1922 Burning of Smyrna... massacres...
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 17, 1922
- Burning of Smyrna Catastrophe
- Modern day Izmir, Turkey (Greek Zone)
- Massacre of Armenians & Greeks by Turks
The top of the front page has a four column headline: "SMYRNA WIPED OUT, KILLINGS CONTINUE" Coverage continues on page 2 with related map (see images)
Complete with 32 pages, light toning, some margin wear, generally good.
Note: This issue comes with a acid-free folder (gratis) for added protection
Background: The September 1922 Burning of Smyrna stands as a exceptionally tragic and singular historical turning point, rare in its near-instantaneous erasure of a multi-millennial civilization. Before the inferno, Smyrna (modern-day Izmir) was renowned across the Mediterranean as "Infidel Smyrna" or the "Little Paris of the East," thriving as a hyper-cosmopolitan hub where Greeks, Armenians, Turks, Jews, and Europeans lived side by side under a distinct Christian-majority enclave in Anatolia. What makes the catastrophe so notable and catastrophic was not just the horrific scale of the massacres—which claimed tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian lives through deliberate targeting, systemic looting, and forced death marches into the interior—but the surreal, deliberate destruction of the city itself. Fuel-fed fires burned the Greek, Armenian, and European quarters to ash while leaving the surrounding Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods completely untouched, effectively trapping hundreds of thousands of terrified refugees against the narrow sea promenade under the indifferent watch of Allied warships anchored in the harbor. Ultimately, this rare moment of total demographic and cultural annihilation permanently eradicated the three-thousand-year continuous Greek presence in Asia Minor, culminating in the forced population exchanges of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and reshaping the geopolitics of the modern Near East forever.