Tag #123960 - Interview #78792 (Harun Bozo)

He had already had a terrible blow economically during the Wealth Tax [11]. The highest taxes had applied to my father and his friends. He had lost most of his money during the Wealth Tax. Also, after these events, most of the people who owed him money didn't pay their debts. So that was another blow. My brother had sent a lot of goods to Istanbul. When these goods were returned to Urfa, they were stolen and looted, so the family lost nearly everything. My brother had also sold goods to the murdered Sorkaya family and of course, they couldn't cash those debts either. In 1949 we sold everything we owned. It wasn't possible to live in Urfa any more. A lot of families moved to Istanbul. Those who were not well off went to Israel. It is true that those were very bad times for us. It is because of these events that there wasn't even one Jewish family left after these events. The last Jew to leave Urfa in 1951 was Nesim Binler. He was the father of my best friend from Urfa, Murat Binler, who is married to Ayten Taragano. Well, Nesim Binler gave the governor of Urfa the keys to the synagogue and asked that it be well looked after. But it wasn't, and today others have occupied it. I don't know who these people are, but I'm sure that if we applied to the officials we could get our synagogue back.