KONSTANTINOS P. PANAYIOTAKES

The following account was written by the survivor and first published in the

O Kosmos newspaper on July 31st 1992.

Konstantinos Panayiotakes was born in Kato Panayia (Cesme), Ionia on August

10th 1907, one of four children (his siblings are Nikolaos, Aphrodite and

Kyriake). He left his home as a refugee for the first time in 1914 during

the early anti-Hellenic pogroms in Ionia, finding refuge on the island of

Chios. At the end of the First World War, he returned home.

"I went to Cesme for the last time on Sunday, August 28 (1922). I

stopped at Tarsana. I did not go any further; it was chaos. Horse-drawn

wagons, carriages, pushcarts, cannons, harnesses, saddles, cases of

ammunition, knapsacks, every sort of war material scattered pell-mell.

Shouts, orders, the trampling of hooves, the din of automobiles, the

whistles of steamships, the groaning of machinery, the dry noise of chains

raising and lowering anchors. Faces, tired, distressed, caked with dust,

eyes red with eyelashes loaded with muddy sweat.

And amidst the indescribable confusion, hundreds of master less

animals formed columns, one following the other, searching for a way out.

Many fell into the sea to drink and there they remained, bloated by the salt

water. Calamity.

From our mistakes and from the calculations of the foreigners, an

epic was ending; the final act of the drama of the Hellenism of Asia Minor.

I realised I would not again set foot in this land. I would not again see

Saint Haralambos, the great church with the suggestive twilight on normal

days and floodlit on holy days. I would not slake my thirst at the springs

of Marasios and the wells of Arkatza. The lights of Karakare would not again

seem to me as being suspended in mid-air. I would not again pass by the

noise of the marketplace, the silent Turkish quarter and the melancholy

shadow of the aigheira trees of the mosques. I would not again find myself

in the familiar and loved surroundings of the enviable Krenaia School.

The Yialoudaki and Taliani of Ayia Paraskeve would remain distant

dreams, as would the varied coast from Lithri and Reizdere up to the

foothills of Mimada, which resembled a witch's embroidery on the azure satin

of the serene gulf.

I grabbed a horse and left with a heavy heart. I stopped at the curve of

the Kasapion for a little. How I longed to go up to Ayios Elias!! From

there, I cast a last glance at the beloved city, which had the sad fate to

bind its name with the National Calamity (Smyrne). I moved towards Kato

Panayia, galloping along the road that, like all the roads in Asia Minor,

would be traversed by tormented columns in a few days, leaving bloody traces

and human bodies in their passing. Which every stop and every start would be

for them, the beginning of a new torment, until they would be finally

exterminated, having beforehand got to know all the bestiality of men with

dark souls, stirred up by leaders drunk on raki and the unanswered

indifference of everyone to the fate of the Christians of the East.

In this epoch of horror and blood, the examples of humanity are

rare, moving and comforting amidst the overflowing of insanity, of blindness

and of the evil of the human animal. When the women and children of Kato

Panayia reached Cesme, exhausted by terror, objects of contempt, a hodja, an

imam, who lived near the Kaimakame's spring, had stored some water. With

sleeves rolled up, and cup in hand, he watered, with the help of his

followers, the thirsty herd.

I recall this scene as it was related to me and I remember with

kindness that man whom I only knew by face. How many times did we rest on

the steps of his house with my co-students! Great was the act and the

courage of the Muslim cleric in those days, when in the same city, amongst

the groups of the murdered, the bloodied mouth of the martyred Father Nikole

in an ultimate fit of pain, bit to pieces the .... , bent the breast of

Theophanides under the stone mortar and hung from the tree with hook under

the chin, Father Kourpas was being dismembered.

And further on, another Zalongo. At this one the heroines were not

the warrior women of Souli, they were the civilian girls of Alatsata. After

crossing themselves and making an invocation, with the wish and the

convulsion of a hapless mother, they passed into the realm of Legend via the

source springs of the Aheron river, without dances and songs. Maybe this is

why no one has been found to sing about them until now.

'From one well, I brought out thirty-nine; one was from Reizdere. I

counted them one-by-one. From the other, they brought out, before me, about

fifteen.' These are the words of Konstantinos Photakes who brought them out

(of the well) and helped with their burial. Alatsata had many wells ... as

did Asia Minor. Here I stop and leave UNESCO to honour Kemal. Maybe later

it will honour other genocide murderers from Genghis Khan to Hitler."

After the Holocaust Konstantinos Panayiotakes settled in Kato Panayia, Elia

prefecture, western Peloponessos. He married Argyro and they had three

children: Paraschos, Maria and Kyriake. He arrived in Australia on December

24th 1975.

Konstantinos Panayiotakes passed away in Sydney in late-July 1991.