More than 1,000 men, many of them Jews, who have been confined in a Turkish labor camp in the Anatolian Mountains for inability to pay a special discriminatory capital levy, have been released, it was learned here today following conclusion of the conferences between Turkish President Inonu and Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt. Turkish officials informed American Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt last week that the prisoners were to be freed.
The decree under which the men were imprisoned provided for a “Varlik Vergisi,” a capital tax which presumably affected all residents of the country, but which in practice spelled ruin for the Jewish, Greek and Armenian populations. It was put into effect about a year ago and shortly afterwards large numbers of Jews and members of other minority groups were sent to labor camps to work out the portion of the excessive tax which they were unable to pay.
The decision, at this time, to release the prisoners is interpreted here to be a direct result of Turkey’s closer orientation to the Allied powers, whose representatives, it is reported, gave her to understand that such discriminatory legislation would not be looked upon kindly in the democratic nations.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
