Conclusion nian men had been sent away on false military call-ups in 1915 , only to be
murdered. Fear of the “oven” shows the widespread insecurity of Jews in
Turkey at the time.
Had the Dönme remained in Salonika, they probably would have been
sent to Auschwitz, the horrible fate of most of Salonika’s Jews during Nazi
occupation. The racial logic of the Nazis was clear: as of 1942 in Salonika,
in the words of the local Nazi commander, “Whoever belongs to the Jew-
ish race is considered a Jew, regardless of what religion he professes.”^51
Northern Greece was among the regions in Europe that lost the highest
proportion of its Jews, despite the fact that the archbishop and heads
of professional and public institutions in Athens publicly and the met-
ropolitan of Salonika privately protested the deportation of Jews.^52 It is
possible that as in Poland, where Rabbinate Jews, when asked to verify
the Jewishness of the Karaite sect, claimed they were not Jews by blood,
saving their lives, the Jewish council appointed by the Nazis in the city
could have done the same. Yet considering poor relations between Jews
and Dönme in the city, this was not guaranteed. The population exchange
saved the Dönme from near certain murder at the hands of the Nazis—
over 95 percent of Salonikan Jews were deported to Auschwitz and most
gassed within hours of arrival.
Despite escaping that danger, they lost their religion after being forced
to migrate to Turkey. How could the group have dissolved so quickly?
After having had survived for almost three centuries, how could they give
up their religion and identity? There were earlier disturbances, as noted
by Paul Bessemer: the fall of Salonika to Greece severed the city from the
Ottoman capital, culturally and economically, the fire of 1917 destroyed
precious Dönme archives, religious books, relics, tombs, and religious ob-
jects, and, finally, there was the population exchange.^53 In the Turkish
Republic, several reasons present themselves. Being Dönme was no longer
an advantage. Where once it had served them well in Ottoman Salonika,
allowing them to rise to the top of society while preserving their differ-
ence, in the Republic of Turkey they could no longer rise to the top, and
maintaining their difference was difficult. One might suppose that they
passed as secular Turks where once they had passed as Ottoman Muslims.
But after World War II, there is hardly any evidence of this strategy of dis-
simulation. Part of the reason was internal, part external. As one Karakaş
descendant informed me, the Karakaş went underground beginning in
1924 in the wake of the Rüştü affair.^54