This book is a compilation of various articles by the author, the most numerous of which are the biographies of several prominent Turkish Jews: the jurist Gad Franko, the Police Chief Samuel Izisel, the Professor of Roman Law Mison Ventura, Salamon Adato, the first non-Muslim parliamentary representative from the Democrat Party, and single party period (independent) parliamentary deputy Prof. Samuel Abrevaya. Through a recounting of the life stories of these persons, who were some of the most ardent advocates of the regime's policy of ‘turkifying' the country's non-Muslim population, the author succeeds in better illuminating the ‘spirit' of this policy, and its effects on those subject to it. Another noteworthy article in this collection is the section that recounts, through the story of a family's murder, the tale of the last years of Jewish presence in the southeast Anatolian city of Urfa. Another chapter tells the dramatic stories of the ships carrying Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis as they attempt, with their human cargo, to reach British Mandatory Palestine. The articles in the section titled "Pages from the Archives" deal with the role of Jews in prostitution and ‘white slavery' in turn-of-the-century Istanbul and the widely-discussed and hotly-debated topic of ‘Sabbateanism' in Turkey.

From The Media

•  Insight Turkey January-March 2004 vol 6 no.1