Witnesses to Witnessing: Records of Research at an Archive of Refugee Testimony

Abstract

With its clear “before” and “after” graphically captured in grainy black-and-white photographs and film footage of Izmir (Gr. Smyrna) in flames, the 1922 “Asia Minor Catastrophe” (Mikrasiatiki Katastrofi), as it is usually called in Greek, presents itself as the quintessential event of modern Greek history. In 1919, Greek troops had invaded Asia Minor with the aim of fulfilling the nations so-called Megali Idea, or “Great Idea,”¹ to expand its territory and population by “redeeming” the lands and peoples of a historic Greek Empire. Three years later, Turkish armies under the command of Mustafa Kemal, who later took the name Atatürk, would decisively rout Greek forces, sparking the mass exodus of the ethnic Greek communities of Asia Minor² and precipitating the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Following these dramatic events, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne stipulated a compulsory population exchange—the first in modern history—between Greece and the newly established Turkish republic.³ In reality, though, the treaty described and ratified, rather than set in motion, a massive population movement that, for the most part, had already taken place in violent and chaotic circumstances.⁴ Ultimately, as a result of the “Catastrophe,” at least one and a half million Greek Orthodox and 400,000 Muslims were expelled from their homes and resettled in Greece and Turkey, respectively.