


Tell me, 'kmagnacca', were you high on 'Arromdian of ASALA/SDPA/ARF'
when you wrote that? Humane behavior and tolerance of Turks was a
legend even 500 years ago when they accepted tens of thousands of 
Jews from Spain who were fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition. Again, 
many Jewish families escaping from Nazi Armenians and Hitler's Nazi 
Germany took refugee in Turkiye during the 1940's. Turkish people
have unselfishly given home, protection, and freedom to the Jews over 
the centuries, including to thousands and thousands of them during 
the Second World War. Get a life or a cup of Turkish coffee. 

"History of the Jews in the Islamic Countries," chapters in Parts I and II,
Jarusalem, Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1986.   

Baron, Salo W., "A Social and Religious History of the Jews," New York,
Columbia University Press, Vols. III, V, XVIII.

Benardete, Mair Jose, "Hispanic Culture and Character of the Sephardic
Jews," New York, Sepher-Hermon Press, 2nd corrected edition, 1982 (original
publication 1953).

Lewis, Bernard, eds., "Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire," New York,
Holmes & Meier, 1982, Vol. I, The Central Lands.

"La Turquie dan les Archives des Grand Orient de France: les loges ...,"
in Jean-Louis Bacque-Graumont and Paul Dumont, eds., Economie et Societes
dans L'Empire Ottoman, Paris, Centre National De La Reserche Scientifique,
1983.

Inalcik, Halil, "Turkish-Jewish Relations in the Ottoman Empire," 1982.

Sevilla-Sharon, Moshe, "Turkiye Yahudileri, Tarihsel Bakis," Jerusalem, The
Hebrew University, 1982.

Source: John Dewey: "The New Republic," Vol. 40, Nov. 12, 1928, pp. 268-9.

"Happy the minority [Jews] which has had no Christian nation to protect it.
 And one recalls that the Jews took up their abode in 'fanatic' Turkey
 when they were expelled from Europe, especially Spain, by Saintly Christians,
 and they have lived here for centuries in at least as much tranquility and
 liberty as their fellow Turkish subjects, all being exposed alike to the
 rapacity of their common rulers. To one brought up, as most Americans have 
 been, in the Gladstonian and foreign-missionary tradition, the condition of 
 the Jews in Turkey is almost a mathematical demonstration that religious
 differences have had an influence in the tragedy of Turkey only as they
 were combined with aspirations for a political separation which every 
 nation in the world would have treated as treasonable. One readily 
 reaches the conclusion that the Jews in Turkey were fortunate..." 

He also stated that:

"they [Armenians] traitorously turned Turkish cities over to the Russian 
 invader; that they boasted of having raised an army of one hundred and
 fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned at least
 a hundred Turkish villages and exterminated their population."


                TURKEY AND THE HOLOCAUST

An  interview  with  Stanford  J. Shaw  (History),  who  recently
completed  two books:  The Jews  of  the Ottoman  Empire and  the
Turkish Republic, and Turkey and  the Holocaust: Turkey's Role in
Rescuing  Turkish  and  European  Jewry  from  Nazi  Persecution,
1933-45. Shaw  chairs the undergraduate  interdepartmental degree
program in Near Eastern Studies and has organized the Program for
the Study of Ottoman and Turkish Jewry. He is affiliated with the
G. E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Editor: How did  you come to write these two  books on Turkey and
European and Turkish Jews?

