my father had
literally been dragged through the door of an aeroplane
taking him to Athens, an emigré against his will at the
age of 50.
Constantinople's Central Railway Station was at Sirkeci.
We had already handed over, packed up in a large trunk,
our life's belongings which the Turks had "magna-16

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nimously" allowed us to take with us -that is, essential
items of clothing only. Everything else had been confiscated
by the Turkish authorities.
This "confiscation" was of a particular nature. The Turks
made a list of all the movable assets, which the victim
had no right to sell. The same was true, of course, for
fixed assets. So all those who were forced to flee had to
leave behind their life's possessions for the Turks to
plunder.
The only things the authorities allowed their victims to
take with them were a few items of clothing. These few
belongings, squeezed into a trunk, had to undergo a customs
check and we had to be present. My mother was then
nearly forty years old, my sister was seventeen and I was
fifteen.
Feeling as if our hearts were gripped in an invisible
vice, we walked in silence along the road to Sirkeci.
There we would have to face the fanatic officers of the
Turkish state performing their "duty" with obvious pleasure
and satisfaction. Their "duty" was to do whatever was
humanly possible to make sure their victims left their
homes completely crushed, financially ruined and with
not one penny of the fortune they might have amassed.

2 For us, it all began one hot afternoon in July, 1964. It
was a Tuesday, which my father had always considered
to be an unlucky day because 29th May, 1453, when
Constantinople fell to the Turks, was a Tuesday.
He was at the electrical goods store in the centre of the
aristocratic district of Cihangir. He had been looking after
this shop for 25 years and had spent a major part of his
life there.
In common with all the other Greeks living in the city,
my father had recently become very concerned. Greeks
were now being deported from Constantinople on a variety
of senseless pretexts. He was well aware that Turkey had,
several decades earlier, mapped out a strategy to get rid
of the Greeks living there and was merely biding its time
and turning to full advantage any opportunity that might
arise to put this strategy into effect.
However, with the outbreak of the Second World War,
Turkey generously offered "facilities" to Fascists and Allies
alike and managed not to shed a single drop of Turkish
blood. On the contrary, it saw the period as an excellent
chance to deal a severe blow to Hellenism in
Constantinople.
Thus with the fall of Crete in May, 1941, Turkey devised
a plan for the general mobilisation of the non-Muslim
population; men aged between 23 and 48 -including
Greeks, naturally, but also many Armenians and Jews -were
taken to forced labour camps in Anatolia, as had
also happened in 1914.
These were in effect labour battalions operating under
military conditions and led by junior officers in the Turkish

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army, who did not bother to conceal the ulterior motives
of their superiors.
"You can forget about Istanbul!" they used to say. "That's
it, you're finished here! Your wives and daughters will
never see you again -they'll become Turkish women!"
However, under foreign pressure against this act of
provocation, even in time of war, the Turks were obliged
to stop the mobilisation procedure a year later and release
all those who had survived. After wiping them out
physically, they now proceeded to do so financially.
On 11th November, 1942, Law 4305 on a capital property
tax (Varlik Vergisi) was debated and passed in a single
sitting of the Turkish parliament; this law meant, in
essence, economic ruin for the non-Muslim population
and was applied in an eminently "Turkish" fashion to
the Greeks, Armenians and Jews in Constantinople: the
local tax officer summoned non-Muslim residents of the
city and informed them of the amount of tax they owed
-a quite arbitrary figure that was frequently as much as
ten times the taxpayer's salary or many more times greater
than a businessman's assets.
Non-Muslim taxpayers had no right to discuss or appeal
against this decision. Within 15 days the unfortunate
citizens had to hand over the whole amount that had
been arbitrarily determined by the tax officer, even if
this meant selling off their entire property, otherwise
they would be sent to a forced labour camp.
In other words, if they did not manage to pay all the
tax within the specified period of 15 days, followed by a
further two-week extension period with penalty, they were
packed off to Askale, in Asia Minor, which was seen as
the Turkish equivalent of Siberia. The offenders built
roads or cleared them of snow, for which they were paid
two Turkish lira a day; the rest of their "wages" went

towards paying off their debt to the Turkish state. Most
of them would have had to work for between 200 and
300 years to pay off the tax debt levied against them!
Thus Greeks, Armenians and Jews, some with vast
amounts of both fixed and movable assets, were forced,
as a result of this law, literally to give away their entire
property at ridiculous prices and at the same time were
exiled in order to pay off their "debts" through forced
labour.
Furniture, gold, hand-woven carpets, tapestries -all these
were the movable assets on which this legalised form of
pillage had set its sights. Sick people were even turned
out of their beds so that these items of furniture could be
removed.
The property was purchased mainly by members of the
confiscation and liquidation committees, who then resold
it at a much higher price. In 1943, when the law was
introduced, a total of 1,869 prominent members of
Constantinople's Christian community were sent to the
Turkish "Siberia" at Askale, once their property had been
confiscated. Many of them died there as a result of the
privations they suffered, but the names of only eleven of
them are known. Two women who could not pay the
unreasonably high taxes imposed on them were sent to
Askale to clean the toilets and other public areas and
were never seen again.
Conditions in these concentration camps were appalling.
The prisoners lived in make-shift tents that afforded little
protection from the extreme cold. They had to quench
their thirst with water from a dirty lake, placing their
fingers across their lips as they drank so as to prevent the
frogs and waterweed from getting in their mouths. One
of the first prisoners to die at Askale was the father of Dr
M. Hekimoglu. The cause of his death was pneumonia.

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The testimonies of those who survived that period paint
one of the blackest pictures in the history of mankind.
There is no doubt that introduction of the property tax,
exile and the conditions at the labour camps all dealt a
severe blow to the Greeks in Constantinople, but the
measures did not "solve" the problem which the Greeks
represented for Turkey, especially when in March 1944,
seeing the end of the Second World War approaching, it
was obliged to release all the prisoners in the concentration
camps.
As soon as they were freed, of course, all those prisoners
who had managed to survive the ordeal gradually began
to leave Turkey in fear of their lives. The Greeks fled to
Greece, the Jews to Palestine and the Armenians to Russia.
Afraid their letters might be censored, the Armenians
said before they left that as soon as they arrived they
would send their family and friends still living in Turkey
a photograph of the whole family. If the family was
standing up, that would mean they were happy and give
encouragement to those who stayed in Turkey to emigrate
to Russia, but if the people in the photograph were sitting
down, this would indicate that conditions in Russia were
as bad as, if not worse than, those in Turkey and the
family should not consider leaving.
Following imposition of the property tax in 1942, Turkey
waited patiently for many years until September, 1955,
when, with masterly organisation, it staged a pogrom against
the Greeks in Constantinople and their property, destroying
4,350 shops and stores, looting 2,600 homes and setting
fire to or ravaging 73 Greek churches, all within the
space of six-and-a-half hours.
In the early 1950s, Cyprus's struggle for independence
had horrified the British who were afraid they might lose
their bases on the island. They therefore decided to activate

the interest of Turkey which, needless to say, was very
happy to oblige. As a result, Greece was persuaded to
take part in the 3-day London Conference which opened
on 29th April, 1955, to discuss the Cyprus problem with
Britain and Turkey. The real purpose of the conference
was to confirm Turkey's active involvement in the Cyprus
issue. Failure was merely a matter of time. Everything
naturally served the British policy, which in this case
was one of "divide and rule". But it was not an
opportunity that the Turks were going to let pass, and
they didn't. On 6th September, 1955, Turkey staged its
night of terror.
Now in 1964, my father held the view that, as on all
previous such occasions, Turkey would seize the
opportunity presented by the current circumstances in its
relations with Greece and deal with its problem of the
"Greek minority" once and for all. A year earlier, the
Anglo-Turkish alliance in Cyprus had brought Greece to
the brink of war with Turkey. After condemning to failure
all the attempts to draw up a Cypriot constitution, the
Turks tried to invade Cyprus using their fleet. However,
intervention by the United States forced them to stop,
especially when the American president of the time,
Lyndon Johnson, sent a letter to the Turkish prime minister,
Ismet Inonu, warning him that if Turkey invaded Cyprus,
the United States would remain a neutral observer should
Russia take any action against Turkey.
The American president then invited the prime ministers
of Greece and Turkey to the United States for talks. The
Greek prime minister, Georgos Papandreou, declined the
invitation, saying the meeting would be "a parody enacted
by deaf people" which would lead nowhere, as had
happened in London in 1955. Mr Inonu, on the other
hand (who, as it happened, was actually deaf), accepted

