The Pappas Post
March 7 2015

Remembering Christopher Thurber: Saved 7,000 Greek Children from
Smyrna Catastrophe; Flogged by Turks for Saving Greek Woman

By Gregory Pappas

Many personal stories of service and sacrifice have shaped the history
of the US involvement in the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the
distinctive work of various US missionary and aid organizations,
including one called the Near East Foundation, originally known as
Near East Relief.

One such story is that of Christopher Thurber, a public health expert
who, at the start of World War I, left his home in Connecticut to work
with typhus-stricken children living in the barracks of war torn
Constantinople.

Thurber himself contracted typhus, but recovered in time to direct the
safe transfer of 7,000 children from Sivas, Turkey, to Greece after
the 1922 Smyrna Disaster, when the Turkish army burned the city to the
ground and terrorized the local Greek and Armenian Christian
populations.

Thurber became well-respected and admired for his humanitarianism, but
it was his attempt to save a Greek refugee woman from being beaten by
Turkish soldiers in Scutari, Turkey, that further elevated his
standing. As punishment for the attempted rescue, he was flogged, and
suffered permanent damage to both feet. He walked with a cane for the
rest of his life.

In 1924, Thurber traveled to Greece to be director of relief work in
the region for Near East Relief. There, he supervised the education of
children in orphanages and also established homes in Athens for boys
who had gone on to graduate.

Thurber was in the midst of planning a new tuberculosis pavilion for
children when he suffered a stroke and died on May 31, 1930. His
contribution to public education and health was so pervasive that the
Greek government held a state funeral and declared a national day of
mourning in his honor. No other American had, or has since, received
such a tribute.