The Great Fire: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide

by Lou Ureneck

Overview

The harrowing story of a Methodist Minister and a principled American naval officer who helped rescue more than 250,000 refugees during the genocide of Armenian and Greek Christians—a tale of bravery, morality, and politics, published to coincide with the genocide’s centennial.

The year was 1922: World War I had just come to a close, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker from upstate New York, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey’s interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence. Mustapha Kemal, now known as Ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, a Christian city, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops. Turkish soldiers proceeded to burn the city and rape and kill countless Christian refugees. Unwilling to leave with the other American civilians and determined to get Armenians and Greeks out of the doomed city, Jennings worked tirelessly to feed and transport the thousands of people gathered at the city’s Quay.

With the help of the brilliant naval officer and Kentucky gentleman Halsey Powell, and a handful of others, Jennings commandeered a fleet of unoccupied Greek ships and was able to evacuate a quarter million innocent people—an amazing humanitarian act that has been lost to history, until now. Before the horrible events in Turkey were complete, Jennings had helped rescue a million people.

By turns harrowing and inspiring, The Great Fire uses eyewitness accounts, documents, and survivor narratives to bring this episode—extraordinary for its brutality as well as its heroism—to life. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062259905
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	509
Sales rank:	413,853
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Lou Ureneck, a former Nieman fellow and editor-in-residence at Harvard University, is a professor of journalism at Boston University. Ureneck is the author of Backcast, which won the National Outdoor Book Award for literary merit, and Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine.

Table of Contents

Cast of Characters xiii

Note on the Text xv

Maps xvii

Prologue 1

Part 1

Chapter 1 End of an Empire 9

Chapter 2 An Innocent Arrives 18

Chapter 3 The Great Offensive 29

Chapter 4 George Horton, Poet-Consul 36

Chapter 5 Garabed Hatcherian 45

Chapter 6 Admiral Bristol, American Potentate 48

Chapter 7 Washington Responds 60

Chapter 8 Jennings's Suggestion 70

Chapter 9 Theodora 92

Chapter 10 An American Destroyer Arrives 95

Chapter 11 The View from Nif 122

Chapter 12 Back in Constantinople 128

Chapter 13 Captain Hepburn's Dilemma 136

Chapter 14 Garabed Hatcherian 168

Chapter 15 Nourcddin Pasha 171

Part 2

Chapter 16 Fire Breaks Out 191

Chapter 17 "All Boats Over" 216

Chapter 18 Morning After 229

Chapter 19 Garabed Hatcherian 237

Chapter 20 Oil, War, and the Protection of Minorities 241

Chapter 21 Bristol's Resistance 248

Part 3

Chapter 22 Halsey Powell 259

Chapter 23 Theodora 286

Chapter 24 Days of Despair 290

Chapter 25 "We Are Celebrating Smyrna" 299

Chapter 26 Jennings and the Hand of God 307

Chapter 27 Garabed Hatcherian 319

Chapter 28 Washington Feels Pressure 325

Chapter 29 Jennings Negotiates with a Prime Minister 338

Chapter 30 The Evacuation Begins 348

Chapter 31 The Rhodes Letter Resurfaces 369

Chapter 32 Revolution 375

Chapter 33 British Assistance 378

Chapter 34 After Smyrna 383

Afterword 391

Acknowledgments 395

Notes 399

Selected Bibliography 449

Index 465

Editorial Reviews

03/16/2015
Ureneck (Backcast), a professor of journalism at Boston University, uses wartime archives and private papers from the principals involved to revisit the inferno of Smyrna, the concluding tragedy of the decade-long campaign of religious and ethnic cleansing that “killed more than three million people” across Asia Minor and marked the end of the Ottoman Empire. Talks with WWI allies—including England, France, Italy, and Greece—broke down when former Ottoman army officer Mustapha Kemal rejected old treaties, sparking conflict between Greek occupation troops and Turkish nationalists that led to deportations and executions of local Christians, primarily Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians. Ureneck highlights the resourcefulness of U.S. Navy Captain Arthur J. Hepburn and his sailors, who formed a buffer to get a number of terrified Americans through the fire—and enraged mob—to safety on a destroyer offshore. Recounting the personal and political activities of key figures, Ureneck wisely underscores several essential themes of the West’s relationships with Muslim countries that remain concerns today: a fragile American foreign policy, human rights violations, and ambitions to control regional oil supplies. Surprisingly fresh, haunting, and potent, Ureneck offers a new perspective on the unforgiveable tragedy at Smyrna and the modern religio-ethnic conflicts that continue to trouble the region. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Ureneck’s narrative is intense and vivid.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

