Smyrna, 1922

The 100th anniversary of a mostly forgotten tragedy

Maybe it’s just a natural response to telling a tale drenched in the blood of at least 15 million people, but we tend to stop the story of World War I as quickly as we can, with the armistice on the Western Front: On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent. The end.

Which was roughly true if you were a British Tommy, a French poilu, or an American doughboy. Less so if you were a German soldier returning to cities where left- and right-wing militias fought in the streets. Or if you were one of the millions of Russians killed in a civil war that kept going for four years after that country quit WWI.

The war didn’t end in November 1918 if you lived in what became the country of Turkey. And that was especially true if you were a Christian living in the city of Smyrna one hundred years ago today.