OVERSEAS DIASPORA. THE GREEK SETTLEMENTS ON THE NORTH-EAST COASTS OF EUXINE PONTO. Academy of Athens Award (1995)
PART 105th

Casualty lists
The editors
The lists of the arrested candidates were drawn up in the party offices of the regional organizations. The selection criteria were largely related to the personal feelings of the responsible party members. The number of persons the situation should include was determined by the regional organizations.
A testimony
The whole process bordered on the absurd, since the central services only gave the number of those who should be arrested: “… they received a telegram that said: 500 people, without names. This number was shared. We have 20 rayons , so there are 25 people in each rayon. Other times there would be a telegram for 100 people. They would send it to the soviet. They and the policeman, a total of five people, would say who they would give, him, him, him! Their relatives didn’t mind. they did not list old people, but only people who could work”.

Arrests
The “black crow”
Arrests were made mainly at night, by secret police agents riding in a black car. The people had called the secret police car “black crow” and its agents “half-hearted”. Greek collaborators of the secret police also participated in the arrests. Those arrested were tortured to confess their involvement. The statements extracted under torture were a collection of confessions and accusations against other detainees.
Testimonials
Pogrom
The manner of arrests in the Greek Region of South Russia is typical: The secret police massively arrested Greek men from 16 years of age and older. In this region there was no Greek family that did not have victims. Survivors vividly remember the scenes of the arrests and the marches of the arrested with the escort of mounted policemen. The authorities went from house to house in the Greek communities and seized everything, Greek passports, photos and letters from Greece.
Escape
Greek residents in the areas where the biggest arrests took place, left their homes in terror and fled to the homes of locals to save themselves. There were cases of Greeks who, fearing that they were included in the lists of displaced people in Siberia, escaped from the Soviet Union and reached Greece in an adventurous way. The Stratigopoulos brothers, old nobles from Ukraine, belong to this category. They escaped from Poland and managed to reach Greece after an eventful journey of several months.

Desperation
The persecuted write, “… the bridges of return to our national homeland had been cut and our people lived without hope of salvation, their fate was predetermined”.
The majority of Pontus Greeks considered the Stalinist persecutions a continuation of the genocide they had suffered in their historical homeland, Pontus, by the New Turkish nationalists.
Inform relatives
The efforts of their relatives to be informed about the fate of their loved ones were met with indifference by the authorities. It was impossible to find out anything about the fate of those arrested. Only with de-Stalinization was some information given, which was mostly inaccurate. For example, in the case of the execution of the arrested immediately after the arrest, his family was informed that he died of natural causes in the concentration camp.