Please do not rewrite history!

Dear Governor Siegelman,

According to an old folk saying "Not knowing is not a fault, not wishing to know is." Retract your Proclamation which is entirely based on IGNORANCE. And let me add a piece of information published 80 years ago in NEW YORK TIMES:

 By EDWIN I. JAMES.
 Copyright, 1922 by The New York Times Company.
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES

 LAUSANNE, Dec. 1.--A black page of modern history was written here today. Ismet Pasha stood before the statesmen of the civilized world and admitted that the banishment from Turkish territory of nearly a million Christian Greeks, who were two million only a few short years ago had been decreed. The Turkish Government graciously allows two more weeks for the great exodus. The statesmen of the civilized powers accepted the Turkish dictum and set about ways to get those thousands of Greeks out of harm's way before they should meet the fate of 800,000 Armenians who were massacred in Anatolia in 1910 and 1917.

Still hesitating? Still not convinced?

If you have read nothing on the subject so far, please read the diary of a survivor of the Smyrna disaster in 1922, Dr. Hatcherian, which I have edited and translated into English. I have sent it to you recently. Please find the time to read it! The diary encompasses the time from September 9 to September 24, and is a detailed chronicle of what the Smyrna disaster meant to Christian minorities, exactly in these September days of 1922. You will see a first-hand eye-witness account signed on June 1, 1923! You will understand what both Armenians and Greeks endured in just those fifteen horrifying days. Just read it!

Please do not listen to Ankara's prevarication! Contact me after you have read this diary. I am sure that then you will change your mind.

Respectfully,

Dora Sakayan
Professor of German Studies
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
Canada