Turkish Jews - World War II

World War II

Turkey served as a transit for European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution during the 1930s and 1940s.

Even though Turkey remained neutral during World War II (until its symbolic declaration of war on Nazi Germany on 23 February 1945) and officially forbade granting visas to German Jews, individual Turkish diplomats (such as Necdet Kent, Namık Kemal Yolga, Selahattin Ülkümen and Behiç Erkin) did work hard to save Jews from the Holocaust. Stanford Shaw claims that Turkey saved 100,000, while another historian Rifat Bali claims Turkey saved 15,000 and another historian Tuvia Friling, an Israeli expert on the Balkans and the Middle East 20,000. In his book Arnold Reisman, accepts a figure of 35,000 comprising 15,000 Turkish Jews from France, and approximately 20,000 Jews from Eastern Europe.

A memorial stone with a bronze epitaph was inaugurated in 2012, as the third of individual country memorials (after Poland and the Netherlands) at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp for eight Turkish citizens killed during the Nazi regime in the said camp. The Turkish Ambassador to Berlin, Hüseyin Avni Karslıoğlu stated in an inauguration speech that Germany set free 105 Turkish citizens, held in camps, after a mutual agreement between the two countries, and these citizens returned to Turkey in April 1945, although there is no known official record for other Turkish jews who may have died during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

According to Rifat Bali, Turkish authorities bear some responsibility for the Struma disaster, killing about 781 Jewish refugees and 10 crew, due to their refusal to allow the Jewish refugees on board to disembark in Turkey. William Rubinstein goes further, citing British pressure on Turkey not to let Struma's passengers disembark, in accordance with Britain's White Paper of 1939 to prevent further Jewish immigration to Palestine.