This book exposes Turkish policies concerning European Jews during the Hitler era, focusing on three events: 1. The recruitment of German Jewish scholars by the Turkish government after Hitler came to power, 2. The fate of Jews of Turkish origin in German-controlled France during WWII, 3. The Turkish approach to Jewish refugees who were in transit to Palestine through Turkey. These events have been widely presented in literature and popular media as conspicuous evidence of the humanitarian policies of the Turkish government, as well as indications of the compassionate acts of the Turkish officials vis-à-vis Jewish people both in the pre-war years of the Nazi regime and during WWII. This volume contrasts the evidence and facts from a wealth of newly-disclosed documents with the current populist presentation of Turkey as protector of Jews.

This book exposes Turkish policies concerning European Jews during the Hitler era, focusing on three events: 1. The recruitment of German Jewish scholars by the Turkish government after Hitler came to power, 2. The fate of Jews of Turkish origin in German-controlled France during WWII, 3. The Turkish approach to Jewish refugees who were in transit to Palestine through Turkey. These events have been widely presented in literature and popular media as conspicuous evidence of the humanitarian policies of the Turkish government, as well as indications of the compassionate acts of the Turkish officials vis-à-vis Jewish people both in the pre-war years of the Nazi regime and during WWII. This volume contrasts the evidence and facts from a wealth of newly-disclosed documents with the current populist presentation of Turkey as protector of Jews.

The neutrality maintained by Turkey during most of the Second World War enabled it to rescue thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in the Nazi-occupied or collaborating countries of Europe. This book shows how in France, the Turkish consuls in Paris and Marseilles intervened to protect Turkish Jews from application of anti-Jewish laws introduced both by the German occupying authorities and the Vichy government and rescued them from concentration camps, getting them off trains destined for the extermination chambers in the East, and arranging train caravans and other special transportation to take them through Nazi-occupied territory to safety in Turkey. 'an important and unique addition to the vast scholarship available on that tragic era' Rabbi Abraham Cooper

This book exposes Turkish policies concerning European Jews during the Hitler era, focusing on three events: 1. The recruitment of German Jewish scholars by the Turkish government after Hitler came to power, 2. The fate of Jews of Turkish origin in German-controlled France during WWII, 3. The Turkish approach to Jewish refugees who were in transit to Palestine through Turkey. These events have been widely presented in literature and popular media as conspicuous evidence of the humanitarian policies of the Turkish government, as well as indications of the compassionate acts of the Turkish officials vis-à-vis Jewish people both in the pre-war years of the Nazi regime and during WWII. This volume contrasts the evidence and facts from a wealth of newly-disclosed documents with the current populist presentation of Turkey as protector of Jews.

More than half a century of investigation and analysis have yielded a vast literature on the events, participants and motivations surrounding Nazi persecution of Jews. But very little is known about the efforts made by Turkey, a neutral country and traditionally a haven for persecuted Jews, to rescue European Jewry during the Holocaust. Bringing to light for the first time documents buried in the archives of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the National Archives (Washington), and the Turkish embassy and consulate in Paris, as well as materials given him by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, Stanford Shaw here unveils the tragic pleas of those fleeing Nazi persecution and traces the Turkish response. Recreating individual stories through letters from Jewish refugees, SS and Gestapo officials, and Turkish diplomats, this dramatic work carefully examines Turkey's little-heralded participation in sheltering leading scholars, physicians, attorneys and thousands of refugees. Turkey and the Holocaust illustrates how Turkey established Istanbul as the homebase for the Jewish Agency and other organizations set up to assist and rescue Jews throughout Eastern Europe and sought, through diplomatic pressure, to prevent Vichy from deporting all 70,000 of its Turkish Jews to Germany for extermination. Shaw narrates the plight of the refugees in the context of Turkey's overall reaction to the Holocaust, the precise role of Turkish diplomats, the effects of the disastrous Varlik Vergisi -- a wealth tax intended to help solve the financial crisis caused by Turkey's need to maintain a very large army against the possibility of a Nazi invasion from Greece -- and finally the inner workings and heroics of the Jewish Agency. Based on spectacular primary research and documents never before made public, this moving history recounts the horrific tragedies of Jewish persecution under Hitler and will be of interest to anyone interested in Turkish, Jewish, and European history and in the history of World War II.

This book analyses the minority politics of the Turkish republic and the country's ambivalent policies regarding Jewish refugees and Turkish Jews living abroad.

This historical study examines the lives of European Jews who found safe haven in Turkey and helped the nation transform in the years before WWII. Out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk formed the modern Republic of Turkey. As the nation’s founding father and first president, he initiated numerous progressive reforms. In 1933, he welcomed German and Austrian Jews who fled the rise of antisemitic violence in their homelands. In Turkey’ Modernization, historian Arnold Reisman chronicles the lives of some of these refugees as they pursued new lives in a new nation. Using archival documents, letters, memoirs, oral histories, photos, and other surviving evidence, Arnold Reisman sheds light on courage and determination of these individuals, as well as their important contributions in several fields of knowledge. With a clear-eyed analysis of Turkey’s achievements and shortcomings, Reisman also speculates about its inability to fully capitalize on these emigres’ legacy. “This book adds to our knowledge of an important aspect of the Holocaust, and of the behavior of Nation States in the modern world of woe and grief.” —Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill’s official biographer