From: KELLY@SUVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: The Jews were Massacred along with the Turks
Date: 29 Jul 92 06:30:10 GMT


  The main body of the following book is the diary of Errikos Sevillias
(a Jew who was born in Athens in 1901 and suffered during the Nazi invasion
of Greece). Nikos Stavroulakis translated the book into English and wrote
an introduction. In his Introduction, Stavroulakis gives a brief history
of Jews in Greece. The following excerpts are taken from the Introduction.

  Athens-Auschwitz (by Errikos Sevillias), Translated and Introduced by
  Nikos Stavroulakis, Lycabettus Press (P.O. Box 17091, 100 24 Athens),
  Greece (1983).

  Introduction, Historical Outline (by Nikos Stavroulakis), page viii:

  <<By the third quarter of the 15th century the Ottoman Empire had
  supplanted the Byzantine. Ottoman policy toward minorities was based
  on Islamic Law, which recognized both Jews and Christians as a separate
  millet (nation) with religious and, to an extraordinary extent, legal
  autonomy within their own communities. This tolerant millet system
  encouraged the immigration of Jews from Europe who had been feeling
  the brunt of Christian persecution, notably, in the late 15th century,
  in Spain. This immigration was welcomed by the Ottomans because of the
  economic stimulation it brought. In 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella
  proclaimed the Edict of Expulsion for the Jews of Spain, Sultan Beyazid II
  proclaimed that Jews from Spain would be welcome in the Ottoman Empire,
  and over 20,000 Sephardic or Iberian Jews arrived in Thessaloniki the
  same year. Soon afterwards 36,000 Jews left Sicily, many of them to settle
  in the Balkans.

  Within a generation a Judea-Spanish culture had been transplanted to many
  centers in the Ottoman Empire. This was not always done smoothly. Many
  of the Sepharadim were Marranos, Jews who had converted to Christianity
  in the 14th century, thereby being able to participate in much of Europe's
  cultural and intellectual life. Their reconversion to Judaism was sometimes
  difficult, and their pride and sense of cultural superiority caused
  friction in their dealings with Romaniot Jews. Whatever the difficulties,
  the former Romaniot communities of Constantinople, Edirne (Adrinople),
  Thessaloniki, and Rhodes were forced by the weight of numbers and cultural
  superiority to adopt not only the minhag but also the language of the
  newcomers. A new, and certainly one of the most exciting periods of Balkan
  Jewry began. In 1497 the first book printed in Constantinople was published
  in Hebrew, well over two hundred years before the first Greek books were
  printed in Balkans. Some Jews, notably Joseph Nasi (1520-1579) during the
  reigns of Suleiman the Magnificent and Selim II, rose to high positions
  in the Ottoman service.

  The Greek War of Independence brought disaster to the Jewish communities
  in the Peloponnesos, where the revolution erupted in 1821. The Jews,
  because of their close association with the Ottoman administration,
  were massacred along with the Turks. The Jewish communities of Mistras,
  Tripolis, and Kalamata were decimated; the few survivors moved north to
  settle in Chalkis and Volos, still under Ottoman rule. Patras lost its
  ancient Jewish community, which was refounded only in 1905.>>


  page xi (second paragraph):

  <<The absence of Jews in Athens immediately following the Greek War of
  Independence is ominous, indicating that they either fled or were
  massacred as were the Turks.>>


Nejat