00:05 - 00:36 Young: One thing we might just begin with some idea of what we wanted to include in this, I had thought that we might begin with some introductory comments concerning the facts of our trip — the plan, the itinerary, and a number of a factual, procedural things — before we get into a discussion of our observations concerning the problems of the Jewish community. 00:36 - 01:40 Young: And also, I thought it might be useful to include perhaps some brief statement of the purpose of our discussion and what we had in mind, I thought something like saying that our primary purpose was to record our impressions and our observations of a recent trip to Syria, including Damascus and Aleppo, and that our plan and our purpose was to make a series of factual observations concerning what impressions we had made together on this trip, and in the process perhaps make some contribution to setting the record straight on points that have recently been controversial concerning these problems. That would be one formulation of what we really had in mind. 01:42 - 01:47 Chammah: You want to do this before we put in the exact dates? 01:47 - 02:56 Young: Going directly from that to the dates, or it could be the other way around. Then we might go on to the — for the question of the timing and the itinerary, we might say that we arrived in Tehran on the 4th of July and proceeded immediately to make application in Tehran for visas to enter Syria. And we received visas without any difficulty, subject only to the restriction, if we were to stay 15 days or longer, there would be a variety of formalities concerning registration with the security office, which would create considerable complications for extending our stay. But aside from that restriction, the granting of the visas was not complicated. 02:56 - 03:03 Chammah: There was also no — on the questionnaire, no question of religion— 03:03 - 03:50 Young: We were asked to fill in a questionnaire, questions in order to get the visa, but they specifically did not include a question concerning religion. We had some question in our mind whether the questionnaire would be requested for the visa to visit Syria at all Syrian embassies. For example we thought it might be interesting to check in Washington whether or not the same questions would appear. But we can say from our own experience there was not a question specifically asking religion on the questionnaire. 03:50 - 04:48 Young: Another thing we might want to point out: We had decided, in responding to questions on this questionnaire, to write straight, factual answers. That is, in order to test the current policy of the Syrian government concerning the visits of outsiders to Syria, particularly whether they are Syrian-Americans of Jewish origin, to the Syrian community, we had decided that the best test would be to answer the questions directly and frankly and candidly, which we proceeded to do. And though we didn’t say anything specifically about religion, we did include information on the questionnaire which would certainly imply [Albert's identity]. We certainly didn’t hide our background and identity. 04:48 - 05:07 Chammah: On the question of reference, we put the name Haim Daya [Albert’s half-brother], which they would know this is a Jewish name. And another reference was the American Embassy. 05:07 - 05:49 Young: The point being that though we didn’t say anything specifically about religion, had they chosen to be particularly difficult or restrictive about it, they could have drawn, easily, inferences with the information that was supplied them…So it is perhaps at least of some marginal significance that given that information there wasn’t any — at least applying from Tehran — there wasn’t any serious problem in getting the visas. Aside from paying all that money.  05:49 - 06:06 Chammah: Yes. The Americans at the American embassy in Tehran — we did go and see them after we got the visas.  06:06 - 06:44 Young: That’s right. I guess it’s also important to note we did not receive any direct help from the officer of the American embassy in Tehran in acquiring the visas. In fact, we had some conversation with them subsequently of their views of how we should handle our visit and received some advice from the head of the consular section. Nevertheless, this was not a factor in the actual application and receipt of the visa.  06:44 - 07:33 Chammah: One of the advice was essentially saying: Oh, so you want to be a test case? Alright, then it’s better not to go on a Syrian airline. Syrian airlines, if they arrive in Damascus and something goes wrong, presumably the Pan American representative would say something to the American embassy while the Syrian airline representative would not say anything to the embassy. That was the rationale for going on Pan American rather than a Syrian airline.  07:33 - 08:04 Young: The conclusion was in the event that there was a problem Pan American would not do much, but nevertheless, looking at the picture from the point at which we were still in Tehran, it was suggested to us that the likelihood of assistance in the event of any problem would be greater from Tehran to Damascus on a regularly scheduled Pan Am flight rather than a Syrian airline.  