Extermination Plan Alleged

The Los Angeles Times, August 9th 1921, page 15.

EXTERMINATION PLAN ALLEGED.
Turks Murdering Greeks on Black Sea Charged.
Last Appeal to America is Made Public.
Government Asked to Help in Grave Situation.
(EXCLUSIVE DISPATCH)
BOSTON, Aug. 8.—Charging that "the Turks evidently have a deliberate plan of exterminating the entire Greek population on the shores of the Black Sea," the Pan-Epirotic Union of America with headquarters here, has made public a cable message from Dr. Tholdis, president of the League of the Greeks of Pontus, in which he makes, "in the name of justice and the most sacred rights of man, a last appeal to the humanitarian sentiments of the United States." The message, dated Constantinople, July 24, reads as follows:
CRIMES NUMEROUS.
“The inhuman acts, assassinations, thefts, violations, arbitrary confiscations of property, all sorts of malefactions unheard of before, are in the daily program since the armistice in the littoral of the Pontus and in the Interior of Asia Minor.
“Recent news just received from the Pontus described with the blackest colors the desperate condition of the Greek population. The male Greek population from 13 to 60 years of age of all the cities of Pontus, Ineboli, Samsoun, Kerassund, Ordou, Tripoli, as far as Trebizond, has been deported to the interior.
“The largest part of this population has been massacred on the way by the Turks and those who could survive have arrived by way of Sivas as far as Albostan in Kurdistan. The fate of the Christian villages of the interior is ignored.
TOWN IS BURNED.
“The village of Ada and its surrounding country, containing a Greek population of nearly 3500 persons, has been burned down and its inhabitants massacred by the Turks, who turned these villages into ashes after having plundered them. Over seventy villages around Samsoun were pillaged and burned down some time ago.
“Yesterday the commander of the American torpedo boat 232. V. S. Houston, brought the news that on the 19th of July the Turks compelled the women, the girls and the children, who were abandoned by their relatives now in exile, to vacate their houses and also to be ready to start for an exile. Fifteen thousand of these unfortunate beings from Samsoun, 6000 from Kerassund, and 14,000 from Ordou, Ouniah, Fatsa, etc., are in danger of being annihilated, if they are not already."