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the invitation, thereby creating a favourable international
climate for Turkey which it would naturally turn to full
advantage.
Any decisive blows meted out by Turkey during the
course of the twentieth century have been inflicted by
taking advantage of a "suitable opportunity". The Armenian
genocide that took place during the First World War, the
Capital Tax known as the Varlik Vergisi which was imposed
mainly on Turkey's Greek population in the Second World
War, the pogrom of 1955 and the expulsions in 1964 -all
these occurred at times when circumstances were
"suitable".
"Are you Gerasimos Koumakis?" a stern voice asked in
Turkish, bringing my father back from his thoughts with
a bump. It was the afternoon of 9th July, 1964.
"That's me!" replied my father, his heart pounding.
"You're to report to the officer on duty at police
headquarters at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning!" came the
order. "Now close your shop and go home -and don't get
any ideas about moving any stock out of here until an
inventory has been carried out!"
My father went pale.
"What's going on?" he asked. "Why do the police want
to see me? I haven't done anything that needs explaining
to the police."
"We don't know that. Maybe even you don't know.
Anyway, we needn't discuss that now. Make sure you're
there at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, as I told you. Now
get your things together and close the shop."
My father realised the moment had come, the moment
he had been thinking about for years. He remembered
the words his father had spoken in Kadikoy (a district in
Constantinople) when he said the Greeks of Constantinople
had roots that went back not to the Emperor Constantinos

Paleologos, but to Byzas, who built the city (then called
Byzantium) in 650 BC, and these roots could not be
severed. Now my father saw that things were not quite as
his father had said.
He quickly closed his shop and hurried towards Pera.
Our house was near the Church of St Constantinos and
the primary school that I had attended. As soon as he
entered the house, my mother realised something was
seriously wrong.
"Wife, the time has come. We must pack up and leave
for Athens. I have to appear at the police station tomorrow
morning."
My mother began to sob. My sister and I watched in
stunned silence.
My father did not sleep that night. He spent the night
worrying that our whole family could find itself in the
position of starting out again from scratch. Our financial
situation in Constantinople, while not particularly
prosperous, was certainly satisfactory. My father had his
business, we had our house and my sister was attending
the Convent School. I was in my second year at the
Zographion High School, right in the centre of Pera. Almost
every summer, my father would shut up his shop for a
month and take us to Greece for a holiday. Chios and
Athens were our favourite destinations.
Yet the family had no savings to speak of. My mother,
ever the more provident, frequently urged my father to
purchase some property in Athens, even if this meant
taking out a small mortgage. On one of our trips, he was
offered a splendid plot in Hiera Street. The year, as my
mother recalls, was 1952 and my father was on the point
of buying the land when at the last minute my mother's
brother, Uncle Iannis, made him change his mind.
"What will you do with land over here?" he said. "It

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would be useless to you. You'd be much better keeping
your money and investing it somewhere else."
No further words were needed to fuel my father's
indecision, to my mother's immense disappointment.
Now, quite out of the blue, we stood at a critical turning-point
in our lives. The uncertainty of the future loomed
before us like a dark avenue full of potholes and hidden
dangers. My father, who had been born and raised in
Constantinople, was suddenly aware of the void that our
unpredictable future presented.
That Tuesday night will remain etched in the memory
of every member of the family. The numbness from the
unexpected blow, the impending change in our lives and
the fear of the unknown served to heighten our senses
and we were all very keyed up.
The next morning my father reported to the General
Police Headquarters (Müdüriyet). The stark and uninviting
building was draped in Turkish flags as if to make quite
sure nobody forgot the power wielded by the Turks. Under
its roof the most obnoxious individuals had been assembled,
all characters with a marked disposition for hatred and
spite, who took daily pleasure in destroying the Greeks
of the city, both psychologically and economically, and
imperceptibly transmitted to you their frustration at not
being able to wipe them out physically as well.
Where the Greeks in Constantinople were concerned,
the Turks had not succeeded in indulging in their favourite
pastime of slaughtering civilian populations -which was
the Turkish national heritage and had received repeated
glorification in the twentieth century with the genocide
of 1.5 million Armenians and the extermination of an
even greater number of Greeks, Pontians and Kurds -whose
massacre went on for decades under the indifferent
gaze of the "civilised" world. More "refined" methods,

though, had to be employed with the Greeks in
Constantinople.
The General Police Headquarters was in Sirkeci. On
the ground floor was a vast area with two flights of stairs
on either side, one on the right and one on the left of the
building, which did not communicate. To reach the fourth
floor, where the Birinci S ¸übe or political section was
located, you had to go up the left-hand staircase.
Over the door at the entrance to the fourth floor was a
coat of arms with the two crescents of the Turkish flag
facing each other. At the front of the building was a
large empty space and at the back, a row of cells and
some offices.
My father shivered. He had heard so much about the
"activities" of the people on the fourth floor that just
being there brought him out in a cold sweat.
The plump fellow in thick glasses who sat behind the
desk which my father had approached did not look like
a Turk -until he raised his eyes and looked at my father.
Then two fiery shafts of hatred pierced the myopic lenses
and my father was left in no doubt that he was a Turk,
and one who was quite prepared to treat his victim to an
overdose of Turkish zeal. Over his head hung a portrait
of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk looking down on him with a
stern expression.
"My name is Gerasimos Koumakis and I was sent to
you by the Duty Officer," said my father.
The fat man bent over some papers and shuffled them
about a bit. After a while he muttered:
"Koumakis Gerasimos. Father's name Le-on-i-das?" he
asked.
"Yes, sir, Leonidas. Gerasimos Koumakis, son of Leonidas
and Zoe."
At that moment the door opened. A tall, skinny man

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with a sallow complexion and a thin moustache slipped
into the room and sat down on a chair opposite my father
without saying a word. My father suddenly thought of
the opinion of the Turks expressed by the great Islamic
prophet Mohammed, which he had read somewhere: "The
Day of Judgement will not come unless battles are won
against the Turks, whose features are small eyes stretching
back towards their ears, a flat nose and a brutal facial
expression."
The fat man gave a little cough to clear his throat and
began:
"You know, Koumakis, that our brothers in Cyprus are
suffering. That devil in a priest's cassock who goes under
the name of Makarios is giving them a really hard time.
They are subjected to daily oppression in a place which
naturally belongs to Turkey. And as if that wasn't enough,
the Greeks have the cheek to call for "union" with Greece.
Is that fair? I'm asking you, is that right?"
The fat man's gaze fell on my father like a bird of prey
landing. My father, too, cleared his throat and said:
"Beyefendi, I am a simple law-abiding man and work
hard for my living. I don't concern myself with politics."
"Do you mean to say that you don't know about the
ordeal suffered by our brothers in Cyprus at the hands of
Kizil Papaz [meaning red, therefore left-wing, priest]?
Haven't you heard about their struggles and their dreams
to see Cyprus become Turkish? Either you are very
insensitive, Koumakis, or else you are pretending. Of
course, I know it's the second of these."
"No, no, Beyefendi," stammered my father.
"What do you mean, no?" the fat man bellowed. "Our
brothers in Cyprus are suffering. Our brothers in Cyprus
are being oppressed by the filthy Greeks. I ask you straight
out: do you approve of all this? Do you approve of the

Turks being tortured by the Greeks in Cyprus? Go on,
tell me -do you or do you not approve?"
His passion was genuine. The fat man lived every
moment like a great theatre star.
Struggling to retain his equanimity, my father said:
"Torture is a very bad thing, Beyefendi. Of course I
don't approve, nor would any civilised person."
Like a viper lying in wait for its prey and ready to
strike when the right moment presented itself, the sallow-faced
man with the moustache extended a threatening
finger and said suddenly:
"Then why do you, Koumakis, why do you yourself
send money to support the devil-priest Makarios? Why
do you stab our brothers in Cyprus in the back by helping
Makarios? Are you so ungrateful to Turkey, which has
raised you and tolerated you since you were born?"
My father just managed to say "Beyefendi, I haven't
sent any financial aid to Makarios -or to anybody else in
Cyprus," when the sallow-faced man sprang out of his
chair and yelled:
"Shut up! Anything you say will just make your situation
worse, you fool! We have reliable evidence to back what
we are saying, and are quite sure that with the right kind
of interrogation you will confess to everything!"
The fat man interrupted calmly:
"But that isn't our aim -unless, of course, you force us.
Turkey is a civilised country and doesn't want to inflict
on you giavours the same suffering as our brothers in
Cyprus have to endure. So we have generously decided to
give you a great opportunity: you will sign a number of
papers which we need for our files. Then three policemen
will accompany you to your shop and your home to make
an inventory of anything you have which is of value.
Don't forget, you acquired these things through the toil

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and sweat of the Turkish people, and you have
conscientiously been sending part of your profits to Cyprus
to be used against our brothers there. You have six days
in which to settle only any urgent outstanding affairs.
You will be deported from Turkey by the first flight next
Tuesday. This is a very small punishment for the crimes
you have committed against Turkey."
The sallow-faced man started shouting again. "I don't
agree! I don't agree! We are letting them get away with
their lives and are ignoring the serious crimes they have
committed! That's not civilisation, that's stupidity!"
"Don't forget that we are a very magnanimous people,
which is something our enemies have always taken
advantage of," replied the fat man. "Come on, Koumakis,
sign these papers before I make up my mind that we
shall have to send you for interrogation to make you
confess."
The colour drained from my father's face; indeed he
felt as if his blood had left his whole body. He had heard
various things about visits by Greeks to the Turkish police,
but this blatant cynicism shown by the fat man was beyond
anything he could have imagined.
Through my father's mind, like lightning, flashed stories
about the dreadful tortures carried out, along with the
image of a man we knew who had passed through the
hands of the Turkish police and emerged, mutilated and
disfigured, to spend the rest of his life a cripple because
he rejected the "charges" they were trying to lay on him.
My father felt as if he had been knocked over by a
piece of thread. For a few seconds he considered his
chances of resisting. He knew at that moment that it
would be futile to attempt to do anything other than what
they were telling him, to do.
He stood up, went up to the fat man's desk, took a pen

and began to sign his name on papers that he hadn't even
read.
When he had finished, the fat man seemed pleased.
"Aferim! (well done!)" he said. "That shows what a
sensible man you are."
My father was then led to a small room where his
photograph and fingerprints were taken.
The fat man and the sallow-faced one with the thin
moustache had completed their task.

