Memory:
The Soul of History
In
Commemoration of the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks
by
Thea Halo
What
is memory? Why do people remember for eighty years and more, things that
seem no more than everyday occurrences, rather unremarkable in themselves,
like my mother remembering her mother crossing herself and then bending to
touch the ground with the tripod her first three fingers made, then
repeating the crossing and touching of the ground three times. She was no
more than nine when she last saw her mother and other villagers make this
Christian gesture typical of the Pontic Greeks. She remembers a young
couple in her village who were in love, who tricked the girl’s obstinate
parents into consenting to their marriage by running away and hiding
overnight. Though a charming story, it’s difficult to imagine what such
an incident could have added to her life that she would remember it and
their subsequent wedding with such clarity. Difficult that is until one
puts all these memories together and finds a mosaic rich in historical
reference, and a gold mine of tradition that might have faded into
oblivion if not for these everyday historians, such as my mother. It’s
easier to understand why and how she would remember the long death march
to exile; the dying one by one of her family and villagers in that Spring
of 1920, although so many of those survivors chose to forget… or at
least chose to bury those memories deep inside and refused to resurrect
them.
Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn once said:
“Every
historical period produces its share of otherwise inconspicuous
individuals who have the gift of preserving the past, though not by
setting down their memoirs for posterity.
Instead, they evoke it in conversation with their contemporaries;
their recollections can be borne across decades even to the very youngest
listeners and when the narrator's own life is drawing to a close. As long
as the head holding these memories remains steady, as long as we stay
receptive to its kindly silver-haired glow, we can continue to draw on it
for the past it has preserved. But the use we make of these insights is
then entirely up to us.”
When
I wrote Not Even My Name I decided to include anything and
everything my mother remembered of her life. I decided early on that if
she remembered something for eighty years, no matter how insignificant it
might seem at the moment, it must have profound significance in the
totality of her life. The result I’m told is a record of how the Pontic
Greeks lived tucked away in the Pontic Mountains along the Black Sea in
the early part of the Twentieth Century… how the Assyrians in rural
areas of the south of Turkey lived, and Armenians lived as town dwellers
in Diyarbekir. And of course it is a record of the long death march to
exile. She was just nine years old when Turkish soldiers came to her
village to shout Mutafa Kemal (Ataturk’s) decree. “You are to leave
this place. You are to take only what you can carry. Be ready to leave in
three days time.”
Why
are these “inconspicuous” historians so important? Because they were
there. Because they were on the ground witnessing, hearing, smelling, and
experiencing what academicians can only piece together from second- and
third-hand information.
In
today’s atmosphere, history is too often written by those with a
political agenda in a winner take all approach to history. As if picking
up where the perpetrators of the Genocide that killed more than three
million Pontic Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, and Asia Minor Greeks, the
media and historians in service of the Turkish government continue to
Dehumanize, Demonize, and Destroy, by putting the “right spin” on the
story. Michael Parenti, author of To Kill a Nation, asserts, “Their job
is not to inform but disinform, not to advance democratic discourse but to
dilute and mute it.”
As
a personal example of this “right spin” to “disinform and dilute”
I offer a New York Times story published about my mother and me after the
release of Not Even My Name. Reporting on an event held in the Pontic
Greek community of Astoria N.Y., the morning edition headline read:
“Greek Exile from Turkey Tells of Homeland Lost.”
Although completely accurate, apparently that headline was too
powerful for someone at the N.Y. Times, or perhaps for its advertisers or
political allies. By the afternoon edition,
the headline read: “A few Words in Greek Tell of a Homeland Lost.”
Since neither I nor my mother speak Greek, as the article itself points
out, that title was far from accurate, but it did serve to obscure and
dilute.
In
the body of the story, an even more odious revision was made which
appeared in both the morning and afternoon editions, a change I was
assured was not in the original copy. The article stated:
“The
Pontic Greeks had lived in Turkey for three millennia. During the
Greco-Turkish war from 1919 to 1923, the Turks singled out the Pontic
community, along with the Armenians and Assyrians, when invading Greek
forces tried to seize the coastline.”
