Greek genocide
The Pontian Genocide started in 1916 and came to the final stage in 1919. It cost the lives of at least 300,000 Greeks living in the Black Sea province of Pontos. Survivors fled to nearby Russia and eventually to Greece after the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe.
One of the methods used in the systematic elimination of the Greek population was the so-called Labour Battalions (Turkish: Tamburu Amele , Greek: Tagmata Ergasias). In them, mostly young and stronger people were captured and forced to exhausting slave labour by the Turkish State, in order to reconstructed various of destroyed areas during the Greco-Turkish War. They were held to concrentration camps and amongst the survivors was the well known writer Elias Venezis, who later described the situation in his work the Number 31328 (Το Νούμερο 31328).
Another method used by the Turks was to force the weaker population, including women and children, to walk for hundreds of Kilometres until they died. This was known as the Light Death.
Pontians who remained in the afterwards Soviet Union, also suffered under Stalin, when they were force to change their Greek surnames, scattered across the vast country, and many deported to Siberia. Their children and grand-childern eventually could freely return to Greece, after 1990.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission has recognized this genocide as such in 1998. It is formally commemorated by the Hellenic State in May 19th the day that father of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk disembarked at Samsun, alledgelly to personally overview the final phase of the genocide. There is an effort to restore the historical truth and commemorate the victims, by the recognition of the genocide, which led to constitution of May 19th in some states of USA.
The official Turkish State still denies that such a genocide took place, along with the denial or the Armenian Genocide