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3 The days that passed until the following Tuesday morning
were very busy and extremely tense.
The Turkish officials lost no time in carrying out the
inventory of our property, both at home and in the shop.
At home, everything went on to the list -furniture, rugs,
pots and pans right down to the smallest kitchen utensil
-all except our clothes. At the shop, anything that was
even remotely valuable -tools, equipment, furniture, stock
-was noted down.
Friends and acquaintances had gathered at our house to
offer their support. Some were weeping but others were
smiling, trying to encourage us with assurances of the
chance of a better life.
My father tried in vain to sell off the few paltry items
that had not been recorded in the inventory. The Turks
were standing by hoping to grab the booty for free. And
that is precisely what happened: the shop was taken over
by a Turk who had been employed as my father's assistant
and when we left the house, it was later taken over by
the Turkish caretaker of the apartment block next door.
My father faced the situation with characteristic calm.
Over the next few days my mother seemed to get over
the initial shock and come to terms with the idea of a
new beginning. But my sister was in despair. She was
having to give up her school, her friends, the whole world
she had grown up in. She was quite inconsolable.
As for me, circumstances forced me to grow up very
quickly. Without realising the full extent of the change
that was about to take place in our lives, I sensed the
gravity of the situation. It was many years till I would

33 13
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feel like smiling again.
As Tuesday approached, the day when my father would
leave us, clutching one small suitcase, and make his way
to Athens to seek a new life for us all, we grew increasingly
more agitated.
On Monday evening, only a few hours before he was
due to depart, he called all the family together and said:
"Tomorrow morning, when I go, I shall be leaving behind
everything in my life that I hold most dear: the place
where I was born and grew up, our home, my work, your
mother, and you, my children. But as you can see, I am
trying very hard to stay calm and I believe all the things
that are happening to us are beyond our control and that
there is nothing we can do to alter our fate. I'm going to
Athens and I'll try to rent a small apartment so that you
can come over to join me as soon as possible. Of course,
this won't be easy; first I'll have to find a job because, as
you know, we'll have no money. But I'll do everything in
my power to have you with me again as quickly as possible.
Till then, I want you to live together peacefully, do as
your mother says and be careful. Make sure you don't
give the Turks the slightest excuse to make trouble. When
you're out on the street, you shouldn't open your mouths
-even if you're provoked.
"Leonidas, you will now be the only man in the family.
Take good care of your mother and your sister. I shouldn't
think it will take me more than a few weeks to sort
things out in Athens. But however long it takes, I must
have an easy mind -as far as that is possible -about
things back here so that I can bring you over to join me
soon."
We all listened silently to my father's words with rapt
attention.
"Perhaps," he went on, "it's better, from one point of

view, that things have turned out like this. At least you
children will have a far better chance of making a life
for yourselves in Athens, where there is freedom and
equality. Here in Turkey, the future for us Greeks in
Constantinople is very black. The Turks cite -and
implement -the agreements which serve their interests
but write off and completely ignore those parts of the
agreements they have signed that don't suit them. Look
at the way they have used the Treaty of Lausanne which
ended the war with Greece in 1923: before the Treaty
was signed, there were 300,000 Greeks in Constantinople
and another 15,000 on the islands of Imvros and Tenedos.
The Turks agreed -ostensibly with difficulty -to exempt
Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos from the agreement
on the population exchanges; this was to be offset by the
80,000 Muslims living in Western Thrace, who would
not be returned to Turkey. The aim of the Turks was
quite clear: they wanted to maintain a Muslim population
in Western Thrace, as the Treaty of Lausanne provided,
since this served their interests.
"Meanwhile they had plans ready to wipe out the entire
Greek population in Turkey, never mind what it said in
the Treaty! They began with Imvros and Tenedos. Although
the islands were Greek -like all the Aegean islands -they
were ceded to Turkey, supposedly for security reasons, as
they lay at the entrance to the Dardanelles. However,
according to Article 14 of the Treaty of Lausanne, these
two islands would have a separate administration and the
non-Muslim population would be given guarantees
regarding their safety and the protection of their property,
their religion, their education and their language.
"What nonsense! The Turks sign things and then proceed
to ignore them. Before the ink had dried on the Treaty
they had signed, the Turks had closed the Greek schools

35 34 14
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on the two islands and banned the instruction of the
Greek language. Greek children were sent to attend Turkish
schools. In 1943, the property owned by the monasteries
at Lavra and Koutloumousion were confiscated and the
buildings given to Lazes whom they brought over as settlers.
Bit by bit, of course, under such conditions of oppression
and persecution, the Greek population on Imvros and
Tenedos was reduced to next to nothing. We've already
heard that a dissolution programme is being put into
effect, aimed at removing all traces of Hellenism from
these Greek islands and at the same time making them
completely Turkish.
"In the meantime, of course, it's been our turn here in
Constantinople. In 1928 the Turks burnt Tatavla and
renamed it Kurtulus ¸. In 1930, Greeks were banned from
certain professions to prevent them from making money.
In 1941, the special labour battalions were thought up. In
1942 came the destructive property tax which it was
impossible to pay, and more forced labour camps. The
looting of our property in 1955 was carried out under the
guidance and organisation of the official Turkish state.
You were very young then, but I'm sure you remember
what a narrow escape I had -otherwise I'd have been
dead now.
"And now, in 1964, they are callously deporting us
without the slightest grounds for doing so and on the
basis of only a summary and totally heartless procedure.
What kind of a future can we have in a country which
captured our land through violence and bloodshed, and
doesn't want us here?
"So let's go to Greece, where the air has the breath of
freedom and where if we work as hard as we do here,
I'm sure we'll have a much better life.
"Now I want you to go to sleep like good children, and

have faith in God."
As my father finished, my mother was unable to hold
back any longer and throwing herself into his arms, burst
into tears. A few moments later my sister did likewise.
My father managed to stay calm.
"Please don't behave like this! Didn't we say we must
show courage and patience? What sort of patience is this,
drowned in tears? Off you go to bed, so that I can get a
few hours' rest. Don't forget what tomorrow has in store
for me ..."

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4 Lying on my bed, I found it impossible to sleep that
night. My father's words kept running through my head:
"Remember what a narrow escape I had..." He was talking
about the night of 6th September, 1955.
The picture came into my mind, as in a dream, of us
all gathered on the flat roof of our house, squeezed into
a corner that overlooked the road and watching for my
father to appear. Later, when he had come home, it was
in this same spot that we waited, terrified, for the
murderous mob to go past. Those moments will remain
imprinted in my memory for ever. The fear that we
might be attacked made us like mice caught in a trap. No
matter how many years go by, I shall never forget the
scene, which is etched in my memory like a nightmare:
wherever you looked, the sky was filled with fire and
smoke, and shouts of "Damn the giavours!" pierced our
ears like bullets.
On the afternoon of 6th September, 1955 all seemed
quiet. A small group of students demonstrating against
Greece had gathered in Taksim Square, at the top of Pera
Street. The Turkish authorities had always viewed Greece
as a target for the mob. In the early 1950s, Turkey had
found a new source for the renewal of anti-Greek fury:
Cyprus. The British had made Turkey a present of part of
the island in order that they might assume the role of
"arbitrator" and thereby safeguard their own interests.
Through his inflammatory anti-Greek articles, Sedat
Simavi, a Turkish Jew working as a reporter on the
newspaper, Hurriyet, had managed to boost the newspaper's
daily circulation from 11,000 copies in 1948, when it

