From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history,soc.culture.soviet
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Greece was a living hell for Muslims and Jews alike.
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 23:18:29 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <C007q7.3Cq@news.cso.uiuc.edu> ptg2351@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Panos Tamamidis ) writes:

> This answer, coming from Cosar/Mutlu/Argic etc., should be the joke of the
> year.  Yeah, perhaps the book of prof. Shaw (a ... scholarly source)
> could help.

Just say so.

Source: Professor Stanford J. Shaw, 'The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the
        Turkish Republic,' New York University Press, New York (1991).

 page 204:

  <<Greeks and Armenians agitated widely to prevent Jews from constructing
  new synagogues when needed in the Empire. The best example of this came
  with Greek opposition to the construction of a new Jewish synagogue
  at Haydarpasa in 1899. Sultan Abdul Hamid II allowed the synagogue to be
  built, and assured its opening despite Greek protests by sending a
  contingent of soldiers from the nearby Selimiye barracks, leading the
  congregation to adopt the name Hemdat Israel synagogue, choosing the name
  not only because of its meaning, 'the mercy of Israel', but also because
  the word Hemdat was close to the name of their benefactor, Sultan Abdul-
  Hamid [43]. Macedonia was a living hell for Muslims and Jews alike,
  with terrorist bands organized by Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and even
  Rumanian nationalists slaughtering all those who failed to share their
  national passions [44].

  Avram Galante, who lived for many years among the Greeks on the island
  of Rhodes, where the Jewish community was numerous, but still a
  substantial minority compared to the Greeks and Muslims, relates how he
  tried desperately to secure assistance from the Greek religious
  authorities to end the pogroms, securing Patriarchal encyclicals in 1873,
  1874, 1884 and 1898, but with only limited success as they felt pressure
  from their flocks to go along with the attacks, or at least not to object,
  while the lower priests actively encouraged the attacks against the Jews,
  not only on the part of their followers but also by Muslims [45]. Efforts
  of the Grand Rabbi and individual Jews within the Empire to stop these
  pogroms were supported by leading European Jewish bankers such as Moses
  Montefiore and Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831-96), principal builder of
  the Orient railroad between Vienna, Istanbul and the East, who as founder
  of the Jewish Colonization Association was the first Jewish philanthropist
  to help Jews resettle in the Holy Land, and by the AIU, whose educational
  efforts were also liberally subsidised by the Hirsch. Such interventions
  usually succeeded in getting the culprits imprisoned, but little could be
  done to remedy the damage done to Ottoman Jews during the course of the
  repeated attacks, and only the constant efforts at protection by the
  Ottoman government prevented things from becoming even worse as time
  went on.>>

[43] Guleryuz, 'Turkiye Yahudileri Tarihi: 19.Yuzyil sona ererken (2)',
     Salom, 19 November 1986.

[44] Robert Mantran, 'La structure sociale de la communaute juive de
     Salonqiue a la fin du dix-neuvieme siecle', RH no.534 (1980), 388;
     D. Levi, Ecole des Garcons, Rodosto, to AIU, 6 May 1920 (AIU Archives
     I C 33) describes a typical Greek blood libel incident at Gallipoli
     in 1920.

[45] Galante, Istanbul, 134-135. El Tiempo, 28 May 1920; Galante, Documents V,
     181-96; Galante, Nouveau Recueil de Nouveaux Documents Inedits
     concernant l'Historie des Juifs de Turquie (Istanbul, 1952), reprinted
     in Galante, Turquie VI, 324.

Serdar Argic

                     'This war quickly developed into one of extermination. 
                      We closed the roads and mountain passes that might 
                      serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks] and 
                      then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)