Shaw: Basically, I'm  an Ottoman historian, but  I'm also Jewish.
I've  spent twenty-five  years studying  Ottoman history,  and as
time went along, whenever I  found materials on the Ottoman Jews,
I collected  them. But  I never  did anything  with them  until a
couple of years  ago, when I suddenly realized that  1992 was the
500th  anniversary of  the  Jews being  expelled  from Spain  and
coming  to Turkey.  Then the  Sephardic Temple  down on  Wilshire
Avenue invited me  to give a series of three  lectures on Ottoman
Jewry.  These lectures  were  greatly appreciated,  and I  became
motivated to  undertake further research  to develop a  book, The
Jews of the  Ottoman Empire and the Turkish)  Republic. This book
is quite different from the  works of most Jewish historians, who
tend to look  at the Jews in any country  more from the viewpoint
of the Jews  and the Jewish community, and rely  mainly on Jewish
sources.  I  view my  subject  as  an  Ottoman historian,  and  I
approach the Jews of the Ottoman Empire largely from the point of
view of Ottoman  society, using largely Ottoman  sources. After I
finished  this book  and  sent it  to the  press,  I came  across
additional documents  relating to  Turkish Jews during  World War
II. In the completed book, I had said that Turkey had done a good
deal  to rescue  the Jews  during  World War  II, but  I did  not
actually have many details. Then I  found a batch of documents in
the Foreign Ministry archive relating to actions taken by Turkish
diplomats to  help the Jews  before and during the  Holocaust. It
was too late to add this new information to the book in press, so
I decided to  write a second book. I  conducted further research,
mainly in the archives of the  Foreign Ministry in Ankara and the
Turkish Embassy and Consulate in Paris. The result was the second
book, Turkey and  the Holocaust, which details  how Turkey helped
rescue Jews from the Nazis.

- How exactly did they do this?

The story takes  place over a number of years.  The book presents
the material in three parts, first of which deals with the period
before the Holocaust. When the Nazis  came to power in Germany in
1933,  they immediately  started  dismissing  Jews and  anti-Nazi
Germans from universities,  hospitals, scientific institutes, and
the like. Turkey at that moment was just beginning the process of
reforming its  universities, and it  saw in these Jews,  who were
being fired from their positions in Germany, a good source of new
talent to  help modernize the Turkish  universities. Within three
months  after the  Nazis  started dismissing  these Jews,  Turkey
arranged to take many of them in. They were brought to Turkey and
were   given   appointments   as  professors   in   the   Turkish
universities, as  heads of scientific institutes,  and as medical
personnel in hospitals. About 300  to 500 major Jewish professors
came to  Turkey in  the 1930s. Ernst  Reuter, a  German political
scientist,  spent the  war  years teaching  political science  in
Turkey. After  World War II,  he was  mayor of Berlin  during the
Berlin Airlift.  Fritz Neimark, a major  German Jewish economist,
came to Turkey and helped  establish a modern school of economics
in Istanbul.  A man named  Reichenbach, who was rescued  from the
Nazis by  Turkey and  spent the war  years in  Turkey, eventually
came to  UCLA, where he  became a professor of  philosophy. Other
German Jewish  emigres engaged in cultural  activities in Turkey.
One  such was  Karl  Ebert,  who had  been  a leading  theatrical
producer in Berlin until he was expelled by the Nazis. He went to
Turkey, where he  organized the Turkish National  Theater and the
Turkish National Opera  Company in Ankara, with the  help of Paul
Hindemuth. So  the first  section of the  book covers  this first
phase, when Jews were being  persecuted in Germany and rescued by
Turkey.  Oddly enough,  the  German emigres,  when  they were  in
Turkey, did not seem to think too badly of Germany. They regarded
themselves more  as Germans than Jews,  and they did not  join in
the anti-Nazi activities of the local Turkish Jewish community. I
even  found  letters  from  the Nazi  representatives  to  Turkey
praising these German Jewish refugees for their work in promoting
the idea  of German  culture. Even though  these people  had been
persecuted by the Nazis and rescued by the Turks, they shared the
Nazis' feelings of  Aryan racial superiority over  the Turks. The
second part of the book deals  with the Holocaust, which began in
1940 when the Nazis occupied France.  In Europe at that time, and
especially in France, there were  about 20,000 Turkish Jews. They
had migrated to Europe for various reasons from about the turn of
the century onward. Most of them had settled in Europe during the
Turkish war for  independence after World War I,  when Greece was
threatening to overrun Turkey. The Greeks had persecuted the Jews
throughout the nineteenth century, and the Jews feared what might
happen to them if the Greeks  took over in Turkey. Many Jews fled
to France during  the 1920s and 1930s. Many  also abandoned their
Turkish  citizenship and  became  French  citizens. Suddenly  the
Nazis invaded France in 1940 and started introducing all sorts of
anti-Jewish laws.  The Turkish  Jews soon found  that it  was not
worth very much to  be a French Jew, but that it  was worth a lot
to be a Turkish Jew.

