Dear Brother Archons and Friends of the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
The late, great historian of Byzantium and Greece, Speros Vryonis Jr., wrote the article below about the horrifying events of September 6 and 7, 1955 in Constantinople, when Turks rampaged and destroyed the native Greek community while authorities looked on passively.
The aftereffects of this pogrom are still being felt today. I urge you to read this article from the Pappas Post carefully, as it is a valuable insight into many of the obstacles that still confront the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Above all, please remain in prayer for His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the embattled Hellenic community of Constantinople.
Yours in the service of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
Dr. Anthony J. Limberakis
The Archon Grand Aktouarios
National Commander
On This Day September 6-7, 1955: Krystallnacht in Constantinople
The following article was written by the late Speros Vryonis Jr., a historian who specialized in Byzantine, Balkan and Greek history. Vryonis authored numerous works on Byzantine and Greek-Turkish relations.
The lethal pogrom of September 6-7, 1955 delivered a fatal blow to the Greek community and Hellenism of Constantinople in seven hours. Well planned (for some years), masterfully carried out in a well organized manner by the Turkish government, the Turks destroyed 71 churches, 41 schools, 4,008 stores, the offices and printing presses of eight newspapers, and approximately 2,100 dwellings, all the property of the Greeks and their communities.
The Turks killed 28 Greeks and also carried out the rapes of Greek women. They profaned and soiled the Greek Orthodox religious vessels; they smashed and dug up the graves in Greek cemeteries, throwing out the bones and remains of the dead; they effected circumcisions on some elderly priests on the streets.
The incident is carefully investigated in Vryonis’ book The Mechanism of Catastrophe.
Most Greek Americans and most Americans generally are unaware of the fact that on the evening of September 6, and in the early hours of September 7, 1955, the Turkish government carried out the most destructive pogrom that had been enacted in Europe since the infamous Krystallnacht which Hitler and the Nazis inflicted upon the Jewish communities, businesses and synagogues on the eve of World War II.
