IV

105TH CONGRESS

1ST SESSION H. CON. RES. 148

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the burning of Smyrna and honoring

the memory of its civilian victims, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SEPTEMBER 9, 1997

Mrs. MALONEY of New York (for herself, Mr. SHERMAN, and Mr. BILIRAKIS)

submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the

Committee on International Relations

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the burning of

Smyrna and honoring the memory of its civilian victims,

and for other purposes.

Whereas in 1914 the Turkish Nationalist regime initiated a

systematic campaign to eradicate the ethnic Greek population in Asia Minor, consigning and killing thousands of

male conscripts in forced labor battalions and destroying

Greek towns and villages and slaughtering additional

hundreds of thousands of civilians in areas where Greeks

composed a majority, as on the Black Sea coast, Pontus,

and areas around Smyrna;

Whereas in 1922, Smyrna, the largest city in Asia Minor, a

cosmopolitan hub populated by a highly educated Greek

community and flourishing commercial and middle class-
2

•HCON 148 IH

es, was sacked and burned and its inhabitants massacred

by the Turkish forces of Kemal Attaturk;

Whereas Turkish forces turned on the Greek population,

whose numbers had swelled to 400,000 with the influx of

refugees from Greek villages destroyed in the countryside,

after first slaughtering the Armenians of Smyrna in their

quarters;

Whereas on September 9, 1922, Turkish soldiers, led by their

officers, set fire to Smyrna and razed most of the city

under the gaze of United States, British, and French

ships and foreign diplomats and journalists stationed offshore;

Whereas Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the spiritual leader of

the Orthodox Christians in Smyrna who refused to abandon the city, was seized from religious services he was

conducting in the cathedral by Turkish police forces and

given over to be dismembered by a mob in the streets;

Whereas 3 other Orthodox metropolitans were brutally tortured to death in 1921 and 1922, as were 37 Armenian

clerics and thousands of priests in the broader period

from 1894 to 1923;

Whereas in 1923 more than 1,200,000 Greeks were expelled

from Turkey; and

Whereas persecutions of Greeks in Turkey were repeated in

a pogrom in Istanbul in 1955 whereby Orthodox churches

and Greek businesses were burned and vandalized, again

in 1964 with the expulsions of Greeks, and continues

today with restrictions on press and religious freedoms

and harassment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Now,

therefore, be it
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•HCON 148 IH

1 Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate

2 concurring), That—

3 (1) the Congress joins the Hellenic and the Ar4 menian American communities in honoring the mem5 ory of the victims of Smyrna in 1922 and the mil6 lions of Orthodox Christians who perished in the

7 genocidal campaign in Asia Minor from 1894 to

8 1923;

9 (2) the United States should encourage the Re10 public of Turkey to take all appropriate steps to ac11 knowledge these crimes against humanity and com12 memorate the victims at Smyrna; and

13 (3) the American people should never forget

14 these events, and an accurate history thereof should

15 be restored and preserved so that such atrocities

16 may never be repeated.

Æ