39 16
16 Page 17 18
was first issued, to 600,000 copies a day! Naturally the
other Turkish newspapers were not long in following suit
and so the general climate had been well prepared.
A large part of this negative mass psychology was
spawned by jealousy of the increasing economic prosperity
of the Greeks of Constantinople. To this, Turkish
propaganda artfully tacked on the notion that the Christians,
the Armenians, the Jews and the other minorities who
enjoyed most of the country's wealth were to blame for
Turkey's misfortune and inability to make economic
progress. The Emperor Nero had likewise misled his
wretched people by ascribing all evil and adversity to the
Christians. The Turks improved on his tactics: the
fanaticism which permeated down to the popular masses
was more acute, extremely well-organised and for the
most part very well-controlled.
Organisations known as "Cyprus is Turkish" sprang up
like mushrooms. Their leader was another reporter on
the newspaper Hurriyet, Hikmet Bil, who was also very
successful in channelling inflammatory anti-Greek feeling
to the masses.
There followed the staged failure of the tripartite London
Conference at the beginning of September and the
implementation of a perfectly devised plan to wipe out
Hellenism in Constantinople.
As was later established, the official point of departure
for the plan was 500 kilometres away, in the city of
Thessaloniki. A few hours before a demonstration was
due to take place, Oktay Engin, a Muslim student at
Thessaloniki University's Law School who came from
Komotini, in Thrace, delivered a bomb to the guard at
the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, Mehmet Hasanoglu.
The guard planted the device in a garden shared by the
Turkish consulate and the house where the Turks believe

Kemal Atatürk was born. The bomb went off but caused
no damage, apart from shattering a few windows. However,
this was of no importance. The plan drawn up by the
Turkish state was not aimed at destroying the building.
The bomb explosion was merely a pretext to blacken
Greece's name. And this is precisely what happened: two
Turkish newspapers had already prepared special editions
with prefabricated texts full of disinformation.
"Greek terrorists destroy Atatürk's family home in
Thessaloniki!" ran the headlines in a special evening edition
of the Istanbul Express on September 6th, 1955, which
contained photographs that had been specially doctored
to suit the purpose.
It was later discovered that the wife of the Turkish
Consul General had asked a photographer called Kyriakidis
for these photographs. She attended the opening of the
20th International Fair in Thessaloniki on 3rd September,
1955, and said she wanted them as a souvenir of the
Kemal Atatürk house, as she was leaving for Constantinople
the next day.
These photographs -suitably doctored, of course -were
then used in the special editions published by the two
Turkish newspapers on the evening of 6th September,
1955.
"Kemal Atatürk's house totally destroyed!" was the
message put about. The special editions published by the
two Turkish newspapers at the time of the demonstration
were the signal. The five main streets leading to Taksim
Square were suddenly filled with a raging mob armed
with axes, shovels, clubs, sledge-hammers and iron bars
and shouting "Kahrolsun giavurlar! Curse the giavours!"
and "Yikin, kirin, giavurdur! Smash it, pull it down -it
belongs to the giavours!"
The police and state security forces were supposedly

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caught by surprise. They received no instructions to restore
order and merely watched the goings-on with a cool
indifference.
When the yelling mob had swelled to approximately
50,000, the next stage of the plan came into effect: the
destruction of all Greek property and the desecration of
all churches and holy places belonging to the Greeks in
the city. The instructions were that nothing was to remain
standing.
The hours that followed were a living hell for
Constantinople's Greek population.
One part of the mob moved off towards Istiklal Caddesi,
formerly known as Pera Street, a kilometre-long road
that was the city's best-known shopping centre with about
700 shops and stores, most of them owned by Greeks.
The first place to come under attack was a cafeteria on
Taksim Square known as "Eptalofos" (meaning "Seven
Hills"). The mob burst into the cafe like a herd of bulls
and smashed everything in sight: windows, tables, chairs,
sideboards, glasses, cups -nothing was left intact.
The next place destined for attack was a textile store
owned by a Greek businessman. Four members of the
rabble ripped up a tram rail and used it to break down
the door and smash the shop windows. Within the space
of a few minutes, the shop looked like a bombsite. Lengths
of textiles and shelving were strewn on the streets and a
sewing-machine was smashed on the road outside before
the eyes of the screaming mob.
Next to be targeted was an electrician's shop, where
the rampaging mob fell upon the goods and scattered
them in the street.
A little further down was a grocer's store owned by two
elderly Greeks. The old man stood firmly outside the
door of his shop and said with remarkable courage: "Get

out of here! We've been living in this country for six
generations and you can't touch us!"
They were the last words he ever spoke. The rabble fell
on him; within a few minutes his shop was completely
demolished and the old man was the first victim of that
dreadful night. His wife managed to save herself by
huddling in a corner but she died of shock shortly
afterwards.
The mob proceeded in similar fashion to destroy all the
Greek stores located on Pera Street: the famous cake-shops
known as "Kervan", "Baylan" and "S ¸ehir", and the
splendid shoe and dress shops. Here the demonstrators
pulled out clothes and footwear, selecting silk shirts, suits
and new shoes for themselves and putting them on then
and there before continuing with their mission of
destruction.
At Frangoulis' magnificent jewellery shop the mob
charged in, fighting with each other to see who could
grab the most valuable pieces. It took them only a few
minutes to pocket the expensive gold jewellery.
When the crowd reached the Church of the Holy Trinity,
it hesitated for a moment. But this quickly passed when
the cry went up "Curse the infidels!" and the mob invaded
the church. Anything in the building that could be moved
was destroyed or desecrated: icons, holy chalices, priests'
robes -everything. The pews and the bishop's throne
were overturned by another group of demonstrators who
burst into the church with a can of kerosene to set fire
to it. We shall never know why, in the end, the Turks
were unable to burn the church.
In just a few hours, Pera Street had taken on a totally
different appearance. The road surface had acquired a
curious extra layer composed of a mixture of the items
that had been destroyed: bits of machinery, furs, watches,

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shoes, oil, cheese, dress materials, smashed crockery,
various foodstuffs and items of clothing -all mixed up
and gradually trampled down by the rabble passing over
it till it resembled a greasy sea of mud.
At around seven o'clock that evening my father was in
his shop when he heard the shouting of the group of
demonstrators far in the distance. With his heart pounding,
he remembered the words that Ahmet Buldur, a Turkish
neighbour who was very fond of him, had said to him
only the previous day:
"Gerasimos, don't go out tomorrow evening -stay at
home with your family."
"Why, Ahmet Bey?" my father had asked.
"Don't ask questions -just stay at home. Information
has reached me which may not mean much, but may be
very serious."
For a moment my father was puzzled. He connected
Ahmet Buldur's words with a number of other "curious"
signs: for example, the shutters and walls of the houses
and shops belonging to Christians had suddenly been
daubed with strange, distinctive markings or Turkish letters.
Many stores belonging to Turks had displayed the Turkish
flag as if to convey a message of some kind, which
remained a mystery to my father. Groups of Lazes and
various other people belonging to tribes which came from
the far east of Turkey had appeared in the centre of
Constantinople in the last few days, dressed in rags and
starving.
How was my father to know that a few hours later
these people would be posing as "outraged citizens" and
embarking on a spree of looting, desecration, rape and
destruction?
Despite giving the matter serious thought, in the end
my father failed to interpret the words of Ahmet Buldur

correctly. He did not realise their true meaning and now,
hearing the shouts of the distant mob, he regretted it.
He hurriedly turned out all the lights and slipped out of
the shop. At that very moment, he was approached by
five people who had broken away from the main body of
the rabble.
"Why haven't you hoisted the Turkish flag in your
shop, eh, giavour?" one of them asked.
That was the signal. All five of them fell upon him and
began to pummel him and kick him. Fortunately they
were not armed with shovels and pick-axes. Reeling from
the repeated blows, my father tried desperately to defend
himself and as soon as he had a chance, to return some
of the punches. He was in a sorry state. Any moment
now the main mob would be on the scene and any hope
of saving himself would have vanished.
At that moment the sound of an ambulance siren rang
out. The scuffle on the street stopped to allow the vehicle
to pass. My father realised this was his only chance to
save his life. Bleeding profusely and dizzy from the heavy
pounding he had received, he summoned all his strength
and started to run. By the time the ambulance had passed,
my father had disappeared; the target of the mob's wrath
was now his shop, which they literally ransacked from
top to bottom. Meanwhile it took my father two hours to
walk the distance to our house, a journey he normally
completed in twenty minutes. He was a total wreck.
We were all waiting for him in a state of great agitation.
As soon as my mother heard about the rioting, she
positioned herself anxiously by the window, waiting
impatiently for my father to appear. When she saw him
coming, we all ran to open the front door. With our
shock and horror clearly etched on our faces, we helped
him crawl into bed and attended to his injuries.

