Letter: Greeks are right to remember

MICHAEL Fathers does not inform us whether it is the Greek day of mourning for the fate of the Pontic Greeks who used to live on the shores of the Black Sea that he finds an example of 'highly strung chauvinism' or the day chosen, the national day of Turkey? Perhaps the distinction should have been made (Flat Earth, 27 February).

He further confuses us by putting quotation marks around genocide. My great paternal grandmother entertained a Turkish official in her home as the Armenian genocide was going on in 1919. When she asked him: 'What will become of us?', he replied: 'You see, madam, first you harvest the wheat and then the barley'. She later lost her home and many family members. My maternal grandfather was forced to perform German exercises (ie endless walks into the Anatolian heartland, as the German military recommended), and he lost his first family.

As the Bosnian tragedy is continuing, is it really so strange that Greeks want to keep the memory alive, not only for ourselves, but for mankind as well?

Dimitrios Ioannidis

Stockholm, Sweden