• Joel Brown

    Staff Writer

    Portrait of Joel Brown. An older white man with greying brown hair, beard, and mustache and wearing glasses, white collared shirt, and navy blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey background.

    Joel Brown is a staff writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. He’s written more than 700 stories for the Boston Globe and has also written for the Boston Herald and the Greenfield Recorder. Profile

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There are 9 comments on A Failed Minister Who Saved 250,000 Christians

  1. Thank you for acknowledging the Armenian Genocide and for this interesting piece. I was shocked at the lack of remembrance from BU during the 100th anniversary. Pretty frustrating.

  2. The atrocities of Turkish muslims against non-muslims is more likely to be whitewashed under the current administration as Turkey slips back into an islamic state. Their ought to me some kind of memorial for Asa Jennings.

    1. Absolutely! Witness the May 16 2017 brutality of bodyguards of the current leader/tyrant, of turkey, while he watched, in our nation’s capital. Not a word from the whitehouse or its occupant!!

  3. THANK YOU GEORGE FOR THIS INFORMATION ABOUT LOU URENECK .
    ABOUT THE “CATASTROFI.”
    MY MOTHER LIVED THE EXPERIENCE BUT DID NOT TALK ABOUT IT. IT WAS TOO EMOTIONAL FOR HER TO REVISIT THE EVENT AND TO RELATE IT TO THE FAMILY.
    I HAVE READ GEORGE HORTON’S BOOK TITLED “THE BLIGHT OF ASIA” AND LOOK FORWARD TO READING LOU URENECK BOOK , “THE GREAT FIRE”
    NA ISE KALA

  4. Great Read! My Great Aunt, an American young woman 22 years of age, worked at the YMCA in Izmir when the city fell. She told me how the Greeks and Armenians crowded into the building seeing the American flag hanging outside and hoping for help. YMCA staff escorted over 200 people to the waterfront where most were evacuated.

  5. I am the daughter of an 18 year old survivor, Sophia, who was responsible for her siblings, Olga, 7, Iphigenia 11/12, and brother Anastasi 12/13. They “walked” from Hamedeye, near Magnissia
    (now known as Mouradeye, Manissa, on Turkish maps) to the quay in Smyrna with hundreds of thousands of Christians, escaping the fires and brutalities of Turks. She talked of huge spotlights at night roaming up and down the quay for the safety of the mostly women and children. Hiding in a waterfront warehouse with about 200 others for 3 weeks they-were among the last to leave on “suddenly appearing ships”.

    My Mother and friends In America talked openly about their escape. Since my childhood and later into adulthood I have heard many 1st hand experiences, and felt their pain.
    There are just 3-4 of my generation left in the Detroit area who also know of their parents’ experiences. I went to Turkey in 1988 and found my Mother’s home, her school building, and my paternal grandfather’s Bakaliko—it was the experience of my life.

  6. Turkish officials try to paint this as an act of war but they attacked civilians – men, women and children. And British fleets were complicit in this as they not only stood by and watched, but actively discouraged those who tried to climb aboard ships to save themselves. They watched them drown.

    I am the granddaughter of a survivor – a man who witnessed these atrocities as a child. He lost his parents, his whole family – all were murdered by Turks. Due to this trauma, he suffered all his life. He died very early, barely reaching 50, never meeting any of of his grandchildren. I only heard about this life second-hand from other family members, like my father. All this pain was internalized.

    My grandfather escaped on a ship with his grandmother and younger sister. I don’t know if Asa Jennings saved my grandfather, maybe he did. But his work, his extraordinary story, an American pastor whose name should be remembered and honoured for his bravery and attempts to save those who were suffering.
    He did more for his fellow Christians than mainland Greeks did at this time who I heard from other survivors were not exactly welcoming of refugee Greeks from Smyrna since they viewed them as more ‘Turkish than Greek’.

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