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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
22 
no continuity between journalism of this sort and the later literature of the Asia 
Minor Disaster. 
As far as I can tell neither of these two works saw a great number of reprints, if any 
at all. It is notable that Yakup Kadri “retells” the stories in his distinct subtle style. 
The burning of his native town of Manisa in ‘Küçük Nero’ (Little Nero)
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is retold 
with no hint on his family’s suffering at the event. Also, he chooses to describe the 
victimisation of a child in a plain, simple language which he puts in the mouth of an 
old villager who purportedly witnessed the event ‘Teslim! Teslim!’ (Surrender! 
Surrender!)
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. 
On the Greek side, systematic recording of testimonies given by the Christian 
victims of the war who were exchanged started in 1930, six to eight years after the 
settling of the refugees in Greece, with the initiative of the Melpo Logotheti-Merlier. 
This lady of upper class Asia Minor origins who was the wife of Octave Merlier, the 
long serving Director of the Institut Français d’Athènes, was responsible for the 
foundation not only of the Institute of Asia Minor Studies but also of the Folk Music 
Archive. Both these enterprises have their intellectual antecedents in the recording of 
folk songs and stories which romantic nationalism had encouraged in Greece since 
the early nineteenth century and for which there was no comparable tradition in 
Turkey. 
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Adıvar nd, 33-38 
31
Adıvar nd, 45-50 

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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
23 
The bulk of the testimonies which were recorded is impressively large and certainly 
counterbalances and perhaps excuses the comparative belatedness of their 
appearance in book form
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. Only a selection of the testimonies has been published in 
five volumes the first in 1980, the second in 1982, the third in 2013, the fourth in 
2015 and the fifth in 2016 under the title 
Η Εξοδος 
(The Exodus). The first volume 
contains testimonies by refugees from various areas in Western Asia Minor, areas 
which were resettled in the middle of 19th century by Greeks from the islands 
opposite it, the Ionian islands, the Peloponnese and the Greek mainland. This volume 
starts with a foreword by G. Tenekides and an introduction by the compiler and 
editor Photis Apostolopoulos. 
The selection of the texts for publication was started in 1957 by the 
Constantinopolitan intellectual Xenophon Leukoparides. Elias Venezis together with 
Thaleia Voilas took over in 1965 but Venezis could not find a satisfactory principle 
for making the selection and compilation of the texts. After his death Photis 
Apostolopoulos took over in 1976
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. 
The second volume contains testimonies from Cappadocia where the orthodox 
Christians were small in numbers but of great historical importance as they were the 
direct descendants
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of the Christian communities established during the Byzantine 
presence in the Anatolian provinces. In this volume the selection of texts by the 
editor, Yiannis Mourelos, overlaps with the one begun by Venezis and Voilas. Out 
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Tenekidis, κη΄, footnote 2: at least 5,100 informants,145,000 pages of recorded information related to 1,356 
Christian settlements in Asia Minor. For a discussion of the selection of excerpts and methodology of 
The 
Exodus
, see Kitromilides 1982, κγ΄- μ΄ and Balta 2003, 47-55 
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Tenekidis, ιθ΄, λ΄ 
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Kitromilides, κε΄, γς 

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