The Reason I Talk about Smyrna

You will notice to the right a new button with the message, “Help Now: Genocide in Sudan,” which links to Darfurgenocide.org. I decided to put this button on my blog after listening to last night’s broadcast of On Point, which featured a discussion of the killing that is taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan, killing that has now spread into neighboring Chad.

If you’ve been to this blog before, you’ve probably noticed that I make frequent references to the atrocities that took place in the Near East at the end of the First World War. There is a reason I talk about the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, the mass killings that took place there, and the subsequent expulsion of 1.5 million Anatolian Greeks. It’s not simply that I’m Greek or because I play music from that part of the world.

The reason I talk about Smyrna is because it was a humanitarian catastrophe of staggering proportions that has been largely forgotten. Even as the horrific events of September 1922 unfolded, the United States and the other Great Powers sat idly by while tens of thousands of innocent civilians were slaughtered, raped, and forcibly expelled from their homes, just like what is happening in Darfur today. The United States could have intervened in 1922 and saved lives, but chose to look the other way, just like we are doing today in Darfur.

During last night’s On Point, the Darfur genocide was compared to the Armenian genocide, which was part of a decade-long orgy of killing that culminated in the burning of Smyrna. I have spoken face to face with survivors of the Armenian genocide. I have met survivors of the Holocaust. I can never forget their stories. That history would repeat itself is almost unimaginable. And yet history is repeating itself. Some 400,000 have been killed in Darfur. More than 1.5 million are living as refugees after being forced to flee from their villages. How is it possible that the global community still tolerates genocide? Have we learned nothing?

For more information on the genocide taking place in Darfur, please visit Human Rights Watch. To do something about it, please visit:

Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop
Save Darfur
Stop Genocide Now