- How so?

Turkey remained neutral through most of World War II. It retained
its embassies  and consulates in all  the Nazi-occupied countries
until it finally entered the war on the side of the Allies at the
end of 1944. During the war,  therefore, Turkey was in a position
to  defend its  citizens  against anti-Jewish  measures, and  the
actions that  Turkish diplomats took  form the second  chapter of
the  book. Turkish  diplomats  who were  stationed  in France  in
particular intervened to protect Jews of Turkish citizenship from
the Nazis. For those Turkish  Jews who had retained their Turkish
citizenship,  there  was  generally  no  problem.  If  they  were
arrested and sent to a  concentration camp, the Turkish diplomats
would  communicate with  the  commanders of  the  camp and  other
officials and say in effect:  "These people are Turkish citizens.
You  can't do  this  to  them." And  the  Turkish  Jews would  be
released.  If  their  businesses were  confiscated,  the  Turkish
diplomats would protest and the businesses would be restored.

The Nazis  in general  wanted to keep  the friendship  of Turkey.
They hoped to be able to use  Turkey as a gateway for an invasion
of the Middle  East, and they also wanted to  obtain chromium and
manganese from Turkey. In order  to keep Turkish friendship, they
usually accepted  these interventions on behalf  of Turkish Jews.
The Turkish  diplomats sometimes went to  the concentration camps
to secure the release of Turkish Jews. At times they even boarded
trains hauling  Turkish Jews  to Auschwitz for  extermination and
succeeded in getting them off the train. Most of the foreign Jews
were sent  to a concentration  camp at  a place called  Drancy in
Paris,  and that's  where  most of  the  intercession by  Turkish
consuls took place.

The greater problem came with  the Turkish Jews who had abandoned
their  Turkish citizenship  and had  become French  citizens. The
consuls couldn't declare that  these people were Turkish citizens
because  they were  not.  My book  includes  photographs of  Jews
lining  up in  front  of  the Turkish  consulate,  either to  get
passports to  return to Turkey or  to get a restoration  of their
Turkish  citizenship.   This  was   a  bureaucratic   matter,  so
processing the application would take  some time. In the meantime
it was a  real emergency, because the Nazis would  arrest Jews on
the streets for almost nothing.  The Nazis would even arrest them
if they  had radios  or telephones  in their  apartments, because
radios and  telephones were  forbidden to Jews.  To take  care of
these  former  Turkish Jews,  the  Turkish  diplomats invented  a
document called  gayri muntazem  vatandash, or  "irregular fellow
citizen." The  document said in  effect "This person is  a former
Turkish  citizen  who has  applied  for  the restoration  of  his
Turkish citizenship.  In the meantime  we would appreciate  it if
you  would treat  him  as  if he  were  a  Turkish citizen."  The
diplomats wrote  the document in  Turkish and put their  seals on
it. Since  the Nazis could  not read  Turkish, on the  whole they
accepted  these papers  as certificates  of citizenship.  By this
means, the  Turkish diplomats were  able to rescue many  Jews who
had relinquished their Turkish citizenship.

Actually the Nazis were of two minds about the Turkish defense of
Jews. On the one hand the  Nazi Foreign Ministry, which wanted to
retain the friendship of Turkey,  was in favor of accepting these
interventions. On the other hand, Himmler and Eichmann wanted all
Jews exterminated.  At times  Himmler and  Eichmann were  able to
prevail and some  of the Turkish Jews were sent  off to Auschwitz
before the Turkish consuls could do anything.

