Sephardic Jews in Cuba - From all their Habitations

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Margalit Bejarano

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of urban development and commercial expansion. A liberal immigration policy in the 1860s brought to Anatolia a large Moslem population which settled in uncultivated areas and developed agricultural products for export, causing the rapid growth of the port cities. The economic transitions brought advantages to the religious minorities who engaged in commerce, but they intensified the competition and tensions between the ethnic groups.(8)

The Armenians and Greeks preceded the Jews in taking advantage of the Ottoman reforms and modernizing their educational system. They improved their economic situation under the protection of European consuls, displacing the Jews from international commerce and financial business. As a result, by the end of the nineteenth century, the Jews engaged mainly in internal trade--as peddlers, shopkeepers, or petty merchants-or worked as artisans and workers. The general situation of the Jewish population deteriorated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a growing number of beggars and poor peddlers. Poverty, however, was not the only reason for emigration, which was caused also by political upheaval in the Ottoman Empire.

While the Jews were considered faithful subjects and enjoyed the protection of the Moslem rulers, they were attacked and persecuted by the Christian minorities. The newly established independence of the Balkan countries in the 1870s and 1880s resulted in a wave of flights by Jews from antisemitic attacks in the newly founded republics, in search of refuge under Ottoman protection; thousands of Jews from Bulgaria settled in Edirne, in Turkey, at the end of the nineteenth century.(9)

The opposition of the "Young Turks" to the autocratic rule of Abdul Hamid II, was part of an effort to save the disintegrating empire. It was a modem revolutionary movement, seeking to maintain civil rights, but demanding allegiance to the Turkish state, hoping to assimilate the minorities. Military service was decreed as compulsory to all the Ottoman subjects (1909), becoming one of the main incentives for emigration of young men. During the Balkan Wars (1912-13) Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia were conquered by Greece and Bulgaria. Jewish residents, attacked by the Christian conquerors, sought refuge in Istanbul: "When the Balkan War came we were living near the frontier with Bulgaria. My father. . . left everything and we left for Constantinople, fleeing so that we would not be killed."(10)

World War I increased the sufferings of all the population. Most of the Jews were not trapped in the areas of battle, but they suffered from shortages in food and heating fuel, from the anarchy caused by the mass desertions of the army, and from the many deaths of Jewish soldiers: "I was born in Silivri, Turkey. In my native town there were many jewish families, but during the War of 1914 almost everybody left Silivri. There were no bombings there, but the situation was very difficult. Those who remained were mostly women, because all the husbands went to the war and many died. . . we passed the war economically very badly." (11) While the Greeks and Armenians supported the Allied Powers, the jews remained faithful to the Turks, sharing the consequences of defeat. During the war between Turkey and Greece (1918-1922) the Jewish population of Izmir fell victim to killing and sacking. Thousands sought refuge in Istanbul, or decided to emigrate overseas. (12)