Testimony: Esther Pohl Lovejoy (1869-1967)
Dr. Esther Clayson Pohl Lovejoy (1869 - 1967)
I was the first American Red Cross woman in France but what I saw there during the great war seems a love feast beside the horrors of Smyrna. When I arrived at Smyrna there were massed on the quays 250,000 people—wretched, suffering and screaming—with women beaten and with their clothes torn off them, families separated and everybody robbed.
Knowing their lives depended on escape before Sept. 30, the crowds remained packed along the water front—so massed that there was no room to lie down. The sanitary conditions were unspeakable.
Three-quarters of the crowd were women and children, and never have I seen so many women carry children. It seemed that every other woman was an expectant mother. The flight and the conditions brought on many premature births, and on the quay with scarcely room to lie down and without aid most of the children were born. In the five days I was there more than 200 such confinements occurred.
Even more heartrending were the cries of children who had lost their mothers or mothers who had lost their children. They were herded along through the great guarded enclosure, and there was no turning back for lost ones. Mothers in the strength of madness climbed the steel fences fifteen feet high and in the face of blows from the butts of guns sought the children, who ran about screaming like animals.
The condition in which these people reached the ships causes one to wonder if escape were better than Turkish deportation. Never has there been such systematic robbery. The Turkish soldiers searched and robbed every refugee. Even clothing and shoes of any value were stripped from their bodies.
To rob the men another method was used; Men of military age were permitted to pass through all the barriers till the last by giving bribes. At the last barrier they were turned back to be deported. The robbery was not only committed by soldiers, but also by officers. I witnessed two flagrant cases committed by officers who would be classed as gentlemen.
On Sept. 28 the Turks drove the crowds from the quays, where the searchlights of the allied warships played on them, into the side streets. All that night the screams of women and girls were heard, and it was declared next day that many were taken for slaves.
The Smyrna horror is beyond the conception of the imagination and the power of words. It is a crime for which the whole world is responsible in not having through the civilized ages built up some means to prevent such orders as that of the evacuation of a city and the means with which it was carried out. It is a crime for the world to stand by through a sense of neutrality and permit this outrage against 200,000 women.
Under the order to remain neutral I saw the launch of an American warship pick up two male refugees who were trying to swim to a merchant ship under the Turkish rifle fire and return them to the hands of the waiting Turk soldiers on the beach for what must have been certain death. And under orders to remain neutral I saw soldiers and officers of all nationalities stand by while Turk soldiers beat with their rifles women trying to reach children who were crying just beyond the fence.
Note: Dr. Esther Clayson Pohl Lovejoy (1869 - 1967) was Chairman of the Executive Board of the American Women's Hospitals and President of the Medical Women's International Association. She was in Geneva attending the conference of the latter organization when the Smyrna fire started and was dispatched immediately by the American Women's Hospitals.