“The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.” — Associated Press

“This is a comprehensive yet intimate work of scholarship, reminding readers of a horrific moment in modern history now largely forgotten.” — Weekly Standard

“The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.” — ABC News

“The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.” — The Post and Courier

“[The Great Fire] is highly readable and paints a portrait of a pivotal period in world history.” — The Register Herald

Praise for Backcast: “This book is a rarity: humble in its beauty, elegant in its reflection.” — Anchorage Daily News

From the Publisher

The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.

Associated Press

The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.

The Post and Courier

[The Great Fire] is highly readable and paints a portrait of a pivotal period in world history.

The Register Herald

The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.

ABC News

This is a comprehensive yet intimate work of scholarship, reminding readers of a horrific moment in modern history now largely forgotten.

Weekly Standard

Ureneck’s narrative is intense and vivid.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for Backcast: “This book is a rarity: humble in its beauty, elegant in its reflection.

Anchorage Daily News

The Great Fire reads like a fast-paced thriller replete with vivid profiles of heroes, villains and ordinary people caught up in ethnic and religious violence.

Associated Press Staff

04/01/2015
Ureneck (journalism, Boston Univ.; Cabin) tells the story of a group of Americans—led by sickly pastor Asa Jennings along with a colorful group of U.S. Naval officers—as they rescued countless Armenian and Greek Christian refugees from the Great Fire of Smyrna in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide in 1922. This is an unusual angle to take in describing this historical event. The book features impressive research from primary resources from the Turkish region and puts considerable focus on the coordination among these Americans as they attempted to save refugees. While this creates an intriguing perspective, it sometimes shifts the focus away from the fire itself and the larger genocide that it was a result of. The narrative is fairly accessible but is nonlinear at times, making it somewhat disjointed. VERDICT This account is written with fans of popular narrative history in mind. Despite the muddled material, many will find this a worthwhile read. Students of this dark part of history, however, will most appreciate Ureneck's research. [See Prepub Alert, 11/17/14.]—Ben Neal, Richland Lib., Columbia, SC

Library Journal

2015-02-16
Ureneck (Journalism/Boston Univ.; Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream and Five Acres in Maine, 2011, etc.) brings to light the miracles of a little-known hero.In 1922, Asa Jennings was a Methodist minister working as a secretary for the YMCA assigned to Smyrna, located in modern-day Turkey. Smyrna, occupied by Greece, was the richest and most multicultural city of the eastern Mediterranean. Jennings and his family arrived shortly after the Turkish Nationalist Army defeated the Greeks at Afyonkarahisar-Eskishehir. The Nationalist's leader, Mustafa Kemal, continued the policies of the "Young Turks" who had taken over the government. Ureneck's research is thorough and wide-ranging as he explains the 500 years of conflict between Greece and Turkey, the World War I years of the Armenian genocide, and the new government's policy of Turkey for the Turks, barring all others. Jennings' appeals for evacuation to the American senior Naval officer, Adm. Mark Lambert Bristol, were generally ignored. Bristol was a well-known supporter of the Nationalists and harbored little sympathy for the refugees. With the backing of the heroic commander of the USS Edsall, Halsey Powell, and the help of the Greek commander of the Kilkis, they managed to evacuate more than 250,000 people from Smyrna in only seven days. With no Allied ships, they convinced the Greeks to lend merchant ships and then persuaded the Turks to allow them into the harbor under American escort, as long as they didn't fly the Greek flag. Powell certainly fudged his orders by escorting the ships, and Jennings worked night and day to move the refugees to a safe location. The story, especially that of Jennings, crippled by tuberculosis and typhoid, is remarkable, and Ureneck delivers it with a wonderful style that grabs and holds the reader's attention. An inspiring illumination of a hero who deserves recognition.

Kirkus Reviews