- Do you have statistics on how many Turkish Jews were rescued?

There were about  20,000 Turkish Jews in Europe  before world War
II,  about 10,000  of whom  were living  in France.  Most of  the
information in this section of  the book relates to the situation
in France. I have published  the letters that the Turkish consuls
sent to  the Nazi  officials and  the letters  that came  back in
reply. Generally the Nazis said  that if the Turkish consul would
present  documents  certifying   that  arrested  individuals  are
Turkish citizens,  and promise  to send them  out of  France, the
Nazis would release them from the concentration camp. The Turkish
consuls also organized  special trains to take  Turkish Jews from
Nazi-occupied  territory   back  to  Turkey.  These   trains  ran
regularly in 1943 and 1944. The Nazis gave the Turkish Jews visas
so they  could pass out  of Nazi  territory, but the  trains were
often  held  up by  the  Nazi-influenced  governments of  Eastern
Europe  -   Croatia,  Serbia,   and  Bulgaria  -   because  these
governments really didn't want the Jews to escape. As a result of
the Turkish consuls' efforts, about 3,000 to 4,000 of the Turkish
Jews  in  France were  saved.  Another  3,000  were sent  off  to
Auschwitz, where  most of them  died. The remaining  3,000 either
escaped  across the  border into  Spain or  fled to  the area  of
southern France occupied  by the Italians, who  treated Jews much
better than  the Nazis did.  At the  end of 1943,  however, Italy
fell out of the war, and that was the end for those Jews as well.
Incidentally, the Turkish diplomats  in Nazi-occupied Greece also
worked to rescue Jews in that country.

- The second part of your  book then deals with Turkish diplomats
acting to  rescue Jews of  Turkish citizenship or  Turkish origin
from Nazi persecution.

Yes,  and  there  is  an  aside   I  might  add  here:  In  their
interventions on  behalf of Turkish  Jews, the Turks  cited their
treaty with Germany which stated  that Turkish citizens in German
territory would be treated the same as German citizens in Turkey.
On  that basis  the Turks  maintained  that the  Nazis could  not
discriminate  against Turkish  citizens who  are Jews.  The Nazis
claimed  (and the  Vichy government  agreed) that  they were  not
discriminating  because  they  were treating  all  Jews  equally.
Turkey  protested,   saying,  "You  are  dividing   our  citizens
according to religion, but the Turkish constitution requires that
all  citizens   be  treated  equally,  regardless   of  religion.
Therefore, you cannot single  out Turkish Jews." American consuls
in  Paris,  by contrast,  accepted  the  Nazi argument  and  told
American Jews  who were being  persecuted by the Nazis  that they
couldn't do  anything about  it, because  the American  Jews were
being treated the same as other  Jews. The third part of the book
takes place in Turkey, which  was the principal center during the
Holocaust for activities aimed at  the rescue of Eastern European
Jews. The  kwish Agency, an  organization established by  Jews in
Palestine to help resettle Jews to Palestine, set up an office in
Istanbul  in 1940  under the  leadership of  Chaim Barlas.  Other
Jewish organizations in Palestine, especially the kibbutzes, also
sent representatives  to Istanbul  to set up  headquarters. These
groups first tried to contact Jews  in Eastern Europe to find out
what was  happening. Today  we know about  the Holocaust,  but at
that  time people  didn't know  what  was going  on. They  didn't
imagine the Nazis could do the things they were doing. And so the
first step was to get information, and the Turkish government let
them use the Turkish mails to send letters to their relatives and
friends  in Eastern  Europe. The  Jewish organizations  found out
what was happening when they  received replies. Later on when the
Nazis  began  to  intercept   such  letters,  the  Jews  received
assistance  also from  the  Vatican nuncio,  Angelo Roncali,  who
served as  the Vatican  representative in  Istanbul from  1935 to
1944  and   later  became  Pope   John  XXIII.  As   the  Vatican
representative  during the  war, he  used the  facilities of  the
Catholic  Church to  supplement what  the Turkish  government was
doing to  assist Jewish  agencies in  contacting Jews  in Eastern
Europe.  With the  cooperation of  the Turkish  government, these
agencies  then  sent  hard  currency, food,  clothing,  and  even
railroad  and  steamship  tickets   to  Jews  in  Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. They weren't able to help much in
Poland because  by then the  Nazis had  wiped out almost  all the
Polish Jews.  Whenever possible the rescue  agencies arranged for
the Jews to get out of Eastern Europe either by train through the
so called  Orient Express route  to Istanbul, or by  boat through
the Black Sea to Istanbul.

