NRB Chronicals 2022-The Immigrant

Here at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, sort of the NRB chronicles, as we meet so many neat people, and now I'm sitting here with Christ. Anthony, Christ, right?

But how fun is that? And Anthony's book, wow, am I understanding what you just told me, that The Immigrant, which is the name of the book, actually came out years ago? Yeah, it was written. I wrote it 20-some years ago.

We had a tragedy in our family, and I redid it last year with my daughter. We thought the story of the Christian Holocaust should come out. You know, the odd thing is, I wander around here and I talk to all these people, and none of them know about the Christian Holocaust. And that is a driver force for me to try to get the story out.

So, wow, I'm sure, absolutely. And you just ran into somebody who doesn't know about the Christian Holocaust, so what is a Christian Holocaust? Well, if you want to bookmark the Christian Holocaust, you go to the girls' college in Adana, Turkey, in 1909, April 25th.

Now, it was actually a girls' high school run by Protestant missionaries and a Catholic priest. That's where the slaughter started. And in that town, 33,000 Christians were slaughtered, all the Christians' homes were burned, and all the Jewish and Muslim homes were left alone. And that was what I call the beginning of the Holocaust. And then you go up to the Arminian slaughters, the North Syrian plain, North Syria, in the desert, of about a million to a million and a half people in 1915 and the beginning of 16. And the other bookmark is Merna, the seaport, on September 10th, 1922, which 400,000 Christians were slaughtered on the beach. And the thing, people don't realize, there were 21 warships, allied warships, docked in the beach, and you know what they were doing while the slaughters were underway? They were playing music, because politicians had told them, don't get involved. So why were those Christians? So what was the motivation of this? Well, you have to understand, you're talking about Byzantium, the foundation of Christianity, the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox faith, the older faith than what we have here.

Okay? A faith that dates directly back to Andrew, Apostle Andrew, 32 AD. And the slaughters, they lived under, when the Ottomans took over 400 years earlier, they lived under discrimination. But Genghis Khan, Attila Han, they were not able to eliminate the Christians. The Christians were erased in the Christian genocide of 1909 to 1922. The population in 1900 was five and a half million.

In 1922, it was 400,000. And four million poor souls were erased. And it was not the Ottomans who did it.

It was the Orthodox? You have to read my book. Now, the truth is, the book is not a story just about the Holocaust. The book is a story about two young men who left their island home and whose father, the immigrant's father, said, go to America. In about his 14 years working through Turkey, trying to get to America. And he did it, ironically, by serving his enemy in 1947.

He was picked by the ambassador to be his butler, serving your enemy, and he came to America. Wow. Is this a true story? Yes, sir. Are you related to this? It was my father. So, you wrote this about your father all those years ago.

Correct. And then what happened after you wrote it? Well, after I finished writing it in 2001, and let me mention something, too. The people that sign the back are both deceased. One was his good friend who ended up being the Archbishop of North and South America for all the Orthodox. And the other was the man who did Earl Hamner, the man that wrote the Walden series. Really? And both of those have signed the back of this book.

They both are dead now, 2005. We also lost our son to a heroin addiction, and that took the wind out of me, and I never did anything with the story. Later last year, my daughter, who's a GS-15 with the government, said, Dad, I want my granddad's story out there.

So we redid the book last year. I apologize for my ignorance once again. What's a GS-15? Well, it's a pay grade in the government. She's advanced very quickly. It's a top grade.

She's with the Commerce Department. So she's way up there, and she's obviously, God's blessed her with some influence, and she's like, I want my dad. Because my granddad's story is like, and you're right, nobody, I don't know, I mean, I'm sure our listeners are sitting there going, what in the world? Bobby, we had so many arguments back and forth about developing it, arguing about nitpicking, but we got it done. We got it done.

Between you and your daughter? Oh my gosh. Don't ask. Absolutely. I mean, it looks like a fairly thick book, so there's lots of information in here, and clearly you've done your research and know the history.

It's actually almost mind-blowing. Yeah, we feel the people here ought to know this. They ought to know the history, and they ought to know who did it.