Such
wording attempts to blame the Greeks for Turkey's slaughter of its
indigenous Christian populations, as if the Pontic Greeks, Armenians, and
Assyrians were singled out when Greek forces allegedly “tried to seize
the coastline” of Turkey. This blatant revision of history relies on the
ignorance of the general public, assuming they will not know that Greece
had not invaded the coastline, but rather had landed troops as a result of
an allied peace treaty with Turkey… that, except for my mother's
villages and some other mountain villages, the killing, not just the
dying, of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, took place in 1915 –16,
four years before Greece landed troops in Asia Minor.
In fact, it began in 1914 before the beginning of the First World
War, when the Young Turk government, using the three Ds of Genocide,
labeled the indigenous Greek population as “infidels,” to Dehumanize
them. Then, as George Horton, the US Consul General at Smyrna reported, to
Demonize the Greeks, they spliced together images to make it appear as if
Greeks were cutting open the stomachs of Turkish women and ripping out
their unborn babies. As a precursor to the sophisticated media outlets
used today, and the methods used by the Nazi’s against the Jews and
other perceived “undesirables,” these posters were placed in schools
and mosques to incite and enrage the Turkish public to perform the third
“D” of Genocide; to Destroy the Greek populations along the coasts in
preparation for war. In what now can be understood as the precursor to
Krystallnacht twenty-four years later in Nazi Germany, Greek businesses
were boycotted to drive them out and Turks went on a rampage slaughtering
thousands of Pontian and Asia Minor Greek inhabitants.
Although
the N.Y. Times accurately reported what was taking place at the time of
the Genocide and expulsions, today the N.Y. Times demonstrates an
appalling amnesia of its own historical record. Even the US government has
consistently refused to recognize the Genocide of the Armenians. Equally
disturbing, until Not Even My Name was published, the Genocide of
the Pontic Greeks and Assyrians was never even addressed outside the
Pontian and Assyrian communities, except in Greece… sorry to say, not
even in most Armenian communities. Such avoidance of these historical
facts serves Turkey in achieving its final “D” of Genocide: Denial.
Denial is what keeps the Genocide current, for it continues to wound both
the survivors and their descendants, and it insures the Genocide will be
complete.
This
is why memory is so important. Memory is the window through which we view
history from those who have lived it. Perhaps we can say that memory is
the soul of history, for the survivors of these historic events can also
give us an insight into what they felt and dreamed and hoped for, and how
they pieced together their shattered lives. Without their memory we might
be completely at the mercy of the fabricators of our own history.
At
this solemn Day of Remembrance held worldwide on May 19, for the
92nd Anniversary of the Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus,
it is wise to remember Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s warning: “…the use
we make of these insights is entirely up
to us.” Peter Balakian, author of Burning Tigris, says: “memory is a
moral act.” Perhaps we, the children and grandchildren of these historic
Christians of Asia Minor are entrusted to record their memories as a moral
act to make sure the world will know their tragic fate, and to keep them
forever alive in our hearts and minds.
Memorial dates:
Pontic Greeks: May 19
Asia Minor Greeks: September 9
Armenians: April 24
Assyrians: August 7
Thea Halo's first career was as a painter. She attended The Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture and has shown her paintings in galleries and museums in New York City, Connecticut and Canada, including both solo and group exhibitions. Her paintings are in collections in the U.S. and abroad.
In 1992 Ms Halo began to write poetry and short stories, and soon
after commenced the writing of her mother's memoir. She has won numerous
awards for her poetry, and her literary and political essays, including
The James Emanuel Poetry Prize and The Ester Unger Poetry Prize; The
Weinberg Excellence in Writing Award; The Reyne Prize in Creative Writing;
The Alice B. Sellers Fund Prize; The Bennett [Political Science] Essay
Prize, and the 2002 AHEPA Homer Award.
In 1996 Ms Halo wrote her own column for a weekly newspaper.
Beginning in 1997, Ms Halo worked as a news correspondent for public radio
station WBAI in New York City, gathering, writing and reporting the five
to seven minute news stories in the public radio tradition.
In 1990 Ms Halo worked as an announcer in Public Radio and soon
began to produce her own programs for WJFF, a public station in
Jeffersonville, New York. Among the programs Halo produced were a
mini-historical series she created called Did You Know, which she also
narrated, consisting of two to three minute segments, and a concurrent
series of half hour interviews of notable people in the area. After a
short stint as DJ for a commercial station, Ms Halo again turned to
writing, producing, directing, and acting in a number of radio plays which
she adapted from short stories for Public Radio.
