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3,000 Jews Flee from Thrace; Loot 65 Homes

July 16, 1934
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Sixty-five Jewish homes were looted and 3,000 Jews fled from Kirklisse to Istanbul, an official government report of the recent Turkish anti-Semitic excesses admits today.

That the outrages in Turkish Thrace assumed the violent character of a pogrom is evident from the report. Meanwhile, fears of the Jewish population were somewhat allayed with the news that a number of Turkish officials have been arrested in the Adrianople area and charged with causing the violence.

A district governor in that quarter has been suspended from his post, and similar action was taken in regions of Chanak and Smyrna.

STATEMENT ALLAYS ANXIETY

Anxiety aroused among Turkish Jewish citizens by the recent wholesale deportations of Jews from Turkish frontier zones and the violent pogroms against Jews in Turkish Thrace was considerably allayed by a declaration made by Premier Ismet Pasha to the National Assembly at Angora.

Ismet Pasha declared in unequivocal language that the Turkish government was determined to combat anti-Semitism in Turkey. He warned the anti-Semites that the government would deal mercilessly with those responsible for the anti-Jewish outrages.

The commandant of police at Kirklisse, who apparently took part in the pogrom against the Jews, was forced to restore to the original owners Jewish property found in his home.

Anti-Jewish outbreaks in Thrace were not spontaneous, but were the results of months of bitter agitation, it developed today. For months chauvinistic Turkish papers have been filled with propaganda against the Jews. A new anti-Semitic paper patterned after the notorious anti-Semitic weekly, Der Stuermer, edited by Julius Streicher, has made its appearance in Turkey. Like the Nuremberg paper, the Turkish imitator is filled with inciting articles against the Jews, blaming them for all misfortunes in Turkey.

Jewish shops all over Thrace were boycotted for weeks by uniformed Turkish nationalist youths. At the same time leading Jewish personalities received threatening letters from nationalists, warning them that they would be killed.

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