What was the total number of Europeans enslaved by the Ottoman Turks and their allies between the 15th and 19th centuries? According to expert estimates, the Berber pirates enslaved about a million; the Crimean Tatars about three million from Russia; the Tatars and Turks about a million from the Caucasus; and about ten million (according to the most conservative estimates) from Central Europe (!) and the Balkans by the Ottomans themselves. This makes a total of about fifteen million - far more than were taken from Africa by European slave traders in the same period!

This fact, however, is quite hidden from the public and more or less unknown to almost all of Western Europe and North America. And the conditions endured by European captives in the Ottoman Empire were infinitely worse than those endured by Africans in America. The latter generally worked on plantations and were allowed, indeed encouraged, to marry and have families. In contrast, Europeans under the Islamic yoke had a terrible fate. Physically able-bodied men had marks burned on their foreheads and were forced to work in galleys or as miners. They were not allowed to marry and were denied any semblance of family life or female companionship. Young boys were castrated - and raped - while women were sent into sexual slavery in harems.