Brutal Murder of Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna Still Haunts Greece

Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna. Credit: Public Domain

On September 10, 1922, conscionable a fewer days earlier the Great Fire of Smyrna which marked the extremity of Hellenism successful Asia Minor, a Turkish mob brutally lynched Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the spiritual person of the Greek Orthodox assemblage successful Smyrna.

Despite the beforehand of the Turkish forces and the reign of panic imposed connected the Christian colonisation of the once-great city, Chrysostomos had refused to wantonness his people.

Arrested by the Turkish commandant, Nureddin Pasha, pursuing the solemnisation of the Divine Liturgy successful the Church of Saint Photini, helium subsequently surrendered to an aggravated Turkish mob. He died lone aft being horrifically tortured.

St. Chrysostomos of Smyrna’s last moments

Historian Giles Milton’s publication Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance contains immoderate of the astir graphic details of the past days earlier the demolition of the city.

It describes what happened to Chrysostomos, according to French soldiers who witnessed the lynching but were nether strict orders from their commanding serviceman not to intervene:

The mob took possession of Metropolitan Chrysostom and carried him away…a small further on, successful beforehand of an Italian hairdresser named Ismail…they stopped and the Metropolitan was slipped into a achromatic hairdresser’s overall. They began to bushed him with their fists and sticks and to spit connected his face. They riddled him with stabs. They tore his beard off, they gouged his eyes out, they chopped disconnected his chemoreceptor and ears.

Chrysostomos was past dragged astir the metropolis by a car oregon motortruck into a backmost thoroughfare of the Iki Cheshmeli territory wherever helium died soon aft that.

Rare footage of the martyred Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna appeared online precocious connected the YouTube transmission “Bahriye.”

The footage begins with shots of Smyrna and the surrounding area, and Chrysostomos is seen astir the 1:25 infinitesimal mark.

Chrysostomos Kalafatis served arsenic the Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Smyrna betwixt 1910 and 1914 and again from 1919 until his decease successful 1922. He was calved successful Triglia (today’s Zeytinbağı), Turkey successful 1867.

He was declared a martyr and a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece connected November 4, 1992.

The Great Fire of Smyrna

September 12, 1922 marks 1 of the darkest days of Hellenism, arsenic Smyrna, 1 of the astir prosperous and beauteous cities connected the Mediterranean seashore of Asia Minor, was destroyed by the Turks, sending hundreds of thousands of Greeks to a homeland they had ne'er known.

Only 5 days anterior to the Smyrna destruction, the Greek Army, which had travel to Asia Minor to liberate lands that erstwhile were Greek, was leaving, defeated by Turkish troops nether the enactment of the laminitis of the new nation, Kemal Ataturk.

Once the Greek Army had retreated, the Turkish troops entered the metropolis from the westbound broadside of the formation that stretched the full magnitude of the city, an country that extended to the bluish extremity of the waterfront—where lone taste Greeks lived.

Turkish soldiers, for nary evident reason, began to enactment with unit against the Armenian merchants on the coast, destroying and looting their shops.

It was conscionable the Armenians astatine first. Yet, the pursuing day, eyewitnesses from the American Institute saw Turkish soldiers throwing lighted torches and pouring cans of gasoline indiscriminately into homes successful the Paradise country of the city, wherever the mansions of affluent Greeks and Armenians were.

In the end, the lone vicinity that remained untouched by the arsonists was that of the Turks.