Historical Perspectives of Jewish Presence in Cyprus and the Hellenic World: Cultural Diplomacy and Jewish Settlements in Cyprus (1883–1938)

This first recording of the Second International Conference on the Historical Perspectives of Jewish Presence in Cyprus and the Hellenic World from the 19th Century to the Creation of the State of Israel, organized by the Jewish Studies Project of the University of Cyprus, opens with addresses and two keynote lectures.

Constantinos Christofides, Rector of the University of Cyprus, Ambassador Kakouris of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yossi Ben-Artzi, and convener George Kazamias introduce the conference and the Jewish Studies Project, which was launched in 2013 and in late 2017 expanded to collect oral testimonies concerning the British internment camps in Cyprus. They dedicate the event to the roughly 2,000 to 2,200 Jewish children born in those camps.

Former Israeli ambassador Michael Harari argues in the first keynote that cultural and educational cooperation strengthens strategic relations between states. Citing Federica Mogherini on European cultural diplomacy, he examines how academic and artistic exchanges complement political and economic ties between Cyprus and Israel, focusing on growing public and scholarly interest in the British detention camps of 1946 to 1949, through which some 52,000 Holocaust survivors passed. A question-and-answer session follows, with questions from George Kazamias on Israeli-Turkish relations, Yitzhak Kerem on museum commemoration at Xylotymbou, Victor Karayannis on Cypriot assistance to camp escapees at Deryneia, and an audience member on Zionist territorial proposals.

In the second keynote, Yossi Ben-Artzi gives a historical overview of the Jewish presence and agricultural settlement attempts in Cyprus between 1883 and 1938, shaped by British colonial policy after 1878 and Ottoman restrictions on immigration to Palestine. He traces the first failed settlements of Russian and Romanian Jews in 1883 to 1884 near Kouklia and Orites in the Paphos district, where only the tombstone of Rabbi Yehiel survives. He then covers the late 1890s purchase of land at Margo by the Ahavat Zion group and the Jewish Colonization Association, which developed Margo as a central village with daughter settlements at Kouklia in the Famagusta district and Çömlekçi. Ben-Artzi shows how Margo functioned until the late 1920s, with a school, synagogue, and cemetery, and notes the 1932 visit of Yosef Weitz and the last settler, Yefim Viner. He also examines Davis Trietsch's turn-of-the-century proposals for Jewish colonization in Cyprus and his short-lived farm at Riddell Chiflik near Pyla, before turning to 1930s citrus plantation investments from Palestine led by Dr. Brunn and the Shapira family. He concludes with the current condition of the sites, including the cemetery at Margo inside the area occupied by Turkey since 1974, and takes questions on place names, Zionist politics, and earlier Jewish history on the island.