Brian

In September 1922, the Muslim Turks savagely murdered Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna. They gouged out his eyes with a bayonet, cut off his ears and tongue. They dragged him by the beard and hair. Around his body the Turks staged, with barbaric Muslim frenzy, the most horrific dance. They left nothing cruel or humiliating undone to the destroyed and half-dead body of Chrysostomos. They stabbed him, dismembered him, and dragged his body to the Turkish quarter, where they threw him to the dogs. Of course there were witnesses. However much the barbarians tried to alter the facts in order to hide who they really are. Things that no one in the rest of Europe and America ever cared to learn. But I will tell you. The metropolitan was proclaimed by the Greek Orthodox Church a Saint, an ethno-hieromartyr, who remained "faithful unto death" to Christ and to Greece. The Greeks of Asia Minor, the Ionians, paid dearly for the fact that they endured five centuries of slavery and remained Greeks and Orthodox Christians. In September 1922 the swords of the chetes and of the Turkish soldiers, as well as of the Muslim mob, burst with savagery upon everything Greek. They burn the cities and the villages, they vent their repressed feelings, they try to gain by plunder what they could not gain with their minds and their sweat; they set fire to the new Parthenons which they themselves, as barbarians, were never able to build. The Muslim Turks murder all the priests who decided to stay behind. Metropolitan Ambrosios Pleiathidis of Moschonisia, from Smyrna, is horribly cut to pieces, together with nine of his priests, on 15 September 1922, at the age of 50. The 46-year-old Metropolitan Efthymios Agritelis of Zela, from Mytilene, is imprisoned and dies in his prison after forty-one whole days and nights of horrific tortures, thirst, and starvation. His executioners buried him by throwing him into a pit in the courtyard of his place of torment; the decision condemning him to death also arrived from Ankara. The 58-year-old Metropolitan Gregorios Orologas of Kydonies, from Magnesia in Asia Minor, was buried alive on 3 October 1922, together with a multitude of clergy and laypeople. The leader of his executioners, a Turkish lieutenant, leading him to death, had the audacity to mock him, saying: "Come, I have prepared a room for you, so that you may dwell there all the years of your life." Tragic also was the death of Metropolitan Prokopios of Iconium, who was martyred shortly before the Asia Minor Catastrophe, after horrific and unspeakable tortures. Finally, the Metropolitan of Smyrna, the 55-year-old Chrysostomos Kalafatis, the Messiah of Asia Minor Hellenism, that charismatic Evangelist of Faith and Redemption, whose death is the most horrific of all. At the hour of the slaughter, Chrysostomos answers in the negative the allies’ advice to leave and save himself. His holy Greek soul urges him to remain, to the end, near the people he loved. For Greece, for the Greeks, and for his faith. A Patriot, a Saint. In a letter to the later university professor Leon. Filippidis, Saint Chrysostomos wrote: "Wherefore I was exiled and many times endured all manner of sufferings, dreaming of a Greek and free enslaved fatherland. The realization of the dreams found me aged, yet not white-haired. And behold, in my days, the one who boasted that wherever I tread, thence the Turk is driven away, the dream, which had taken flesh and bones, vanishes, dissolves, decomposes. And behold before the gates of Smyrna, the Greek one, the slaughterers, my God. What a sight and what a hearing. Am I to abandon Smyrna and my Metropolis? Never. The shadows of holy Polycarp would pursue me as a coward, and of Saint Gregory V as an unworthy successor of his. Dying, perhaps I shall strengthen others to remain faithful to duty and to shepherd the flock, carrying out what they preach. Perhaps, perhaps the blood which the slaughterer will shed… will shake the human conscience, perhaps illuminate the mind and warm the heart of the powerful of the earth to understand that the Hellenism being crushed is worthy of life and freedom." That same evening the U.S. consul G. Horton visits him and tries in vain to persuade him to have him smuggled out on the American firefighting vessel. In vain. The testimony of G. Horton: "They committed violence upon him, they tore out his beard, they struck him with clubs and with knife wounds, until he died, and then they dragged him, scraping him along the streets. His only fault was that he was a Greek of great patriotism and eloquence who desired the progress of his race and worked for that purpose. He died as a martyr and deserves to be awarded the highest honors by the Greek Church and the Greek Government". The testimony of René Puaux: "Chrysostomos, then, was handed over to the frenzied Muslim mob. They tore out his beard, stabbed him, dismembered him, and dragged his body to the Turkish quarter, where they threw him to the dogs…" Horton notes: "Chrysostomos died as a martyr. Polycarp, the holy patron of Smyrna, was burned alive in the stadium above Smyrna. The Turk rules today in the land of the Seven Churches and no one resists him, but the final scene of the total extermination of Christianity was glorified by the heroic death of the last Metropolitan of Smyrna." The killing of the Metropolitan was the signal for complete destruction. Burnings, persecutions, massacres, lootings, various barbarities took place. What happened in Constantinople on 29 May 1453 was repeated in Smyrna 1922. As I said before, the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Ionians, paid dearly for the fact that they endured five centuries of slavery and remained Greeks and Orthodox Christians. Revenge and justice will come when the whole world embraces Hellenism at the appropriate moment. The day is near. Remember these words of mine when the moment comes and stand with Greece against the evil and barbarism. The Light shall prevail. If you want to support me in the effort I’m making, please consider becoming a subscriber to my X account for only $2. I write about the ancient, medieval, and modern history of Greece and what Christians went through because of Islam. Always with primary sources and historical facts. Thanks for reading me and for all the support. - Homer Pavlos