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Meanwhile, the plan to destroy all Greek property in
the city was now fully under way. A hundred gangs of
rioters were busy carrying out their terrible task, covering
a vast area that stretched from the Bosphorus to the Sea
of Marmara. Each gang had a leader who was armed with
a list of the houses and shops in his area owned by
Greeks. It was an organised tornado of violence which
swept away everything in its path. Dozens of Greek citizens
and clergymen were beaten up. Altogether 73 Greek
churches were plundered or burned. Icons, murals and
holy chalices of inestimable historic and archaeological
value were destroyed. All the city's 26 Greek schools
were completely demolished. The Patriarchal School at
Fanari, established in 1453, and the Theological School
on Halki were subjected to the fury of the rabble in an
act of extreme barbarism. The Zappeion High School was
attacked and the statue of its benefactor, Constantinos
Zappas, sent tumbling down the great marble staircase.
The mob did not stop at ruining desks, a piano and the
school hall but also did immense damage to the murals
that decorated the interior walls of the school.
In all, 4,340 Greek shops and stores were looted and
destroyed that night; 2,600 Greek homes were caught in
the eye of the storm and submitted to the mob's
unprecedented wrath. The offices and printing presses of
the city's three big Greek newspapers were literally
smashed to pieces. The offices of Olympic Airways, then
known as T. A. E., on Cumhuriyet Street in Elmadag were
visited twice by the rabble. The first time the offices
were protected by a strong guard and the "demonstrators"
were obliged to withdraw temporarily without completing
their task. However, one of the guards told them they had
arrived too early and advised them to come back later;
and indeed, the second time they turned up the guards

had all disappeared save the one who had suggested they
return later. After destroying the airline's offices, leaving
almost nothing standing, they were about to make their
exit when the "guard" urged them to finish the job by
destroying a large advertisement displayed in the inner
office. This they did, and when they finally departed they
left behind them a scene that resembled a bombsite.
In another part of the city, one group of demonstrators
had spent two whole hours venting their blind rage and
hatred by destroying the tombstones and crosses in the
Greek cemetery at S ¸is ¸li. Opening up the most recent
graves they removed the bodies and hacked them to pieces
with knives.
At the Church of the Virgin Mary of Vlacherna, which
was built on the foundations of a Byzantine church that
dated back to 470 AD, the frenzied mob destroyed what
the Greeks had managed to preserve for 1,485 years.
The historic 13th century Church of Saint George at
Psomathia, which the Turks called kanli kilise (bleeding
church) because of the blood shed on that spot during the
Fall of Constantinople, was turned into a heap of ruins.
In the Bosphorus district, the screaming mob pushed a
Turkish flag into the hands of a priest and forced him to
chant "Cyprus is Turkish!" as loudly as he could "so that
Archbishop Makarios could hear him". Scared out of his
wits, the wretched priest was unable to shout very loudly
and was savagely beaten up, kicked and left in a bloody
heap on the road.
In the Byzantine district of Pikridion, known as Hasköy
in Turkish, the mortal remains of the latter-day saint,
Argyri, kept in a silver urn, were strewn on the streets.
Nothing was left except for a few charred relics.
In Therapia, the Metropolitan Church of Derki and its
library containing rare and valuable documents were burnt

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to the ground. The historic church building, where secret
meetings had taken place prior to the 1821 Revolution
between the city's elders and Papaflessas, a member of the
Filiki Etairia who stopped in Constantinople on his way to
Odessa on the Black Sea, was completely destroyed. Bishop
Iakovos of Derki managed to escape at the last minute and
was saved thanks to the help offered him by Dimitris
Koutsopoulos and the head waiter at the Touring Club.
At Mega Rema -called Arnavutköy in Turkish -was
the residence of Bishop Gennadios of Ilioupolis, a learned
and exceptional man: sociologist, historian, theologian and
prolific writer, he was a highly cultured man who spoke
seven languages and was renowned not only amongst the
Greeks of Constantinople but throughout Christendom.
It was precisely this prestige that marked him as a target
of Turkish wrath. That night the mob broke into his
house and having found him on the upper floor, beat him
up savagely and threw him down the stairs. It then set
about destroying everything inside the building, including
a valuable library which the Bishop had built up. Finally
he was dragged outside and assaulted yet again before
being left, unconscious, on the street. Bishop Gennadios
died from his injuries three days later.
At the historic Monastery of Zoodochos Pigis, known
as the Baloukliotissa, it was the policemen and night-watchman
who were supposed to be guarding the building
who led the mob in the task of destruction and looting.
The three monks who were in the monastery on the
night of September 6th were either killed or badly beaten
up. One 90-year-old monk, Chryssanthos Mantas, was
burned alive. The 60-year-old abbot, Bishop Gerasimos
of Pamfilios, was tortured and received severe head injuries.
The 35-year-old monastery priest, Evangelos, was also
beaten and tortured. The mob wanted to put him to death

slowly and sadistically, by crucifixion, but they ran out
of time. Martial law was declared at midnight and they
were too afraid of the consequences to flout the law.
The Patriarchal tombs and relics of the great Greek
benefactors, which had been kept in the wall of the
monastery courtyard since 1850, were flattened and
desecrated with an almost cannibalistic zeal. The graves
of the Patriarchs were ripped open and their bones scattered
everywhere.
Twenty-one Greek factories were completely demolished.
Any that lay along the coastal road beside the Bosphorus
had their machinery and equipment torn out and thrown
into the sea.
A total of 110 Greek restaurants and hotels were
plundered and then smashed or burned down, while all
27 Greek pharmacies in the city were stripped and
demolished.
It is estimated that the number of cases of women raped
that night, irrespective of their age, was well over 200. The
total number of people who lost their lives that night
exceeded 20, despite the orders that there were to be no
killings. Of the hundreds of cases of rape reported, some
incidents were particularly shocking to the Greek
community. At Ortakoy a group of demonstrators seized a
woman dressed in black who had the misfortune to find
herself in their path. After each of them had "had his fun"
with her, they abandoned the wretched woman where she
lay, unconscious and bleeding. She was discovered the
next day, still alive, and taken to hospital where doctors
confirmed the experience had driven her insane.
At a house in Tatavla, two orphan girls were waiting
anxiously for their father to come home. But instead of
their father, who worked in the Bosphorus district and
was unable to return before the disturbances started, a

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gang of rioters suddenly appeared, raped them both and
left them lying in a pool of blood. When their poor father
finally came home, the shock of what had happened to
the two girls was too much for him and he hanged himself.
At Yenisehir, egged on by the shouts of the crowd, an
8-year-old girl was raped by a well-known porter
nicknamed the Gorilla, so called because of his repulsive
face, which was pocked with the marks of syphilis. The
little girl survived the ordeal but was to carry the trauma
of that night with her for the rest of her life.
Two women, Zinovia Charitonidou and Asimenia
Parapandopoulou, died as a result of being raped that
night.
The names of some of the others who died in the
Turkish pogrom that September night were Olga Kimioglou,
aged 80, who was trampled to death by the mob in the
area of Golden Horn Bay; Giorgos Korpovas, Emmanuil
Tzanetis, Avraam Anavas and Nikolaos Karamanoglou.
I still remember that appalling night as if it were
yesterday; I remember being huddled in terror in a corner
of the flat roof of our house, waiting frantically for our
turn to come. And indeed, at around 11 o'clock the night
sky, already thick with smoke and fire wherever you
looked, was suddenly filled with fearful cries of "Death
to the giavours! Death to the giavours!", "Yikin, kirin,
giavourdur! Smash it, pull it down -it belongs to the
giavours!"
The shouting was getting dangerously close. My mother
crossed herself, whispering with trembling lips: "Jesus
Christ wins and scatters all evils". Without being conscious
of doing so, we all followed suit and crossed ourselves,
repeating our mother's words.
The rabble was drawing nearer.
Our house was on a steep hill called Enli Yokus ¸. At the

top of the hill, at the junction with the main road which
was called Kallioncu Kulluk, was a large store named
Crystal which occupied the ground floor and basement. It
sold household goods and glassware and belonged to a
Greek. The mob charged into the store and began to
wreak havoc; some of the items that were hurled out on
to the street rolled down the hill and ended up outside
our front door.
The noise of the merchandise being smashed combined
with the shouting of the crowd to produce an atmosphere
of sheer terror. The destruction was accompanied by cries
of "Today your property, tomorrow your life!" When they
had finishing breaking and looting at the Crystal store,
the mob moved on towards our house.
The leader of the gang, who was holding a list of houses
in the area, stopped in front of the building.
"Giavours live here!" he cried. "In this house there live
infidels who torture our brothers in Cyprus and plant
bombs in the family home of our Father, Kemal Atatürk!"
The sound of that voice will remain with me for the
rest of my life. The hatred and passion in it were like a
knife plunged deep into our sensitive souls.
The frenzied mob began to throw the first stones at the
door. Paralysed with fear, we crouched motionless on the
roof, hardly able to breathe.
Suddenly a familiar voice shouted out "Stop!" from the
building opposite. The wife of the infamous Papa Eftim,
who lived across the road from us, had appeared on the
flat roof of the house opposite.
Papa Eftim was a shady character, detested by the Greeks
because he was suspected of being a Turkish agent. It
was he who had organised the so-called "Turkish Orthodox
Church". The Greek Orthodox Church had repudiated
him and all the Greeks viewed him as a traitor; they