08:04 - 08:20 Young: We might then move on to our arrival, which was a morning flight on Thursday the 5th of July from Tehran to Damascus by Pan American. 08:20 - 08:23 Chammah: 7:20am I believe it was. 08:23 - 09:03 Young: Something like that, anyway. Definitely before 8am. And the first thing perhaps to note about that was we arrived we presented our visas at the customs control, we did not have any serious problem. They stamped us in and sent us on our way without any problem — well first of all without any extensive questioning of any kind, and in any case certainly without creating any difficulty or problem. 09:06 - 09:08 Chammah: When we — 09:08 - 10:02 Young: I suppose it might be interesting to note, since our best effort to secure a confirmed hotel reservation in Damascus had failed, that we faced the problem of finding a place to stay Thursday night, and though this is a digression from our main theme it is of some to note that at the present time this proved to be a difficult task because of the very extensive influx of refugees, Damascus appears to be unusually crowded with [people] from Lebanon of all backgrounds. 10:03 - 10:43 Chammah: We had sent telegrams — we should mention this also — we sent telegrams both to Damascus and to Aleppo, as well as actually — we sent telegrams of our arrival time to Damascus and to Aleppo, Damascus being to Bella and Salim, and also I sent a telegram to Ann of our arrival and departure in case there’s any problem. 10:43 - 11:25 Chammah: There was also a telegram to Jack Horner, or John E. Horner, the Quaker representative to the Middle East, in Cyprus, telling him of the exact arrival and departure because he was planning to come to Damascus or Aleppo and leave with us from Syria. This was in case there was any problem. The telegram was also sent to Eric Cuneau[?], although it wasn't quite clear whether he could have done anything with any problem we would have, but anyway a telegram was sent to him about our stay in Syria. 11:25 - 11:48 Young: It might be relevant that the telegrams to Damascus and to Aleppo were substantially delayed in arriving, so much so that the one to Damascus arrived only after— 11:48 - 11:49 Chammah: At 11 o’clock. 11:49 - 12:17 Young: After we arrived — we later found that the reason for this, and there is really no doubt in our minds that this is in fact the case, is that the telegrams were opened and censored by officers of the Syrian government. Not that there was anything important in them, but just this substantially delayed the time of delivery. 12:17 - 13:07 Chammah: And as long as we are on telegrams — we are jumping a little bit — since we are on telegrams, also apparently the telegram to Aleppo was delayed more than the telegram to Damascus, and one of the things that the security office came to my mother’s house and asked about the friend, because I had included in the telegram, 'Coming to Aleppo with friend.' And they wanted to know who this friend is and why is he coming with me and all the particulars about him. Of course they didn’t know anything about the friend. But the telegram did not arrive until Saturday to Aleppo. 13:07 - 13:10 Young: We had planned to arrive on Friday. 13:10 - 13:20 Chammah: On Friday. The telegram was sent from Tehran the day after, or the same day as we got the visa. 13:20 - 13:22 Young: Tuesday, Tuesday morning I think. 13:22 - 13:24 Chammah: The 4th? 13:24 - 13:26 Young: No that would have made it Tuesday morning, the 6th. 13:26 - 13:28 Chammah: The 6th. Okay, so it was — 13:28 - 13:48 Young: In any case, the telegram was sent in the morning as I recall, more or less first thing that morning, and it didn’t arrive in Aleppo until – Well, I guess they were aware of it earlier on. 13:48 - 13:50 Chammah: Because they came and questioned 13:50 - 14:06 Young: But the actual delivery was on Saturday, which means this was one, two three, four, five days. 14:06 - 14:48 Chammah: Five days, yeah. This is one of the reasons why, when we did not know — since we did not know why nobody was at the airport in Damascus, my sister and my brother wasn’t in the airport. We assumed that they may be afraid to come to the airport, that’s why they didn’t come. And then we took a taxi and proceeded directly to the American embassy first? Or did we —   14:48 - 14:50 Young: No we — 14:50 - 14:57 Chammah: Located the hotel…[unclear] 14:57 - 15:08 Young: We did succeed in locating a hotel for the night in the center of Damascus. 15:09 - 15:14 Chammah: The Semiramis hotel. 15:14 - 15:29 Young: After getting settled there, our first move was to make contact with the American Embassy, which we had indicated before entering Syria that we would attempt to do. 15:29 - 15:30 Chammah: One of the telegrams —  15:30 - 15:35 Young: I guess one of the telegrams sent from Tehran — 15:35 - 15:48 Chammah: It’s called an in-house telegram, I believe, that was sent between embassies. There was also this specific name — 15:48 - 15:50 Young: Interested party 15:50 - 16:14 Chammah: An interested party telegram. And we requested in that telegram a visit with Ambassador Richard Murphy, reminding him in the telegram that he knows about us from John E. Horner. 