Jewish of Armenia to commemorate Holocaust victims

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1. 

   April 27, 2009

   haluk

   “Sometimes it is difficult to eradicate these poisonous elements (the Jews) when they have struck deep root like a chronic disease, and when it becomes necessary for a people (the Nazis) to eradicate them in an uncommon method, these attempts are regarded as revolutionary. During the surgical operation, the flow of blood is a natural thing.”
   –Hairenik, the Armenian publication in Germany [1]

   “We have first hand information and evidence of Armenian atrocities against our people (Jews). Members of our family witnessed the murder of 148 members of our family near Erzurum, Turkey, by Armenian neighbors, bent on destroying anything and anybody remotely Jewish and/or Muslim. Armenians should look to their own history and see the havoc they and their ancestors perpetrated upon their neighbors. Armenians were in league with Hitler in the last war, on his premise to grant themselves government if, in return, the Armenians would help exterminate Jews. Armenians were also hearty proponents of the anti-Semitic acts in league with the Russian Communists.”

   Signed Elihu Ben Levi, Vacaville, California.

   Source: Extracts from a letter dated December 11, 1983, published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

   [1] James G. Mandalian, ‘Dro, Drastamat Kanayan,’ in the ‘Armenian Review,’ a Quarterly by the Hairenik Association, Inc., Summer: June 1957, Vol. X, No. 2-38.

   “While the Greek and Armenian community leaders in Istanbul and Paris pressured the Allies to drive the Turks out of Istanbul and much of Anatolia, the Empire’s Jewish leaders, remembering very well the persecution their people had suffered as Ottoman territories had come under the rule of independent Christian states, not only refused to join their delegations but actively pressured the Allies to allow the Turks to remain in areas where they consisted a majority of the population, thus incurring further the wrath of the Christian leaders.

   In Thrace and Southwestern Anatolia also the invading Greek army, which was attempting to provide the Paris Peace Conference with a fait accompli in the territories it wished to retain, armed the Christian minorities and encouraged them to attack Muslims, with the Jews suffering as well because of their support for the Turks during the war [89], and with the once-flourishing Jewish community of Salonica in particular being permanently displaced by Greek refugees from Anatolia settled there after the Greek army evacuated Anatolia.

   The Greek army that occupied much of Southwestern Anatolia starting in May 1919 slaughtered thousands of Jews and Muslims in the course of its attack, not only during its initial landings at Izmir, but also in the interior during the subsequent two years, and particularly during its final retreat to Izmir, when it ravaged and burned Bursa and other towns and villages along the way. Albert Nabon, Principal of the AIU [Alliance Israelite Universelle] Boy’s School in Izmir, reported to the Alliance on 6 July 1919:

   ‘The city was put on fire and sacked, the people dispoiled
   of all they possessed. There is no food, putting the entire
   population on general, and our co-religionists in particular,
   in danger of suffering greatly from these privations’

   going on to describe how most Jews, not only from Izmir but also from Greek attacks at Aydin, Bergama and Manisa, took refuge in his school, where they were suffering from overcrowding , lack of food, and medicine. [90]

   The Jews of Tire, led by Rabbi Ismail ha-Cohen, established close ties with the local Turkish resistance as well as with the Turkish national forces operating against the Greeks in the vicinity despite considerable pressure from local Greek commanders [91]. In Odemis, Rabbi Isaac Franco refused the demands of the Greek military authorities for him to greet their army as it occupied the city [92]. In Aydin, Jews hid Turks in their homes as the Greeks ransacked the city following its occupation, and refused to join local Greeks and Armenians in welcoming the occupying Greek army and flying Greek flags from their buildings [93]. As a result, the long-standing Greek religious prejudice against Jews as well as Muslims was manifested in numerous incidents that took place until ..the Turkish national army finally recaptured Southwestern Anatolia in 1922 [94]. Jewish notables, like the Muslims, were beaten and executed, many Jewish homes and shops were ravaged and burned, and hundreds of Jews were deported to almost certain death in the countryside. As the Greek army retreated in panic late in the war, moreover, it burned the Jewish and Muslim quarters of Izmit, Manisa and Bergama, destroying synagogues, yeshivas and hospitals as well as homes and businesses while killing hundreds and forcing the remainder of the non-Christian population to flee in panic,..[95]. Though many Jews returned to Izmir following the restoration of Turkish rule and its inclusion in the Turkish Republic, the Jewish population of Izmir following the war reached no more than half its former size.”

