Anyos Munchos i Buenos /
Good Years and Many More

Turkey’s Jewish population in the mid-1980s sat at approximately 22,000, most of whom lived in Istanbul, with about 2,000 in Izmir, a sizable community in Ankara, and small numbers scattered throughout the rest of the country. Salzmann and Gürsan-Salzmann set out on the road, eventually visiting 32 cities and towns from Thrace on the European side of the Sea of Marmara to Troad and the Aegean coast, along Turkey’s Mediterranean shoreline to southeastern Anatolia along the Syrian border. Their travels also included, to a lesser extent, eastern and central Anatolia, and the Black Sea coast. The work in the smaller locations combines mostly (though not uniformly) ruined synagogues and neglected cemeteries, with oral histories taken from Jews who may have remained, or local Muslims with long memories.