Originally posted by Onur
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"Greek" nationalist historians can write whatever they want or suit to their nationalist agenda, but let be known to everyone that Ottoman regime was 100 times better than their rude rule. I am not glorifying Ottomans but I am asking myself why people used to live peacefully with each other in the Ottoman period of "Greece".
For five centuries Salonica was ruled by an empire, under the Islamic sultans in Constantinople, but it was generally inhabited by people of three religious faiths - Muslims, Christians and Jews. For the most part they lived peaceably.
Four years later, Greek armies ended Turkish rule. The Muslim population stayed put, only to be expelled in the aftermath of World War I as continued fighting between Greece and Turkey resulted in a population exchange: Greek communities evicted from Anatolia replaced them in the city. While Jews adapted to Greek rule, nationalist propaganda was a constant source of tension. Then came World War II, and the Germans. A community that had thrived for 450 years was almost annihilated in two months in 1943 at Auschwitz. Salonica had become wholly Greek, and has remained so ever since. At least, in part due to the swift intervention by British troops in 1944 blunting an armed Communist uprising, it did not end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Today it prospers once again.
The Ottoman era ended when Greek troops entered the city in October 1912. At this point, Mazower changes course, providing less a history of Salonica or of the interplay among its ethnic components than an account of the often difficult relations between, in particular, the Greek state and the city’s Jews.
At the time, just 25 percent of Salonica’s inhabitants were Greek Christians, a fact of great concern to its new rulers. As one officer observed, Salonica was a “gaudy city with all the tribes of Israel,” a place with “nothing Greek about it, nor European.” So the Greek government set about “Hellenizing” Salonica with the usual tools of the nationalist state, imposing the Greek language, which was known by few of the city’s residents, and changing street names.
An opportunity to do still more came in 1917, after the last of the great fires. With half of the population homeless, and most Jews without shelter, the Greek authorities swept away the charred remnants of the Ottoman city, replacing it with a French-style metropolis of broad, straight boulevards.
Engineering of a different sort was applied to Salonica’s population. New housing estates were filled with Greek Christian refugees. These had arrived in large numbers after World War I and the failed Greek attempt to resurrect the Byzantine Empire by conquering western Turkey. In 1923, the city’s Muslims were forced to move to Turkey as part of a population exchange. The minarets once vilified by a Greek journalist as “the symbols of a barbarous religion” were demolished, stripping Salonica of the most visible aspect of its Ottoman heritage.
With the Muslims gone, the Jews remained the only substantial non-Greek element in a city whose identity and appearance had changed drastically in just over a decade. Increasingly marginalized, many Jews emigrated. Most of those who remained met their end in 1943, with deportation to Auschwitz. As Mazower reports in his brief account, the Nazis (who had conquered Greece in 1941) succeeded in murdering over 90 percent of the 50,000 Jews living in Salonica on the eve of World War II.
Four years later, Greek armies ended Turkish rule. The Muslim population stayed put, only to be expelled in the aftermath of World War I as continued fighting between Greece and Turkey resulted in a population exchange: Greek communities evicted from Anatolia replaced them in the city. While Jews adapted to Greek rule, nationalist propaganda was a constant source of tension. Then came World War II, and the Germans. A community that had thrived for 450 years was almost annihilated in two months in 1943 at Auschwitz. Salonica had become wholly Greek, and has remained so ever since. At least, in part due to the swift intervention by British troops in 1944 blunting an armed Communist uprising, it did not end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Today it prospers once again.
The Ottoman era ended when Greek troops entered the city in October 1912. At this point, Mazower changes course, providing less a history of Salonica or of the interplay among its ethnic components than an account of the often difficult relations between, in particular, the Greek state and the city’s Jews.
At the time, just 25 percent of Salonica’s inhabitants were Greek Christians, a fact of great concern to its new rulers. As one officer observed, Salonica was a “gaudy city with all the tribes of Israel,” a place with “nothing Greek about it, nor European.” So the Greek government set about “Hellenizing” Salonica with the usual tools of the nationalist state, imposing the Greek language, which was known by few of the city’s residents, and changing street names.
An opportunity to do still more came in 1917, after the last of the great fires. With half of the population homeless, and most Jews without shelter, the Greek authorities swept away the charred remnants of the Ottoman city, replacing it with a French-style metropolis of broad, straight boulevards.
Engineering of a different sort was applied to Salonica’s population. New housing estates were filled with Greek Christian refugees. These had arrived in large numbers after World War I and the failed Greek attempt to resurrect the Byzantine Empire by conquering western Turkey. In 1923, the city’s Muslims were forced to move to Turkey as part of a population exchange. The minarets once vilified by a Greek journalist as “the symbols of a barbarous religion” were demolished, stripping Salonica of the most visible aspect of its Ottoman heritage.
With the Muslims gone, the Jews remained the only substantial non-Greek element in a city whose identity and appearance had changed drastically in just over a decade. Increasingly marginalized, many Jews emigrated. Most of those who remained met their end in 1943, with deportation to Auschwitz. As Mazower reports in his brief account, the Nazis (who had conquered Greece in 1941) succeeded in murdering over 90 percent of the 50,000 Jews living in Salonica on the eve of World War II.
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