In article <1993Apr19.010955.1@eagle.wesleyan.edu> kmagnacca@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:  >> Too bad. In fact, by 1942, Nazi Armenians in Europe had established  >> a vast network of pro-German collaborators, that extended over two  >> continents.  >Before you go calling the kettle black, keep in mind that the  >Turkish government was a strong supporter of Nazi Germany and >played a vital role in supplying it with oil until the Allies >invaded Iran.  Complaining about Armenian complicity with the >Nazis does little good when Turkey played a much bigger role.  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