HOUSTON, TX – The Holocaust of the Seven Village area of ‘Santa’ in Pontos constitutes one of the most tragic and, at the same time, least-known pages in the history of Pontian Hellenism. If someone does not come from Santa or Pontos, it is very likely that they have never heard its story.
Each year, however, on the first Sunday of September, memorial service is held at Panagia Soumela on Mount Vermio in Greece’s Central Macedonia region, where I had the honor and blessing of being present six times together with my brother-in-law, Theodoros Triantafyllidis.
Approximately 15 years ago, with the help of the then-secretary of the Association of People from Santa in Thessaloniki, Viktoria Savvidou, we organized a memorial service and lecture at the Holy Institution Panagia Soumela in New Jersey. The text of the lecture had been written by my late friend Efstathios Pelagidis, a professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Seen are Christina Remediakis, Fr. John Haby, Lambros Kakisis, Emmanuel Papadakis, Anna Sarli, Sofia Vaxevanou, Elias Neofytidis, Ioannis Remediakis, and Maria Karagiannopoulou. (Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
As a member of the Board of Directors of the nonprofit Hellenic Cultural Center of the Southwest (HCC-SW), I proposed that the memorial service and historical presentation also be established in our community in Houston. Naturally, very few people knew at that time what Santa was or where it was located. Everyone, however, showed a willingness to learn.
Thus, on Sunday, September 6, 2026, with the valuable assistance of Viktoria Savvidou, the current president of the Association of People from Santa in Thessaloniki, a memorial service was held at St. Basil Church in Houston for the victims of the September 11, 1921 ‘Holocaust of the Seven-Village Santa’.
The memorial service was conducted by Fr. Luke Palumbis, together with Fr. Dimitrios Ntovas and Fr. John Haby.
Following the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, Fr. Luke referred to the twofold significance of the memorial service.
He first stressed the spiritual dimension of prayer for those who departed before us in the Church’s teaching that the living and the departed remain united in the Body of Christ.
Lambros Kakisis, Consul of Greece in Houston, Texas. (Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
He then placed particular emphasis on the need to know our history. He warned that when societies embellish, conceal, or forget the dark experiences of the past, they create the conditions for similar tragedies to be repeated.
His central message was that historical knowledge is not merely an academic matter. It is a means of understanding the present and responsibly confronting the challenges of our time.
As he characteristically stated, if we are willing to learn what has happened in history, we will be in a better position to confront today’s threats; if, by contrast, we choose ignorance, we already know from history where it can lead.
He therefore invited the congregation to remain in the hall to listen and learn more about Santa, stressing that prayer must be accompanied by education, knowledge, and historical consciousness.
Subsequently, in the community hall, Hellenic Cultural Center of the Southwest President Ioannis Remediakis referred to the importance of preserving historical memory.
Speaker Sofia Vaxevanou. (Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
He recalled that Santa was not merely a name on a map but a living society: villages filled with families, churches, schools, traditions, faith, and hope for the future. Behind every number in the historical records, he said, was a human being – a mother, a father, a child, or a neighbor.
He particularly stressed: “We do not gather to cultivate hatred or to reopen wounds. We gather because memory is an obligation. When the victims can no longer tell their story, the responsibility passes to us.”
He also drew a particular symbolic parallel between September 11, 1921, the day of the tragedy of Santa, and September 11, 2001, in the United States. He clarified that these are two completely different historical events, separated by 80 years and different circumstances, but that they leave us with a common warning: when intolerance, extremism, fanaticism, and the dehumanization of the other are allowed to take root, the consequences can become catastrophic.
The message of remembrance, he stressed, is not hatred or vengeance but vigilance, humanity, and the determination not to allow such human suffering to be repeated.
Distinguished guests were among those present at the event commemorating the Holocaust of the ‘Seven Villages’ of santa. (Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
Remediakis also welcomed the officials and representatives of the community, including Greek Consul in Houston Lambros Kakisis and Hellenic Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Anna Sarli, whom he warmly welcomed to her new assignment in Houston, while also calling upon the Greek-American community to embrace her and make her feel that she had found “another home away from home.”
He also acknowledged the contributions of the members of the HCC-SW Board of Directors and the event’s sponsors and volunteers, with particular reference to Maria Stellaki, a true pillar of the community, for providing the ‘kollyva’ and for her valuable assistance before and during the memorial service.
A greeting by Greek Consul in Houston Lambros Kakisis followed. He paid tribute to the innocent men, women, and children who suffered persecution, displacement, and death during one of the most tragic periods in the history of the Hellenism of Asia Minor. He stressed that the event constitutes not only an act of remembrance but also an act of responsibility.
He referred to Santa as a proud and resilient community that, through centuries of hardship, managed to preserve its faith, language, traditions, and identity.
A particularly touching moment in his speech came when he recalled that behind every historical tragedy lie not merely numbers but human lives, families, dreams, and entire communities. The memory of the people of Santa, he stressed, constitutes an inseparable part of the collective memory of the Greek nation and of the Pontian community throughout the world.
Ioannis Remediakis, president of the Hellenic Cultural Center of the Southwest. (Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
He also emphasized that memory should not be used to perpetuate division, but to cultivate understanding, reconciliation, human dignity, justice, and respect for cultural and religious freedom.
He thanked the HCC-SW for its effort to keep this history alive and transmit it to younger generations and, on behalf of the Hellenic Republic, paid tribute to the victims of Santa, expressing the wish that their memory and the example of their courage and endurance would continue to inspire future generations.
The principal historical presentation was delivered by Sofia Vaxevanou, St. Basil’s Director of Greek Education. She began with an exceptionally candid admission: when she was asked to speak about Santa, she knew almost nothing about it. She therefore began to study. She said, this process produced not only a speech but also a personal realization of how many important parts of Greek history remain unknown even to Greeks themselves.
