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 popu-
lation 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-
•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 off-
shore;
Whereas Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the spiritual leader of
the Orthodox Christians in Smyrna who refused to aban-
don 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 tor-
tured 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
•HCON 148 IH
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That—
(1) the Congress joins the Hellenic and the Ar-
menian American communities in honoring the mem-
ory of the victims of Smyrna in 1922 and the mil-
lions of Orthodox Christians who perished in the
genocidal campaign in Asia Minor from 1894 to
1923;
(2) the United States should encourage the Re-
public of Turkey to take all appropriate steps to ac-
knowledge these crimes against humanity and com-
memorate the victims at Smyrna; and
(3) the American people should never forget
these events, and an accurate history thereof should
be restored and preserved so that such atrocities
may never be repeated.
Æ