Tag #124445 - Interview #97985 (Samuel Coyas)

In 1955, the events of 6th-7th September [25] happened. That day, my uncle Leon and his wife Lucienne, my cousin Kemal Deleon and his wife Merso, were over at our house for a visit. My wife was pregnant with our third child. All of a sudden, we heard noises coming from the street. When we went down, we saw that everything was in flames and that some people were attacking the homes of non-Muslims. At that time the newspapers published a second print run, saying that the Greeks had burnt Ataturk’s house in Salonika. The public was enraged. Our guests had left to go to the ferry station, but they came back upon witnessing the chaos. My uncle who was living in France said that ‘they had seen World War II, but nothing like that’. Our Turkish neighbors saved us from absolute disaster by telling the attackers that there weren’t any Greeks or Jews there, but only Muslims. They saved our lives. We all hung Turkish flags on our balconies in an attempt to prevent the attacks.

The next day we had to go to Beyoglu for some business. The scene was unbelievable. Shops had been burnt and looted. Silverware, furs, fabrics, refrigerators, furniture and many valuable goods were scattered in pieces on the muddy ground. All doors and windows were broken and stores had been looted. There were rumors of rapes in Yedikule, which had a large Greek population. Towards the evening, going out into the streets was banned, and tanks started patrolling the streets. But it was too late. It was witnessed that some people became rich in two days after the incidents. After a while, the Cyprus conflict [26] started.