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avoided him whenever possible, even to the extent of not
greeting him on the street. Now his wife, who must have
weighed at least 130 kilos, suddenly appeared at the last
minute on the roof of their house, which was exactly
opposite ours.
The mob, knowing perfectly well who and what Papa
Eftim was, paused for a moment. The pseudo-priest's
wife continued in a voice that did not waver:
"Please, go away. Giavours used to live in that house,
but now there are peace-loving people who love Turkey
as much as you or I do."
Our anguish was indescribable. We hadn't the strength
to make even the slightest movement, not even to look.
"Are you sure, abla (sister)?" asked the leader of the
group in disbelief.
"I am sure you know who I am," came the voice of the
fat woman.
"Of course we do," was the reply.
"Then you should also know that I get very angry when
my word is doubted. Take my word for it and get out of
here."
After a slight hesitation, which seemed to us to last a
century, the leader shouted:
"Let's go! We still have a lot of work to do!"
The mob followed him as he led the way down the hill
past our house, still shouting "Death to the giavours!"
We stayed where we were, transfixed, until the last
member of the gang had turned the corner at the bottom
of the road.
The houses of the Greeks who lived in the suburbs of
Constantinople sustained worse damage that night than
those belonging to Greeks living in the city centre. Two
areas completely devastated by the Turkish mob were
Chrysokeramo (Çengelköy), on the shores of the Bosphorus,

and Eptapyrgio (Yedikule). In Chrysokeramo there lived
a man called Apostolos Nikolaidis with his wife Efterpi
and their two children, Domna and Miltos. We knew the
family and were shocked when we learned what had
happened to them. Early in the evening, when word had
spread of the anti-Greek demonstration taking place in
Taksim Square, Apostolos Nikolaidis left his shop in
Karakoy and took the boat home to Yeni Mahala (meaning
"new neighbourhood") in Chrysokeramo.
They lived in a two-storey house which belonged to
Stefanos and Tarsi Sarandidis. After carefully locking all
the doors and windows, the family gathered in the little
kitchen at the back of the upper floor of the building and
the owners of the house went upstairs to a small attic.
Opposite the house was a street-lamp which lit up the
road and an empty plot, where only the previous night,
Apostolos Nikolaidis had dumped a load of coal that he
was going to store in the basement of his house for the
winter. They then turned out all the lights in the house
and the Nikolaidis family huddled round the radio, listening
anxiously for news of what was happening. Suddenly
they remembered that somewhere in the house was a
small Greek flag, and as a precaution they decided to
destroy it. The little flag was burned, using a small quantity
of spirit.
As time passed, their despair and anxiety increased.
Turkish Radio started to broadcast news of the rioting
and the whole family froze when the noise from the
disturbances began to reach their ears as the yelling mob
destroyed houses in a district further down the road.
The contents of every Greek household were gradually
being thrown out on to the streets and strewn all over the
pavements; the sound of the homes being smashed and
the shouts of the crowd on the rampage produced an

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appalling din.
The interior of the parish church was totally demolished
and the blackboards from the Greek school, with the last
lesson still written on them in chalk, were hurled out on
to the streets.
The cordon was beginning to tighten around the district
of Yeni Mahala, where the Nikolaidis family lived, when
Apostolos Nikolaidis suddenly jumped up; he had heard
on the radio that martial law had been declared. It was
midnight.
"I hope we're through!" he whispered to his family. "As
martial law's been declared they'll have to stop!"
He slipped out of the tiny kitchen and peered through
a crack in the shutters, trying to see what was going on
down in the street. He strained his ears to hear whether
the noise of the mob's yelling and destruction was receding.
Then he heard the sound of a jeep approaching and through
the chink in the shutters he saw a police vehicle stop
outside the house. Its engine was switched off. The hope
that the police had come to offer their protection leaped
inside him, but his intuition told him this was not the
case.
He stood there waiting, as still as the jeep and its
passengers outside. Five minutes must have passed and
no-one moved. The racket from the mob's destructive
operation seemed to be showing no signs of diminishing,
much less of stopping altogether.
Then, suddenly, the engine of the police jeep was started
up again and it disappeared as mysteriously as it had
come.
Soon the rabble's cries became even louder and the
family realised it was now very near. Apostolos Nikolaidis
went back into the little kitchen.
"It seems they have destroyed Giovanni's grocery store

and the house of Iannis Vlastos." Both of these were very
close to their home.
The first stone landed with a terrible crash, sending
fragments of window pane flying into the room. Whooping
and yelling, the mob began to throw pieces of coal from
the heap lying on the empty plot opposite at the doors
and windows. Paralysed with fear, the Nikolaidis family
watched as their house filled up with coal tossed through
the broken windows. Half the pile of coal which had
been brought the previous evening was now lying in their
living-room! One spark would have sufficed to set fire to
the whole lot and burn them like torches.
All of a sudden, the mob began to move away from the
house, still shouting: "Today your property, tomorrow your
lives!" Half an hour passed; all was dangerously quiet.
Everyone felt as if they were sitting on a time-bomb
whose fuse had already been lit.
At that moment a muffled voice called to Apostolos
Nikolaidis from outside. It was immediately recognised
as being the voice of their neighbour, a Turk from the
Pontus:
"Apostolos-efendi! Apostolos-efendi*! Come down and
we'll hide you in our house! You'll be much safer with
us. If you stay in there, you'll be in danger. They're sure
to come back!"
The members of the family looked at each other with
desperation and fear written all over their faces. The
wife of the Pontian Turk was a secret Christian. She used
to go to church every Sunday morning, very early, light
a candle and leave without uttering a word. She must
have asked her husband to protect the Christian families
in the neighbourhood. ----------------------------

* Efendi is an honorific title in Turkish, attached to the first names of
people to indicate respect.

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But under such circumstances you could not afford to
trust anyone. Apostolos Nikolaidis pressed a finger to his
lips, indicating that noone was to speak. The Pontian
Turk repeated his suggestion twice more, then disappeared.
The noise of the Turks breaking up Greek homes was
meanwhile continuing unabated.
Once more, thirty minutes of uneasy silence passed and
then a fresh wave of rioters began to approach, their
passions whipped up to such an extent that their behaviour
resembled that of wild animals.
His eye glued to the crack in the shutter, Apostolos
Nikolaidis saw the mob returning. For the second time
that night, hope sprang up inside him when he saw that
it was led by Biletçi Kemal. This was the man who
issued the tickets for the ferry that operated between
Çengelköy and Karaköy. He also owed his life to Apostolos
Nikolaidis. Once when he had been seriously ill -something
wrong with his head -it was the ice with which Apostolos
Nikolaidis kept supplying him that had saved him. The
Nikolaidis family were the only people in the area with
a refrigerator at that time.
Seeing that the leader of the gang was Biletçi Kemal,
who was so obliged to him, Apostolos Nikolaidis decided
to do what a priest at the church of Beykoz had done a
few days earlier: the priest had stood at the entrance to
the church holding a Turkish flag, and speaking in fluent
Turkish managed to convince the crowd which was bent
on destroying the church that nothing separated Turks
from Greeks.
Wasting no time, Apostolos Nikolaidis went downstairs,
grabbed a Turkish flag which they always kept ready for
an emergency like this, opened the front door and
confronted the mob.
Inside the house, everyone held their breath. An awkward

silence fell on the angry rioters. Making his way over
pieces of coal, stones and broken glass which cut into his
flesh through his thin shoes and still clutching the Turkish
flag, Apostolos Nikolaidis summoned up the courage to
speak to the crowd.
"I am Apostolos Nikolaidis," he said, "and I was born
in this country, just like all of you. My parents, like your
parents, were also born here. So were my grandparents. I
have Turkish citizenship, just like you. I served in the
Turkish army, like you did. And not just once, not even
twice, but three times!"
He paused for a moment, out of breath. Total silence
reigned, as if an invisible hand had immobilised the crowd
that had been raging so angrily a few minutes before.
Speaking in faultless Turkish, he continued, his voice
clear and resonant:
"I have nothing to do with Cyprus! I have no connection
with what is going on there or anywhere else, for that
matter. I live here, like you do. There is absolutely no
reason for you to destroy our home. In any case, like you,
I believe in God. And in both our faiths, wrong-doing is
a great crime. So I would ask you to leave quietly without
causing any further damage and remember that my family
and I are part of this country, just like you!"
The deathly hush which fell after his speech lasted just
a few seconds. Then a voice charged with hatred and
fanaticism cut through the silence like a sharp knife:
"What's the Turkish flag doing in the hands of that
giavour?"
Some of the rioters who were standing close to Apostolos
Nikolaidis pounced on him as though they had been waiting
for the slightest provocation. One of them, holding a
club, came forward from behind and delivered a sharp
blow on the back of his head. As Apostolos Nikolaidis

