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

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 studies the role of the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey in providing refuge and prosperity for Jews fleeing from persecution in Europe and Byzantium in medieval times and from Russian pogroms and the Nazi holocaust in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It studies the religiously-based communities of Ottoman and Turkish Jews as well as their economic, cultural and religious lives and their relations with the Muslims and Christians among whom they lived.

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.

What compels Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of antisemitism in Turkey? Based on historical narrative, the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire and then, later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then how can we believe that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians? Marc David Baer confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to find the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts but to confront it and come to terms. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, Baer sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide.

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.