A monument of sorrow
“Few times in my life have I so physically felt the collective void of a people vanished, the expectant silence that hangs over the empty houses of a missing population. Once was while wandering through the empty barracks at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, and the other, walking through the largest and best preserved ghost town in all of Asia Minor – Kayakoy, Turkey.” Trent Rockwood "Greek Ghosts of Turkey"
The Asia Minor Catastrophe resonates massacres, looting, fires like in Smyrna. But such violence did not reach the south coast of Asia Minor. In those parts the tragedy was silent. Numerous Christians in the region were coexisting peacefully with their fellow Muslims for centuries. Until one day, without violence, without blood, without warning, suddenly came the news: the Great Powers had decided a "population exchange". The Greek arrogant folly “let’s get to Ankara too” uprooted 2.3 million souls on both sides of the Aegean. It was 1923.
One of the Christian settlements on the coast of Lycia (north-east of Rhodes) was Levisi. Rather a town than a village with some 3,000 inhabitants, it was built amphitheatrically on mild slopes covered by pine trees, just 2 km from the sea, hidden from pirates.