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collapsed, unconscious, in a heap, a frenzied cry pierced
the air, sounding as if it had come from deep within the
entrails of a wild beast that had been injured:
"Kemal abi! Babami öldürüyorsunuz!" (" Uncle Kemal!
You're killing my father!")
The cry, which came from 15-year-old Miltos Nikolaidis,
had the effect of a high-voltage electric shock directed
into the crowd. Everyone stopped in their tracks. They all
looked like naughty children caught in the act by their
parents. Their leader looked around, embarrassed.
"Let's get out of here!" he ordered, gesturing to the
crowd.
After a slight hesitation, the mob began to move away.
But it had not gone very far before it started to shout
slogans again, rekindling its wrath to be vented on the
next Greek target.
Efterpi Nikolaidis and the two children ran to the help
of the injured man and dragged him inside the coal-filled
house. They secured the doors and windows again as best
they could and gathered round the wounded man. His
head and feet, lacerated by the broken glass, were bleeding
profusely.
The minutes ticked past agonisingly slowly. The danger
of another attack was immense. Efterpi Nikolaidis attended
to her husband like a real nurse. When at length he
began to recover, he asked them to collect a few essential
items of clothing and be ready to leave for Tarlabas ¸i at
first light. They would be much safer in the centre of the
city, where there were many houses and lots of people.
They had several friends and relatives who would be glad
to take them in.
The Nikolaidis family spent the rest of that long night
of Saint Bartholomew in a state of restless agitation,
listening and watching anxiously for any sign of danger.

When dawn finally broke, they began to get ready to
leave.
"We shouldn't carry suitcases!" Apostolos warned them.
"We'll only attract attention, and they'll think the cases
are full of things we've stolen from people's houses.
We'll each put on four sets of underwear and carry as
little as possible in our hands. We'll leave by one of the
first boats from Karaköy and then go on up to Pera on
foot."
They set about boarding up the windows of the house
until they were all covered with pieces of wood. Then
they decided to leave all together, but in pairs: Apostolos
with his daughter and Efterpi with her son. All the way
to the pier, there was an almost tangible feeling of terror
in the air. The Turks, overjoyed at the havoc they had
wreaked during their night on the rampage, were
celebrating the damage they had caused to giavours'
property.
"D ün S ¸eker Bayrami, bug ün Kurban Bayrami (yesterday
we celebrated the Festival of Sweets, today it is the Festival
of Sacrifices)," they told the terrified Greeks when they
saw them leaving. It was as if they had said "Yesterday
we looted your property, today we'll kill you." They wanted
to make sure no-one would dare to go back to Çengelköy
amid such a formidable atmosphere of terror. This is
precisely what happened with the Nikolaidis family. After
the night of 6th September, 1955, they never returned to
their house. They made straight for the centre of the city
and stayed there until they had to leave Turkey a few
years later.
Some months after that dreadful night, Apostolos
Nikolaidis was suddenly smitten with amnesia. The blow
he had received on the head caused serious injuries from
which he never recovered, despite two major operations.

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There were times when he could not remember whom he
had seen or what he had said just a few moments earlier.
He was to relive that September night in 1955 over and
over again for many years.
Among the many Christians who lived in the district of
Eptapyrgio (or Yedikule) were the Vafias and Soukas
families. They lived in a three-storey wooden house in
front of the castle walls. The building was in the middle
of a row of houses which formed a semi-circle around
the western wall of the castle; in front of the houses was
an enormous garden full of trees. It was an idyllic place
for children to play or generally to relax in. How excited
I was whenever I learned we were going to visit people
there!
At one end of the semi-circle was the local police station.
Most of these wooden houses, which all looked alike and
were linked by a huge communal garden with a high
fence round it, were occupied by Christians. At the bottom
of the garden, right up against the castle walls, was a
spoon factory owned by some Armenians who, although
they had converted to Islam and had Turkish names,
were at heart still loyal to the Christian faith. They never
showed their Christian feelings overtly, but it was obvious
in the way they behaved towards their Christian neighbours.
In one of these three-storey wooden houses lived
Thanassis Vafias with his wife Irini, two of their sons,
Sideris and Iannis, and their newly-wed daughter Olga
with her husband, Nikos Soukas. The previous year the
young couple had had their first child, Iannis, who from
the day he was born was an unusually restless baby.
Nikos had installed some sewing-machines in the
basement of the house where he could work at home,
stitching clothes. Early in the evening of 6th September,
1955 he was just finishing an order for a hundred shirts

which had to be delivered, when news of the demonstration
taking place in Taksim Square began to filter through.
Only the day before, he had noticed some white circles
chalked on to the houses where Christians lived and had
wondered what they meant. Neither he nor anyone else
in the house could explain what the chalk marks signified,
but they were all aware of a heavy atmosphere of hostility
that was widespread. Their senses were heightened by
the dangers they faced every day which had become
permanent features of their lives and now they felt a
kind of numbness, like an invisible pressure weighing
down on them.
At about 8 o'clock in the evening shouting and banging
was heard from outside the front of the house. The rioters
had arrived, yelling their frenzied slogans: "Death to the
giavours!" "Damn the infidels!" and "Today your property,
tomorrow your lives!"
The whole family ran upstairs to the second floor in
panic. From the window they could see the mob moving
about in the main street; its numbers seemed to swell
with every moment that passed.
A stone was suddenly flung through the second-floor
window, scattering pieces of broken glass all over the
bedroom. The stone landed at the far side of the room
beside the baby's cot. As everyone in the room screamed
with terror, Nikos Soukas leapt to his feet and dashed
across the room, seized the infant in his arms and with
extraordinary calm said quietly:
"I'm going to hide in the garden with the baby! You go
and hide in the hut next to the spoon factory. We'll have
to try and get out the back way, but we mustn't make a
sound. Right, let's go!"
With bated breath and their blood running cold in their
veins, they began to go downstairs. On the ground floor

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was a door that would take them out into the garden. The
last one to leave was Thanassis Vafias, who had a heart
condition. Helped by his sons and stopping every few
minutes to catch his breath, he moved slowly down the
stairs. Outside, at the front of the house, the shouting
from the mob was getting louder. The stones hurled at
the front door and the windows were coming thick and
fast.
The first to go out into the darkness of the garden was
Nikos Soukas. Clutching his infant son tightly in his
arms, he made his way in the dark along the familiar
path towards a fig tree which produced the best fruit in
the garden, and crouched down under its sheltering
branches.
Behind him came Olga, holding her mother's arm, and
they were followed by her brothers supporting Thanassis
Vafias. The poor man was having difficulty breathing, he
was so flustered and upset. At that moment they heard
loud banging coming from the front door of the house;
the demonstrators, shouting at the tops of the voices,
were trying to break it down with crowbars.
With a look of anguish and horror on her face, Olga
Vafia-Souka looked behind her and waited for her brothers
and her father, who was now having evident difficulty
walking, to catch up with her.
A sudden thunderous crash made them all shake with
fright. The front door had given way under the constant
battering and the clamouring of the mob could now be
heard even more clearly.
All five members of the family were now out of the
house and standing paralysed with fear in the garden
behind. The pitch blackness smothered their slow steps
away from the building. The banging and shouting coming
from inside the house was terrifying. In the back hall,

beside the door into the garden, was a piece of furniture
containing glassware, kitchen utensils and a radio. The
rioters smashed everything they could lay their hands on
-plates, glasses, saucepans: everything was demolished.
One of the intruders opened the garden door and threw
out the broken radio and some plates just as the residents
of the house reached the hut at the bottom of the garden,
next to the spoon factory. They slipped inside the hut as
silently as they could, trying not fall over anything in the
dark.
Further down Nikos Soukas was huddled under the fig
tree with his son in his arms, praying the child wouldn't
open its mouth and start crying loudly in its customary
manner.
From different parts of the garden, they all stared with
eyes rounded in horror at the havoc being wreaked on
their home. Inside the hut, Olga Vafia-Souka could contain
herself no longer and let out a deep sob. The terror in her
voice distorted her words:
"Oh God, how shall we ever get out of here alive?
They'll murder us all! I'd rather just die outright and not
be tortured, not live to see all this! Oh God, please help
us -help my child! None of this is his fault -his innocent
little life has hardly begun!"
She had hidden her face in her hands to deaden the
sound of her sobbing. Her mother, standing beside her,
pulled her into her arms and whispered, her voice
trembling: "Ssh, my daughter -be brave! We're not going
to die!"
The others had not moved and or said a word. The
pandemonium of the destruction going on inside the house
pierced their ears like knives. Now and again the mob let
out a cry of triumph when it discovered something of
value to take.