Turkey was not eager for all  these refugees to remain within its
borders during  the war, because  it was being blockaded  and was
suffering   terrible  shortages   of  food   and  clothing.   The
government,   therefore,   facilitated   the  movement   of   the
non-Turkish Jewish  refugees from Turkey to  Palestine, either by
the Taurus  Express Railroad through  the mountains to  Syria and
Palestine,  or by  small boats  across the  eastern Mediterranean
from southern  Turkey to  Palestine. These efforts  were bitterly
opposed not only  by the Nazis, but also by  the British, who did
not want  any more Jewish  immigration to Palestine  because they
feared it would hurt their  relations with the Arabs. The British
constantly pressured the Turkish  government to stop this traffic
and send those Jews back. In  a few cases the Turkish government,
yielding  to  British pressure,  did  send  the boats  back.  For
example, in  one incident,  the steamship  Struma, with  some 700
Jewish  refugees  from Romania,  was  sent  back by  the  Turkish
government  as  a  result  of the  intervention  of  the  British
ambassador. When  that ship was  sunk by a Soviet  submarine, all
were lost except one person.  Nevertheless, all told, the Turkish
government allowed no fewer than 100,000 Eastern European Jews to
pass through  Turkish territory and  move on to  Palestine during
the Second World War. The Turkish authorities also provided these
refugees with facilities  and money, and gave  them permission to
send money and food out of the country.

- Many  of these  Jews who  passed  through Turkey  may still  be
living in Israel.

Yes, and  their children. But  let's return  for a moment  to the
first group, the Turkish Jews who  came from Europe. They did not
go  on  to   Palestine;  they  stayed  in  Turkey.   It  was  the
non-Turkish, Eastern  European Jews who passed  through Turkey en
route to Palestine. Their story is very interesting.

- And you have rescued it from obscurity.

Many studies have been made of the Holocaust, but most of them do
not focus on the Eastern European or Middle Eastern Jews. Most of
the scholarship  has centered  on the  Western European  Jews, of
whom 6 million were massacred by the Nazis. My study deals with a
much smaller  number of  people. I  have tried  to round  out the
picture,  and I  hope my  book  will persuade  other scholars  to
undertake further investigations in the history of Eastern Jews.

When it  comes to numbers,  the German Jews were  also relatively
small in number. Most of the millions slain were Polish Jews. The
rescue  of  100,000  Eastern  European   Jews  may  not  seem  so
significant  compared  with  the  total of  6  million  who  were
murdered, but it meant a lot to those who were saved.

About  three-fourths   of  the  book  consists   of  documents  -
translations  of many  documents. They  are included  because the
story is not well known. Not  only are people in the West unaware
of  the courageous  actions of  the Turkish  diplomats; even  the
people of Turkey  did not know the story. I  felt that they would
not  fully understand  this  remarkable  achievement unless  they
could see the documents.

- What languages are used in the documents?