16:14 - 16:46 Young: When we arrived on Thursday and got established in the hotel we went off directly to the American Embassy. This was probably towards the latter part of the morning. And we were fortunate to be able to see Ambassador Murphy directly. In fact he spent a relatively long period — 16:46 - 16:47 Chammah: About an hour and a half 16:47 - 17:51 Young: Must have been an hour and a half, during which we had a fairly extensive, and I thought reasonably interesting and useful conversation with him. He expressed considerable interest in our visit, made it clear that he was enthusiastic about the idea of our effort to test the new stated policy of the Syrian government as enunciated some time before in a speech of President Assad’s and discussed with us at considerable length his own perception, at that time, of the position of the Jewish community in Syria and the relative benevolence and policies of the regime. 17:51 - 18:13 Chammah: His major point was, I recall, the difference between the Jews and non-Jews in Syria was that the Jews cannot leave Syria. Otherwise there’s not much difference between Jews and non-Jews. 18:13 - 18:26 Young: Well there’s some difference, but I think we can agree that in his opinion the most important difference was the ban on immigration on the part of any member of the Jewish community.  18:29 - 18:52 Chammah: One of the things — he wanted us to do this test in entering Syria — was because one American before of Syrian-Jewish origin who has gone into Damascus, whose name is Boucai. 18:52 - 18:54 Young: Joseph. 18:54 - 19:04 Chammah: This is the same person who has appeared on I believe the second Mike Wallace show, but I’m not sure.  19:04 - 19:05 Young: Yes the second. 19:05 - 19:27 Chammah: Who has praised Assad, if I recall correctly, in that interview. But this person Boucai has not been further than Damascus as far as we know. He has not been to Aleppo, for example.  19:27 - 19:43 Young: Our visit was a genuine test case, in the sense that we would be the first Americans to visit various parts of Syria beyond Damascus itself. 19:44 - 19:52 Young: Do we want to say any more about our conversation with the Ambassador at this point? 19:52 - 19:55 Chammah: Yeah. Let’s see. What else is there? 19:55 - 20:12 Young: We could point out that we briefly made contact with several other persons at the American embassy. We talked for example with the American consul, 20:12 - 20:45 Chammah: The American consul. His name is Donald Sutter, and we may as well mention the other people in the embassy. Ambassador Richard Murphy — later on after we came back from Aleppo, on our return, before we left, we saw Deputy Chief of Mission Robert Peletrow. And James R. Hooper who is — 20:45 - 20:47 Young: I think just a political officer. 20:47 - 20:49 Chammah: A political officer. 20:49 - 21:01 Young: We also when we passed through the first time saw the political affairs officer, in effect the head of USIS in Damascus. 21:01 - 21:02 Chammah: His name is Kenton Keith 21:02 - 21:11 Young: Kenton Keith, for example, suggested we make contact with someone at the University of Aleppo. 21:11 - 21:14 Chammah: Yes. He gave us a letter 21:14 - 21:18 Young: A letter of introduction, as I recall, to the Vice Chancellor 21:18 - 21:40 Chammah: Vice Chancellor of the University of Aleppo. Other people that we dealt with there is Judith Khalif, who was in the office of the consul. And there was another person called Emanuel Besmanji. That should be enough about names. Let’s see — 21:40 - 22:09 Young: Perhaps we ought to pass on now — that may be enough for the moment from our initial contact with the embassy. We can come back to our session with them, and pass on now to our experiences on the remaining portion of our day. 22:13 - 22:18 Chammah: We went back to the hotel and — 22:18 - 22:44 Young: We had some concern in our mind as to how to proceed next. We wanted to contact your sister and her husband, and we debated for a while whether we should phone them, or whether we should take a taxi and go directly to the address we had for them. 22:44 - 23:59 Chammah: We finally called them, called — it was the shop of somebody who is near Salim’s shop, and his first reaction was to say that Salim was not there, and what did I want from him? And I told him I was his brother-in-law and that I would like to see him and he said well when you come to Damascus you can come and see him and I said well I am in Damascus. At that point, somebody had mentioned, I heard in the background in the shop that somebody had heard of our arrival, because then somebody else got on the line and everything was alright. But anyway, the implication being, it sounded like he was afraid in discussing, in suggesting seeing Salim without knowing whom he’s talking to. 23:59 - 24:57 Chammah: Then from there, Salim had one of his colleagues from the bazaar, from where he works, came, suggested that he would come and pick us up, and one of the sons of Salim was going to come also to the hotel and pick us up, which they did and we subsequently found out about the telegram not arriving until 11 o’clock. And Salim was running around the airport trying to find us. He was told that these two people never arrived, or at least they didn’t know of any such two people at Pan American, as well as at the airport. 