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Suddenly Iannis Vafias' clear, steady voice came quietly
through the darkness as if from the beyond.
"Soon we shall have to get out of here and walk from
the end of the garden to the police station. If we can
make it, they won't dare leave us outside -their chief
constable has received some very handsome handouts from
the Greeks. Now -in this corner of the hut there is a
bucket; I'm going to leave my wallet with all my savings
beside the bucket. In it there are 5,000 Turkish lira.
Whichever one of us survives will know where to come
and find the money!"
No-one uttered a word; they were all overcome with
the emotion of the moment. Even Olga had stopped
weeping. Their attention was now drawn outside the garden.
The rioters had by this time gone upstairs to the first
floor of the building and were throwing chairs, picture-frames,
table-cloths, ornaments, ash-trays and anything
else they could lay their hands on out of the windows.
The sky was a bright red and the smoke, accompanied by
a strong smell of burning, was suffocating. Above the
infernal noise of the vandals carrying out their work rose
the sound of a bell ringing.
"They're burning the church!" whispered Irini Vafia in
horror. "They're burning the church of St Constantinos!
My God, what a dreadful thing to do!"
A moment or two passed and then Thanassis Vafias
said:
"We must go! We must try to reach the police station.
We'll all go together, without splitting up. Whatever
happens to us, it will be our common fate!"
Suddenly Sideris Vafias shouted rather than said: "The
gold! We forgot to bring the gold!"
"Be quiet, don't shout!" whispered his father. "Our lives
are in danger and you think about the gold?"

"I'm going to fetch it ! You set off for the police station
and I'll meet you there. I'll go into the house and pretend
I'm one of the demonstrators; then I'll go up to the
second floor before they do and get the gold out of the
trunk!"
Irini Vafia crossed herself.
"God have mercy! Have you gone mad, my son? Are
you in your right mind? Do you want your father to die
of heart failure?"
But it was too late. Sideris had left the hut and was
running towards the house. The rest of them stared after
him in anguish, unable to move.
Crouched under the fig-tree, Nikos could make out
Sideris' silhouette moving across the garden and thought
the rioters must have started to search the garden. His
heart pounded in his chest. It occurred to him, too, that
under the present circumstances the safest place to seek
refuge would be the police station, which was only a few
hundred metres away. Very slowly he got up and started
to walk cautiously, with the child, unusually quiet as if
it sensed an unseen danger, clutched tightly in his arms.
There were two points at which the huge garden
communicated with the road outside. One was the entrance
to the factory, which was closed at night. The other was
a path which led from the garden to the main road,
emerging right beside the police station. Nikos set out
slowly and carefully along this familiar path. His eyes
anxiously scanned the darkness for human shadows and
his ears were alert for any sound of danger close at hand.
Every now and then he stopped to make sure no-one had
seen him. The short distance to his destination seemed
like a thousand miles.
Finally he reached the police station. A guard on duty
outside blocked his way.

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"I must see the chief constable, it's urgent!" he told the
guard, who had been observing the rioting as if he were
watching a war film.
The guard had been employed at the police station for
many years and knew Nikos Soukas. He took one look at
the child in his arms and the distraught look on the
man's face, and said with a languid gesture: "He's in his
office." He stood aside to let Nikos pass.
Nikos Soukas dashed into the police station and went
up to the chief constable.
"At this very minute our house is being destroyed, my
family has scattered and I don't know where they are!
This little tot is in danger and I must protect him! Please,
I beg you, keep us here tonight -outside our lives are in
danger!"
The chief constable looked at him with an apparently
indifferent air and said:
"What happens if the child cries? Do you think I'm in
any less danger than you or the child if they find out I've
given refuge to Christians? Do you really think that with
just a handful of policemen I'm in any position to help
you?"
"I realise that, sir! I also know what a good man you
are. In my position, wouldn't you have done the same?
So please, help us -you know we have always found
ways of showing our gratitude!"
The police officer scrutinised him carefully, a barely
perceptible smile on his lips.
"All right!" he said. "Stay here, but if the child cries
he'll have to leave immediately!"
At about the same moment, Sideris Vafias had managed,
with the aid of a stick with which he beat about him
dramatically, pretending to be an enraged demonstrator,
to get up to the second floor of the house. Pushing aside

anyone in his path, he reached the place where the family
gold was hidden. With a dexterity that would have aroused
the envy of the most experienced burglar, he wrapped
the gold in a piece of cloth and pushed it into his trouser
pocket.
Then, employing exactly the same tactic as when he
had entered the house, he went back downstairs, threw
away the stick and sidled towards the door into the garden.
It was at this moment that one of the demonstrators
recognised him and shouted: "Get him! He's a giavour!"
Sideris tried to get out through the door but four Turks
who were close by jumped on him and started beating
and kicking him, using their hands and feet and any
object they happened to be holding.
Sideris tried desperately to make use of the narrow
space which did not allow his attackers much room for
manoeuvre. Summoning all his strength, he pushed two
of them away and rushed out into the garden before they
could catch him. In a moment the Turks were in hot
pursuit, shouting and swearing. One of them who could
run faster than the others managed to catch up with him
and lunged at him, dragging him to the ground. Sideris
tried to struggle up, but the other three chasing him also
pounced on him. All four went berserk, beating him up
savagely; but as they were out of breath from the chase
Sideris once again managed to get away from them and
headed in the direction of the police station.
Helped by the fact that he was familiar with every inch
of the garden, Sideris succeeded in making off into the
darkness. His whole body was racked with pain as though
it had been punctured by a thousand needles and his nose
and mouth were bleeding.
The four Turks who were after him charged about the
garden like mad bulls, shouting wildly. The instinct for

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self-preservation told him he should stay still for a few
minutes, and so he stood like a statue leaning up against
the trunk of a tree. He could hear the footsteps and
shouting of the Turks who were chasing him very close.
After a while, he bent down and started to crawl slowly
along the ground, making sure not to make the slightest
sound that would give him away. His persecutors seemed
to be further away now. With a supreme effort, he dragged
himself towards garden gate. Then his blood froze in his
veins.
At the exit near the police station he could make out a
number of figures walking slowly about. In despair, he
thought the rioters must have closed off the exit beside
the police station as well, that they were planning to loot
Christian homes by breaking down the back gate into the
garden. Then it dawned on him that the four figures in
front of the police station were none other than his parents
and his brother and sister. Gathering what little strength
he had left, he stood up and ran over to join them. When
they had recovered from their surprise, his mother crossed
herself and said: "Thank God! That was a very stupid
thing to do!"
Soon the whole family was inside the police station,
along with several other Christians who had also sought
refuge there. The Turkish chief constable kept them there
until the early morning of 7th September, 1955.
It took about six hours for the organised plan for the
total destruction of property belonging to the Greeks in
Constantinople to be carried out. By midnight, when the
well-organised gangs had just about completed their task,
the Turkish government was kind enough to impose martial
law in a city that was by now engulfed in flames. The
plan had been singularly successful. Almost all Greek
property had been destroyed. The Greek population was

in a state of terror and those who had survived the ordeal
were aware of a menacing atmosphere. Hellenism in
Constantinople was never to recover from the severe blow
it received that night. Gradually the Greeks began to
stream out of the city; having lost their properties, they
now had to concerned themselves with saving their lives.
The exodus of Greeks from Constantinople took on
gigantic proportions. Whole suburbs and settlements once
densely populated by Greeks were decimated. Churches
formerly brimmed to overflowing, their congregations
filling the courtyards as well, were now deserted. The
number of children attending the Greek schools began to
dwindle and one by one the schools were obliged to close
down.
Shortly after the events of that September night, Oktay
Engin, the Muslim student who had delivered the bomb
to the Turkish Consulate in Thessaloniki, was arrested by
the Greek police. When he was released on 15th June,
1956 he escaped to Turkey were he was given a welcome
befitting a national hero. The supposedly serious Turkish
newspaper, Cumhurriyet, employed him to translate news
and comments broadcast by Athens Radio. He was later
to be made Chief of Police in Ankara.
Only three days after the incidents of 6th September,
1955, the leader of the Turkish opposition People's Party,
Ismet Inonu, made a provocatively clear statement at his
party's headquarters:
"It is a good thing that our party was not involved in
the incidents; nonetheless, the events were a well-organised
national action and beneficial in ridding the country of
the Greeks, who are a trial and tribulation to the Turks!"
Five years later, when a military coup overturned the
government of Adnan Menderes in May, 1960, the prime
minister and his foreign minister, Fatin Rüs ¸tü Zorlu,

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were sent to appear at a court martial on the island of
Plati. At the trial, which lasted from 20th October, 1960
to 5th January, 1961, both men were found guilty of,
among other charges, the organisation and execution of
the acts of vandalism carried out on the night of 6th
September, 1955.
The trial verdict said they were found guilty not because
they organised the pogrom but because of the bad publicity
and damage to Turkey's international image which the
incidents provoked.
A few weeks after the incidents, the village of Gerze in
Asia Minor, from where most of the Lazes who had been
involved in the rioting came, was totally destroyed in a
major fire, while two other villages whose inhabitants
also took part in the raid were razed to the ground in a
powerful earthquake.

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