There's a glossary and a bibliography in the back that we try to explain or reference the sources. Some of the books are out of print, like Morgenthau's My Story, he was the US ambassador to Turkey during the Holocaust, and also Horton's Blight of Asia. They're both out of print, but Horton was an American diplomat that was watching it over in Turkey when it was occurring.

But we think we're right on with that part of the story. So your father was Turkish? He was Greek. He was Greek. He was a Christian, Greek Christian, as was the archbishop, and they went to Turkey.

He self-taught himself French, ended up at the Para Palace, the Agatha Christie Ballroom. He worked his way up to become a waiter and waited on Kamil Mustafa Ataturk. He was there at the Rendell bombings in 1941. After that, he was conscripted by, in a way, the president of Turkey to go into the work battalions for young Christians in 1941-43.

They were reinstituted after the Holocaust, under the guise of World War II. Turkey was neutral. He survived that by serving his enemy in the house where the Pashas were. They found out he could cook. They would bring him up to make meals, and he would get warm, and he wouldn't freeze to death on the Russian border. He came back to the Para Palace, went to the Park Hotel. One of his customers had just been appointed ambassador to America, and he said, I want you to come as my butler. So serving his enemy, he got to America.

The dreams of his family came true after 14 years. And obviously, he passed on that story to his son. Well, not only him, the archbishop too. The archbishop of the Americas, who nicknamed him Breadcrumb, and interviewed him, and also wrote the prelude to the book and the inscription on the back cover. When Breadcrumb passed in 1994, and we informed the archbishop, he fainted. I mean, they were childhood friends all their lives. Wow, wow, wow. So, obviously, God put it on your heart to do this originally.

Then he brought it back after a tender time, 20 years, with your daughter. So what do you sense God would have for the people? What would you hope the fruit would be for the people that are impacted by this book? Well, the book is about an immigrant, and what could be more topical today, when we have our border, what's happening with our borders and everything. But it's about an older immigrant.

So there's a measure of how it was done back then. He did eventually, when he scheduled Louis Armstrong at the Turkish embassy, he got blowback, and he pretty much understood he'd have to leave to get true freedom. But when he left, the ambassador didn't like that.

So they weren't helping him. So he met Blaise at the Place Vendone and the Rib Gauche, two fancy French restaurants in Washington, where he waited on Jacqueline Kennedy numerous times. His biggest tipper was Groucho Marx.

He got the biggest tip he ever received from him. So as he was going through this, Blaise helped him to become a citizen. He did his papers and everything. He went to night school and started to learn English. It took him four years because he couldn't produce a certificate from Turkey that said he was in good standing. They were concerned about that. Not the fact that he had married an American girl, not the fact that he had a baby. He had a hard time proving.

He was a very good man, but he had a hard time getting proof for his citizenship that he was in good standing. So it tells the story of an older immigrant, what the nation held them to. And then the parallel is, in the screenplay, when Jimmy goes with Martin Luther King and Selma and marches across the bridge and writes Fred Kupkrom and says in a letter, nobody knows discrimination and persecution like us, it closes another very big opening today, which is the racial issue, the diversity, the woke crowd, what's going on out there today. It puts it in a perspective, a different perspective.

So both of those things, even though it's an old, old story, both of those things, I think, speak to us. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Anthony, I am so… And it's on Amazon, under Anthony C. Christ the Immigrant, on Amazon by Anthony C. Christ. But I'm sorry to interrupt you.

And I thank you for the interview. Well, I'm so glad that you… It says Anthony Christ, but it's Christ? Well, Christ. Well, as in Christmas without the M-A-S.

Okay, so it shows what I know. It's not Christ. It's Anthony Christ. It's spelled like Christ, but it's Christ. Yeah, it was short from an old Greek name. And actually, when we were younger, we used to get calls on New Year's, it's Jesus.

You know, I don't know which is worse, Chris lost meetings or Chris? The book is called, again, The Immigrant. Anthony, God bless you. I'm so grateful for you sharing this. I hope… Thank you. I hope we're successful. Thank you for helping us get the Immigrant out there.

God will make it happen what it's supposed to. I know that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Robbie, thanks.