   [89] Edgar Morin, Vidal et les siens (Paris, Seuil, 1989), 67-93.
   A dossier of reports on Greek atrocities against people and officials
   in the Izmir area is in BA [Basbakanlik Arsivi=Prime Minister’s
   Archives], Adliye Tezkere 246/2740, 18 September 1920; see also
   Ottoman Council of Ministers Minutes/MVM vol.213 no.457, 24 November
   1334/1918; vol. 215, no. 249, 28 May 1335/1919; vol.216 no.263, 1 June
   1335/1919, describing Greek soldiers driving the settled population
   out of Bergama and Izmir; vol.216, no.269, 1 June 1335/1919, describing
   the displacement of Jews and Muslims at the Dardanalles/Canakkale by
   Greek settlers from the Aegean islands; vol. 216, no.288, 9 June 1919,
   regarding Ayvalik; vol.216 no.380, 21 June 1919, describing Greek and
   Allied attacks on the local populations in Thrace and at Izmir,
   Diyarbekir and Bayezid; vol.216 no.323, 26 June 1919; vol. 216 no.337,
   15 July 1919; vol. 216 no.339, 15 July 1919; and particularly vol.216
   no.343, 16 July 1919, regarding Greek atrocities in Aydin province;
   vol.217 no.573, 29 November 1919, and vol.221 no.127, 30 April 1921,
   and no.239, 4 August 1921, on Greek atrocities in Thrace; vol.218 no.9,
   11 January 1920 on resettlement of Greeks from America in Anatolia;
   also BEO, 343329; Greek atrocities in Southwestern Anatolia and Thrace
   were condemned by an international investigation commission headed by
   American High Commissioner in Istanbul, Admiral Mark Bristol, leading
   the Allies to abondon further support for the Greek invasion. See
   Ottoman Council of Ministers Minutes, vol.217 no.481, 16 October 1919.
   Also Hayyim Cohen, Jews of the Middle East, 18.

   [90] Similar reports came from Nabon to the AIU on 2 July 1919 (no.23/915),
   9 July 1919 (no.26/927), 12 July 1919 (no.27/932) and 14 July 1919
   (no. 28/933). In Nabon’s report of 17 July 1919 (no.30/935), he stated
   that the Greeks at Aydin had burned 200 Jewish houses and 13 shops,
   had dispoiled all the local Jews of their money and property, and had
   strangled two Jews as well as driving the remainder to seek refuge
   in the local AIU school: ‘At Aydin, Manisa, Tire and everywhere else,
   our Jews live in an atmosphere of suspician by the Greek inhabitants’
   who suspect that they favor the Turks. On 23 July 1920 Nabon reported
   that all the Jews had left Izmir, the synagogue had not been burned, but
   the Greeks had taken all its valuables as well as the property of local
   Jews, and the streets were full of bodies.

   [91] Guleryuz, ibid.; Galante, Turcs et Juifs (1932), 54.
   [92] Galante, Anatolie (1939) II, 41.
   [93] Guleryuz, ibid.; Galante, Anatolie II, 101-2.
   [94] See Guleryuz, ‘Kurtulus Savasinda Egede ve Bursada Yahudiler’, Salom,
   30 October 1985; Galante, Turcs et Juifs, in Histoire des Juifs de
   de Turquie, 26-28, and El Tiempo, 22 October 1922.
   [95] Univers Israelite, 2 September 1921, p.467-48, quoted in Guleryuz;
   see also Galante, Anatolie II (1939), 70-100; and ‘Manissa’, EJ XI,
   878-79.