24:57 - 25:13 Chammah: We also took some tickets the next day to Aleppo on the Pullman, it’s called, the Karnak, the Karnak-Pullman, the Karnak bus. 25:13 - 25:26 Young: We booked space that day, Thursday still on a Karnak bus leaving mid-day Friday the 9th from Damascus to Aleppo. 25:27 - 26:14 Chammah: During that afternoon, when we arrived, and we stayed overnight, a very large number of people from the Damascus Jewish community came to see us, and we had various discussions with them. The head of the community Salim Totah, came for example, and so did the rabbi, two of the rabbis of the community also came. One of them, Rabbi Hamra is one of them. The other one is Rabbi Nafifi I believe. 26:15 - 26:20 Young: Then we talked with these two brothers. 26:20 - 26:21 Chammah: Yes. 26:21 - 26:23 Young: One of them a pharmacist. 26:23 - 26:32 Chammah: Naferi. No, Naferi is not a pharmacist. Naferi is the one who has a shop, a copper shop. 26:32 - 26:33 Young: Yes. 26:33 - 27:02 Chammah: And his shop was also on that television Mike Wallace show. And the pharmacist was also on that show and he was the one who had said on the Mike Wallace show that the Jews — that it was Zionist propaganda to say that the Jews were not well treated in Syria. 27:02 - 27:52 Chammah: In talking with him at length for about a couple of hours, it turned out that he feels very bitter about the Mike Wallace show. He’s also being blamed and put under great pressure by the Jewish community, the Syrian-Jewish community. He felt that the show, that the Mike Wallace show was a distortion of what he said, that Mike Wallace had filmed a large amount of footage, and the pharmacist felt he only took specific sections to make it sound quite different from what he intended. 27:52 - 28:15 Young: He had been quoted out of context, and that the overall message he wished to convey throughout the full interview was quite different from the impression that comes across in the brief segments selected for inclusion in the Mike Wallace show itself. 28:15 - 29:01 Chammah: He also was the one that said that the people who say things — he feels that there is not just pressure, but they have no choice but to say the things that they say openly, not openly but on radio, television, mainly because they have to live, after all, with the Syrian government and because there is somebody, a representative of the government who is there, they don’t feel that they say anything to displease them. 29:01 - 29:14 Chammah: At the same time it’s a question of how far they can balance not saying anything versus keeping quiet. 29:14 - 29:59 Young: I think we’re trying to say that we found some considerable difference in attitude and orientation on this question within the community itself. Some people feel a necessity or at least justifiable, and other people feel distressed at taking that point of view. And there is a fair amount of discussion, and essentially disagreement within the community itself on this question of what is the most appropriate posture to adopt with respect to the desires and demands of the Syrian government itself. 29:59 - 30:14 Chammah: This is both in Damascus and in Aleppo, this ambivalence or this combination, this varieties of view in how to deal with the government. 30:14 - 31:13 Young: I think you can find this ambivalence in specific individuals, but also disagreements among different groups within the communities themselves. That is to say, there will be some people who take the point of view that being more or less conciliatory, or appealing relatively friendly toward the government is desirable because it will perhaps induce the government to be less harsh, or perhaps be more friendly in subsequent policy decisions. Whereas there are others who feel that that is selling out, in a sense, or condoning what in other respects are obviously harsh, restrictive and unpleasant restrictions, policies, so that regardless of the consequences, this is an inappropriate stance to take with respect to the desires and actions of the repressive government. 31:13 - 31:43 Chammah: Even the pharmacist was — this ambivalence even shows even in the pharmacist himself. At one point he said, all of these people have to live with the government, especially the ones who are considered leaders of the community. There is more pressure on them, and therefore they have no choice in the matter. And they are all by and large, as he called them, “Good Jews.” They don’t sell out anybody. 31:43 - 32:03 Chammah: At other times in the conversation he says that — what do really these people get out of the government, out of being conciliatory? All they get is maybe better treatment in terms of having a laissez-passer to travel more easily. We will take more about the laissez-passer situation later on.