Félix Sartiaux (1876-1944) was a French engineer and amateur archaeologist who eye-witnessed the

Massacre of Phocaea The massacre of Phocaea ( el, Η Σφαγή της Φώκαιας, ''I Sfagí tis Fókaias''; Turkish: ''Foça Katliamı'') occurred in June 1914, as part of the ethnic cleansing policies of the Ottoman Empire that included exile, massacre and 1 ...

.Emre Erol.
The Ottoman Crisis in Western Anatolia: Turkey’s Belle Epoque and the Transition to a Modern Nation State
', , I.B.Tauris, 2016. Phocaea massacre Sartiaux 2

Sartiaux was a graduate of the Polytechnique and Director of Operations at the French Northern Railway Company. In 1913, he traveled to

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

commissioned by the French state to carry out archaeological excavations at the ancient town of

Old Phocaea Old or OLD may refer to: Places * Old, Baranya, Hungary * Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, ...

. During his second mission to Phocaea in 1914, he and his excavation team witnessed the violent looting and massacre of the town by

Ottoman Turk The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922). Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...

irregulars Irregular military is any non-standard military component that is distinct from a country's national armed forces. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military orga ...

. Sartiaux and his three assistants, hoisted French flags on their homes and provided shelter to fleeing Greeks. Around 700-800 people were saved from the attacks and were later evacuated by boats to Greece. Sartiaux's documented testimony and photos are invaluable in describing the sequence of events before and during the massacre. Between 1919 and 1920, following the end of

WWI World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, many Phocaeans including Sartiaux, returned to Phocaea but were expelled once again in 1922 after the

burning of Smyrna The burning of Smyrna ( el, Καταστροφή της Σμύρνης, "Smyrna Catastrophe"; tr, 1922 İzmir Yangını, "1922 Izmir Fire"; hy, Զմիւռնիոյ Մեծ Հրդեհ, ''Zmyuṙno Mets Hrdeh'') destroyed much of the port city o ...

. Sartiaux published documents and photos of his archaeological work including the events of the massacre in French.Félix Sartiaux, ''Le sac de Phocée et l'expulsion des Grecs Ottomans d'Asie Mineure en Juin 1914'', Revue des deux mondes 24 (1914): 654–86. The photographs, notes and correspondence of Sartiaux were discovered in different archives and were published in 2008 and 2012 by the Greek photo historian Haris Yiakoumis ( el, Χάρης Γιακουμής).Haris Yiakoumis. ''Phocée 1913-1920; le témoignage de Félix Sartiaux'' , Picard - Kallimages, 2008

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References

1876 births 1944 deaths French engineers French archaeologists Greek genocide Foça District French expatriates in the Ottoman Empire {{Archaeologist-stub