Posted on 03/18/2002 8:05:17 AM PST by a_Turk
NEW YORK - Every so often, a new heroic account of Jews being saved from the death camps of the Holocaust is added to the small list of good deeds carried out during the Nazi era. From the legend of the king of Denmark wearing a Jewish star, to the story of Japanese ambassador Chiune Sugihara who saved 2,000 Lithuanian Jews against his government's wishes, stories of such heroic acts crop up once in a while, but are all too few and far between.
Today, nearly 60 years after the Holocaust, one would expect the stockpiles of such stories to be near depletion.
Desperate Hours, however, a new documentary about Turkey's role in the Holocaust, is proof that there are still stories to be told and people to be lauded. The little-known story of this neutral Muslim country's saving of 20,000 Jews, most of whom made their way to Palestine, should be emphasized in light of the good deed itself. However, this film also serves as a reminder that with the current levels of European and Muslim anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial and the culture of hatred in some parts of the world against the West, people may need to display such courage again.
Screened in New York last month by the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Jewish History, the movie highlights individual Turks' daring and heroic rescue of Turkish Jewry living in France, and its position as a haven for German elites and Zionist officials with the Yishuv movement, who used Istanbul as a base to rescue European Jewry and bring them to Palestine. Ordinary Turks' tolerance of the Jewish influx - or their lack of reaction to it, as seen in the film - seems particularly striking in such an era.
With Istanbul located less than 100 kilometers away from Nazi-occupied Europe, some may question how Turkish diplomats and clergy could have done more than they did: rescue Turkish Jews and provide transit visas to anyone with an end visa for a third country. It can also be noted that, like in many instances in which Jews were saved, the actions of so few saved so many.
Desperate Hours was written and coproduced by Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, and directed and coproduced by Victoria Barrett. It has been screened on Turkey's CNN affiliate, and TV stations in the US and Israel are looking into screening it, said Berenbaum.
In the film, Turkey's less laudable Holocaust-related history is also documented, including its refusal to allow 760 Romanian-Jewish passengers aboard the SS Struma to land in Istanbul. The ship is rumored to have been torpedoed by a Russian submarine, and just one passenger, David Stoliar, survived.
Another important point - which was not included in the film - is that it was Turkey's alleged genocide of one million Armenians that Hitler used as evidence that the world would not react to the mass murder of the Jews. "Who remembers the Armenians?" Hitler purportedly said.
TURKEY'S rescue of Jews took place mainly in Nazi-occupied France, where diplomats insisted that the country's 10,000 Turkish Jews be accorded the same protections as French citizens in Turkey. When the French government demanded that Jews wear a yellow star and started confiscating their property, the Turkish diplomats vigorously protested. They yanked all the Turkish Jews they could find from trains, transit camps and concentration camps, and provided them with passage to Turkey.
"If you were in my place you would do the same thing," said former Turkish vice consul to Vichy-run Marseilles, Necdet Kent, who, 60 years ago, boarded a train full of Jews claiming Turkish citizenship being sent to a concentration camp. Three hours later, an SS guard relented and pulled him and 70 others off of the train, and the consulate sent them to Istanbul for the duration of the war.
"Turkey was the only country in Paris that was helping, protecting and trying to protect the Jews," said ambassador Namik Yolga, who was stationed in Paris.
"I'm a human being, I couldn't do anything else," said Kent.
Selahattin Ulkemen, the consul-general in Rhodes, became the only Turk to be awarded the Righteous Among the Nations for his rescue of Turkish Jews. Ulkemen protested Nazi deportation orders and issued exit visas to all 42 Turkish Jews living on Rhodes, as the rest of the Jews on Rhodes were deported and killed by the Nazis.
Well before diplomats were forced to start saving lives, the Turkish government provided German professors, scientists, and musicians with jobs at its universities and institutions. The professors were Jewish and non-Jewish Germans who were deemed unfit to teach by the Nazis. There were 200 altogether, two-thirds of whom were considered to be Jewish by the Nazis.
Even further back, in 1492, the Ottoman sultan had sent a fleet to pick up Jews escaping the Spanish Expulsion in order to import Western ideas. In 1933, Turkish president Kemal Ataturk welcomed 200 Jewish and non-Jewish professors fleeing the Nazis with a similar refuge, including permission to bring their families and assistants for an unlimited time.
Among those welcomed into Turkey was an architect who built the presidential palace, the parliament, state opera and theater, and ministry of defense.
"There was a saying that Istanbul University was the best German university outside of Germany," notes a Turkish assistant to a Jewish professor.
The Catholic church in Turkey also tried to save Jews. In an era when the Church was notorious for turning its back on Jewish suffering, the Vatican's representative in Istanbul, archbishop Joseph Roncalli, handed out documents providing them with the Holy See's protection, and was said to have issued false baptismal certificates to Jews, though proof that such certificates were used has not yet been found. In 1962, after he became Pope John XXIII, Roncalli officially absolved Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus - a move widely attributed to his experiences during the Holocaust.
The film also documents Heinrich Himmler's "Jews for Trucks" offer, which was negotiated, unsuccessfully, among Jewish Agency officials in Istanbul.
However, as Chaim Barlas, the Yishuv's chief representative in Turkey, is said to have written in a letter, "It is a miracle that even this small number has escaped from hell."
That'll be the essence of the upcoming Turcophobe posts, anyway.
I had heard some of these reports but had no idea of the number saved.
It seems Turkey still thinks for itself concerning the Jews and Israel.
Humane people of whatever background sometimes go beyond the bounds of "just doing their job."
It isn't right to be snide about a man we don't know. He may have been a real mench.
This story about Turks saving Jews is completely new to me. It's wonderful, and heart-warming, especially when you consider that Muslims in other countries were aligning themselves with the Nazis. Very stupid of them. Thanks for bringing this article to us, A_Turk.
. In an era when the Church was notorious for turning its back on Jewish suffering, the Vatican's representative in Istanbul, archbishop Joseph Roncalli,...
More Jews were saved by the Catholic Church than all other agencies combined. Radler's disgusting ignorance over the Church's wartime role extends even to things as small as Achbishop Roncalli's first name, which was Angelo, not Joseph.
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