By Nick Stamatakis
The answer to the question of the title should be self-evident if you have seen how the Jewish-American community (and the State of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora) have handled the “Holocaust” over the last 8 decades. The same holds true for the Armenians… It’s about memory and identity and for us Greeks it is about all of those things plus one word bigger than any other, one concept so central to our existence as individuals and as a group that surpasses any other in significance: “FREEDOM”…
This is how Kazantzakis handled it (and explained it in his “Report to Greco”) – and luckily, the director of the recent movie “Kazantzakis” put it right in the opening scene: Kapetan Mihalis, the “Wild Beast” according to Kazantzakis, his father, dragged him out of the house at age 5, and pulled him by the hand to take him to the central square of Kastro (Iraklio, Crete) in the immediate aftermath of a great slaughter of the rebellious Cretans by the Turks… There, in the center of town, the Turks had hanged a bunch of rebels upside down – after one of the ten or so great rebellions of Crete in the 19th century… “Are you afraid?” He asked the boy… “It does not matter, you will get used to it…”, he answers the question himself…
They approached one of these men hanging by the tree and Kapetan Mihalis forced the 5 yr old Nikos Kazantzakis to kiss the bloody feet of the dead Cretan… “Bow and worship them,” he said as he forced the young Nikos to kiss the feet… In the following scene, he takes young Nikos up to the 10,000 ft tall mountain, Psiloritis, to see his grandfather’s grave… “Kapetan Mihali”, a shepherd yells from afar… “Crete is FREE!!…”
This is how you create memory and identity. You teach the younger generations to NOT EVER forget where they came from, what their fathers and grandfathers had to suffer to gain and preserve this ultimate of all ideals, FREEDOM… I strongly encourage you to watch the first 10 minutes of this wonderful movie, especially between minutes 5 and 8 (hopefully with your children and grandchildren…) – and those of you who have not seen the whole movie, here it is in this video… No, it’s not terrifying – it should be uplifting and very didactic if you do it in the right way, with a little introduction…
Then to commemorate the 353,000 Pontian Greeks who died in the Genocide along with the hundreds of thousands of other Greeks and Christians let’s see another video of the famous Pontian dance “Serra”, the famous 3,000-year-old dance, based on the ancient “Pyrrihios” dance… It’s a rhythmic war dance, you can feel the ground shaking below the dancers’ feet and you can sense their primordial feeling of unity, their determination to fight together in battle and die next to their brothers… Very hard not to be moved by the great symbolism of this dance… Along with the (also very ancient) Cretan Pentozali, they opened the 2004 Athens Olympics in spectacular performances… Enjoy the videos…
When ALL Mikrasiati are recognized under one date of commemoration, not 4 separate ones maybe then all Greeks can get on board. Yes
Pontians were part of the Genocide along with Erythians, Anatolians etc. We are Mikrasiati, Romoi, Ione, we are Greeks. Proud Mikrasiatia granddaughter of both paternal and maternal Mikrasiati.