eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
I read with interest the article entitled «A Survivor’s Story of Holocaust Heroism: Lina Amato in your most recent issue.
Selahattin Ülkümen is certainly a hero for all times. And that is why Yad Vashem has declared him to be a Righteous among the Nations.
And needless to say, I am delighted that Lina Amato had the providential good fortune to be among those saved by Ülkümen from the cruel fate of the six million Jews murdered by the Germans.
The article however is seriously deficient on the historical facts on Turkey’s involvement in the Holocaust. By way of illustration:
First, the author refers to the saving of Jews of Turkish descent when as matter of fact they were Turkish citizens and some who had lost their citizenship revoked on capricious grounds.
Second, the author states that “about 20 Turkish diplomats” engaged in saving the lives of Jews.This number issubstantially overstated.In any event, if this had been the case, surely, Ülkümen would not be the only Turkish Righteous person inscribed in the rolls of Yad Vashem.
My comments are based on my reading of Corry Guttstadt’s well–researched comprehensive study titled Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust, first published in German in 2009 followed by its English translation published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.
Guttstadt,a lecturer in the Department of Turkish Studies at the University of Hamburg and an independent researcher with a focus on Turkey,commenced her research for this study in 1999 and, among substantial other sources, the book is based on data collected from about 50 archives worldwide. Further, she consulted with a large number of historians including Turkish ones and employed a number of Turkish researchers to ferret out the historical facts.
The study shows that during the Holocaust era,Turkey was far from welcoming Jews,including those who converted to Christianity in the hope of saving their lives.
The article,also refers to the showing of an ”international documentary film,the Turkish Passport”(2011) and describes its contents.
eSefarad reviewed the film on two occasions.A brief review in 2012 titled “Documentary:Turkish Passport(Turkey 2010)” and a longer one (whose date I could not figure out due to poor quality of the copy) titled “Film ‘Turkish Passport’:When Turkish Diplomats Saved Jews from the Nazis”.
And again, the facts alleged in both reviews are, not to put too fine a point on it, historically seriously deficient. In this regard, readers who wish to pursue the matter may wish to read Guttstadt’s lengthy review of the film published in the scholarly publication Sephardic Horizons under the title “Film Review:Turkish Passport, 2011”.
As the late Professor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Moynihan once put it: “You are entitled to your opinion but not to your own facts.”
My objections to the article under review and to the two film reviews, is that their authors bought the representations made and the inferences suggested in the documentary and by Turkish officialdom, at face value and wrote them up as facts instead of researching the subject-matte properly before putting pen to paper.
This is a serious problem when addressing the history of the Holocaust. Otherwise, the dicta “Never again” makes no sense .
Doğan D. Akman