Most of them are in Turkish  or French; some are in Hebrew. There
is a great  deal of material in Hebrew about  the organization of
the boats  going to Palestine, the  passengers, and so on,  but I
did not go into those details extensively. I describe mostly what
Turkey did, so  most of my documents are in  Turkish or French. A
few documents are  in English. The Jewish groups  in Istanbul did
not necessarily  cooperate with  one another  to rescue  Jews; in
fact, they often fought with  one another. They took turns trying
to  get  the  Turkish  government to  deport  rival  groups.  For
example, some of  the kibbutz groups felt that  the Jewish Agency
was  run by  Western European  Jews who  were interested  only in
helping  Western  European  Jews.  Finally,  in  1944,  President
Roosevelt sent a personal  representative, Ira Hirschman, who had
been an executive of Bloomingdale's  department store in New York
City, and  Hirschman managed to reconcile  their differences. The
documents related to his mission are in English.

I also obtained many documents  from Serge Klarsfeld, a Holocaust
historian in France,  who mainly worked on the  French Jews. (His
father was  killed by  the Nazis.)  He gave  me materials  he had
gathered in the German archives on  the Turkish Jews, so I didn't
personally consult the German archives.  I believe that much more
can  be learned  from the  German  archives, and  I hope  someone
someday will make the effort.

- This new book fits in well with your teaching, doesn't it?

Right. I'm  giving a  course on  the history of  the Jews  of the
Ottoman  Empire.  I first  gave  the  course  two years  ago.  In
addition to  research, writing, and teaching,  I've been actively
involved in  the commemoration  of the  500th anniversary  of the
coming of the  Jews to the Ottoman Empire. Among  other things, I
helped organize  a large international conference  on the subject
which was held in Istanbul in 1992.

- Now that your  books are finished and the  conference has taken
place, what do you plan to do next?

I'm working on two new books. One is a history of the Turkish War
for Independence, which took place  after World War I, during the
years  1918 to  1923. The  Turks warded  off the  efforts of  the
victorious  European   powers  to  occupy  Turkey   and  end  its
independence. The  second book is  a study of Sultan  Abdul Hamid
II, the last major sultan, who ruled from 1876 to 1909. He was an
important modernizer in his own  way, although he also suppressed
all sorts of political movements.

Stanford  J. Shaw  received  a B.A.  in History  and  an M.A.  in
British History. He then shifted to Near Eastern History, earning
a second M.A.  and a Ph.D. at Princeton. As  a doctoral candidate
at Princeton, he  spent two years abroad, studying  at the School
of  Oriental  and  African  Studies, University  of  London;  the
University of  Cairo, the American  University at Cairo,  and the
University of  Istanbul. He  taught at  Harvard before  coming to
UCLA in 1966. His postdoctoral research has been supported by the
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Research Institute
in  Turkey, the  Social  Science Research  Council, the  National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, and ISOP. He
has  received  honorary  degrees   from  Harvard  University  and
Bosporus University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey, and medals of honor
for lifetime contributions  to the fields of  Islamic and Turkish
studies from the Center for Research in Islamic History, Art, and
Culture in  Istanbul and from  the American Friends of  Turkey in
Washington,  D.C. In  addition to  undertaking many  professional
service activities and public lectures  in both the United States
and Turkey,  Shaw has  also produced eight  books and  one edited
volume. His  History of  the Ottoman Empire  and Modem  Turkey (2
vols.)  has been  published  in many  editions  (six editions  or
reprints  from 1977-1991),  and  translated  into Turkish  (1983,
1991) and French (1984). His book  The Jews of the Ottoman Empire
and  the  Turkish  Republic  (MacMillan,  London,  and  New  York
University Press, 1992) will  be published in Turkish translation
by the Turkish  Historical Society, Istanbul. His  Turkey and the
Holocaust: Turkey's  Role in Rescuing Turkish  and European Jewry
from Nazi  Persecution, 1933-1945 will be  published by Macmillan
Publishers,  London, and  New York  University Press  in 1993.  A
pamphlet summarizing the book was published in Ankara, Turkey, in
1992.

Serdar Argic