Ottawa: Parnassos commemorates the 100 years from the Smyrna catastrophe with a speech by Philip Augustine

Lecture given on Sept. 14th at the Hellenic Community of Ottawa.

In September 1922, Greece’s “Great Idea” of the expansion of the modern Greek state to Asian minor was crushed. Unopposed, the Turkish army took control of the City of Smyrna. Hundreds of thousands of Christian refugees were trapped on the quay of Smyrna. That great city was destroyed by fire and pillaged by Turkish soldiers and Turkish irregulars. As the city burned, battleships of the Great Powers sat passively in the harbour, adopting an official position of neutrality.   

In the midst of the carnage and chaos of Smyrna in September 2022, two individuals, without any official standing or authority stepped forward. This is the story of Asa K. Jennings, an YMCA employer at Smyrna and Sara Corning, a Canadian nurse working with Near East Relief.  

Asa K. Jennings established a safe house for injured and pregnant women on the quay at Smyrna, evacuated a small number to the island of Lesbos and then returned to Smyrna with merchant ships which evacuated approximately 500,000 refugees almost exclusively women and children.   

Sara Corning, after years of work in Samsun and at Anatolia College in Marsovan helping the Greeks during the Pontic genocide, arrived in Smyrna just before the inferno started. She and a few other relief workers saved hundreds, or perhaps thousands of orphaned Greek and Armenian girls and got them out of Smyrna to safety.  

Both Jennings and Corning were given high civilian honours by Greece and Armenia and both have memorials honouring their humanitarian work. 

Viewers can log herebelow and listen to the entire lecture:

or here: https://youtu.be/fbbl1gFTJhc

Thanks to Efharis Kostala for the brief write-up and supportive media for this timely for Hellenism event in its 100th Anniversary.