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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
24 
of respect, it must be presumed, for Venezis in particular their choices are identified 
at the end of the volume. The volume was published under the supervision of 
Paschalis Kitromilides whose scholarly approach to the historical context in which 
the testimonies are placed is admirably thorough and objective. 
The testimonies of this volume are published in their original form with explanatory 
notes where necessary. 
The last three volumes contain testimonies from the Black Sea region with an 
introduction by and under the academic supervision of Paschalis Kitromilides. 
It was much later that Leyla Neyzi stressed the value of the “oral history narrative” 
and in 2001 and 2003 recorded the testimony of a native Smyrniote, Gülfem 
Kaatçılar Iren, born in 1915, of the burning of Smyrna and of Manisa
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. 
Subsequently the Lozan Mübadilleri Vakfı (The Lausanne Refugee Foundation) was 
officially registered in 2001 with the aim not only to record accounts of the Muslim 
exchangees but also to bring them in touch with their Christian counterparts in 
Greece
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. 
Autobiographical works and memoirs had already enjoyed popularity in Greece and 
were used as part of the national narrative, with Makrygiannis’s 
Απομνημονεύματα 
(Memoirs) published in 1907 being the most obvious example. There are many more 
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Neyazi 2008, 106-127 in which the Karaosmanoğlu family is noted among the victims, 
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Extracts from 
The Exodus
have been translated into Turkish by Ozdemir (2001) and Umar (2002). 

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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
25 
publications of similar character which never reached the wider public but they 
reveal significant information about the local history, as in 
Η Ιστορία του Παππού 
1822 
(Grandfather’s Story 1822) relating to the Massacre of Chios in 1822
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. In 
Turkey this literary genre had not enjoyed great popularity as part of the national 
narrative until the War of Independence. It certainly existed though. Coincidentally, 
when the Massacre of Chios occurred a hundred years before the end of this War of 
Independence, the then governor of the island Vahit Pasha wrote down his personal 
recollection of the event. His work was written shortly after the event in 1824. Its 
unpublished manuscripts were entrusted by Vahit Pasha’s family to its translator 
who published them in Greek in 1861 on the island of Syros
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. 
The importance of memoirs, memory and recollections has been recognised and is 
recently extensively studied both by historians and social anthropologists. In the case 
of the literature we are studying it was certainly of core importance
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. 
From this enormous field I have chosen to study obviously formative works with 
three principal characteristics: that they were works of fiction, they were composed 
relatively early on and that they exercised influence on later writers and the public 
imagination by remaining available. Somewhat surprisingly in the Greek case this 
narrows down the field enormously. This is mainly because the Greek public’s 
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Kalvokoresis 1822. The memoirs were written in1902 when the narrator and witness of the massacre was 87-
88 years old. It was firstly published in Chios in 1914 by his grandson. 
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Mitsis, 9: The book was initially published under the following title: 
Απομνημονεύματα πολιτικά του Βαχίτ 
Πασά, πρέσβεως εν Παρισίοις τω 1802, Ρείζ Εφέντη τω 1808 και τοποτηρητού της Χίου τω 1822. Εξ ανεκδότου 
Τουρκικού ιδιοχειρογράφου ελευθέρως μεταφρασθέντα και σημειώσεσι συνοδευθέντα υπό Δ.Ε.Δ.
Εν Ερμουπόλει 
Σύρου, τύποις Γ.Μελισταγούς Μακεδόνος 1861(Political Memoirs of Vahit Pasha, Ambassador in Paris in 1802, 
Reis Efendi in 1808 and Acting Governor of Chios in 1822. From an Unpublished Turkish Autograph Freely 
Translated and Accompanied by notes by D.E.D. Ermoupolis, Syros , G. Melistagis). A demotic version was 
reissued in Chios in 2007. 
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Niyazi 2003 and 2008, and Hirschon 1998 and 2004. 

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