She posed a simple but revealing question: many Greeks know the important dates in national history. But if someone asks, “What happened on September 11, 1921?” silence will probably follow. “And that silence is the reason I am here today.”
She called Santa the Souli of Pontus – high in the Pontic Mountains, difficult to access and isolated, ‘Seven Village’ Santa had developed a strong degree of communal autonomy over the centuries. Its inhabitants organized their lives, defended their community, educated their children, and maintained a strong Greek and Orthodox identity.
(Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
As Vaxevanou stressed, Souli has become a symbol of national memory. Santa, although it displayed comparable determination and sacrifice, has remained almost unknown.
In one of the most powerful phrases of her presentation, she essentially noted that the difference between 1821 and 1921 was not an absence of courage, virtue, or faith, but while one story culminated in a national anniversary, the other culminated in silence.
She added that a nation is not only a record of its victories. It is also the catalogue of those things its people refused to abandon and those people and ideals it refuses to forget.
As an educator, Vaxevanou placed particular emphasis on the schools of Santa. Despite their isolation in the mountains, the seven villages had developed schools and churches, while some students continued their studies at the renowned ‘Frontistirion of Trapezounta’ in that renowned city of the Black Sea coast.
For her, this contains a message directly relevant to today’s Greek-American community: language does not survive on its own, and culture does not pass automatically from one generation to the next. They must be taught, practiced, and protected. Santa, she stressed, was not simply “people clinging to a rock.” It was an educated, organized society – a civilization.
She then presented the broader historical context of the persecution of the Pontians during the period from 1914 to 1923.
(Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
She referred to the labor battalions, forced population movements, and the so-called ‘White Death’ – the exhausting marches into the interior of Anatolia amid cold, hunger, and deprivation. One characteristic phrase of hers captured the nature of this extermination: “It was not a massacre. It was a march.”
A detailed description of the events of September 1921 followed. On September 6, powerful Turkish military forces moved against Santa. Facing them were approximately 100 armed men under Efklidis Kourtides, who were attempting to protect hundreds of women, children, and elderly people.
Vaxevanou described the gathering of hundreds of civilians in the large cave known as Magara and the guerrillas’ efforts to protect them.
When they were asked to surrender, Dimitrios Tsiripis, second in command, came out to reply that Santa would not surrender. According to the account she presented, he was shot on the spot.
The most shocking moment in the speech concerned the night of September 10–11, 1921. Remaining in the cave was no longer possible. Efklidis Kourtides decided upon an escape during the night: the women and children would move toward a dense forest, while the armed men would follow a different route, deliberately leaving tracks to draw the military forces away from the civilians.
Then occurred what the survivors’ testimonies preserved as the most unbearable moment of the tragedy.
The cries of the infants threatened to reveal the location of hundreds of people in hiding. The people there were confronted with a choice that no human being should ever be called upon to make. Seven infants did not come down from that mountain. Hundreds of other people, however, were saved.
This account visibly shocked the audience.
(Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
The destruction of Santa did not end there. The villages were looted and burned, while a large part of the population was driven into exile in the interior of Anatolia. Many died from cold, hunger, and exhaustion.
As Vaxevanou characteristically said, they did not merely lose their homes. They lost the world those homes contained – the schools, the churches, the language, the graves of their ancestors, and the sound of their bells in the mountains.
Efklidis Kourtides and his men remained in the mountains for another three years. In 1924, they reached Greece. Nea Santa was established in Macedonia. Vaxevanou then expressed perhaps the most optimistic phrase of the entire presentation: “They lost seven villages and built one. The village did not die. It moved.”
At the end of the presentation, she returned to the question she had asked at the beginning: How many people in the room were Pontian? Only two or three hands were raised. And yet, for her, those few hands in a hall in Houston, TX – thousands of kilometers from the ruined villages of Santa – were the answer to the entire story. It was not only a monument or a museum. They were living people.
She said that only a few weeks earlier, she had not even known what Santa was. Now she stood before a roomful of people and spoke about it. That, she said, is precisely what an event of remembrance must do: bring us closer together and remind us – or even teach us for the first time – about our roots, so that we may transmit them to our children.
This event even gave rise to another promise: the children of the community will have the opportunity to become acquainted with Pontian dances, transmitting memory not only through books and speeches, but through living cultural tradition.
Vaxevanou concluded by thanking Ilias Neofytidis for his initiative, the material he provided, and his persistence in bringing the history of Santa to the community. She also thanked the parish, the Consulate, the HCC-SW, the volunteers, the sponsors, and everyone who devoted a Sunday morning to hearing the story of a place of which, until then, most of them had not even known.
Her final message was absolutely clear: “Our roots are the foundation of who we are. We cannot exist without them.”
A scene from the event. (Photo: Elias Neofytidis)
Approximately 70 people attended the event, but the fact that only a very small number of them were of Pontian descent makes the initiative’s success even more significant. For the history of Santa does not belong only to the people of Santa, nor only to the Pontians. It belongs to the history of Hellenism.
Indeed, it constitutes a universal reminder of what can happen when intolerance, extremism, fanaticism, and the dehumanization of the other prevail over human dignity.
Many of those present warmly thanked the speaker and the organizers, expressing the desire for more similar historical and educational activities to be held.
Particular mention should be made of Fr. Paloumbis, who has opened St. Basil’s facilities to organizations wishing to contribute to the Greek-American community, thereby significantly facilitating cultural and educational initiatives.
This is also one of the principal missions of the Hellenic Cultural Center of the Southwest: To prevent Greek history from becoming silence. For, as was said that morning: The victims can no longer tell their story. We can. To remember them. To honor them. To tell their story.
