Tag #127649 - Interview #97523 (Suzi Sarhon)

I remember the 6-7 September 1955 events. [13]  That day, my elder son Sami  was at his grandmother’s (my husband’s mother).  My husband had gone to pick him up.  By the time they came home, the streets were full of looters and people attacking shops and houses.  I remember them coming home terribly frightened.  Our landlord was Greek then.  It was an apartment building of two storeys.  The landlord and his family lived upstairs.  They came down to us, terribly frightened.  Also there were two Greek grocers at the corner of our street.  When there was a shortage of sugar or coffee these would not sell anyone these goods.  So now, that day, the angry mob came to these shops and threw all their coffee and sugar into the streets shouting: “Hey, Kocho, no coffee eh?!”  The poor men hid in the basements of their shops.  Kurtulus was in a terrible state.  We stayed at home quite afraid.  Then it stopped.  Everywhere was ruined.  After that all the Greeks in Istanbul started to run away, to Greece most of them.