Turkey and the Holocaust

Prior to joining the Allied Powers late in the war, Turkey was officially neutral in World War II. Despite its neutrality, Turkey maintained strong diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany during the period of the Holocaust.[1] During the war, Turkey denaturalized 3,000 to 5,000 Jews living abroad; between 2,200 and 2,500 Turkish Jews were deported to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor; and several hundred confined in Nazi concentration camps. When Nazi Germany encouraged neutral countries to repatriate their Jewish diaspora, Turkish diplomats received instructions to avoid repatriating Jews even if they could prove their Turkish nationality.[2] Turkey was also the only neutral country to implement anti-Jewish laws during the war.[3] Between 1940 and 1944, around 13,000 Jews passed through Turkey from Europe to Mandatory Palestine.[4] According to the research of historian Rıfat Bali [de; tr], more Turkish Jews suffered as a result of discriminatory policies during the war than were saved by Turkey.[5] Since the war, Turkey and parts of the Turkish Jewish community have promoted exaggerated claims of rescuing Jews,[6][1] using this myth to promote Armenian genocide denial.[7][8]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Webman was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Baer 2020, pp. 202–203.
  3. ^ Baer 2020, p. 202.
  4. ^ Ofer, Dalia (1990). Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel, 1939–1944. Oxford University Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-19-506340-0.
  5. ^ Baer, Marc David (2015). "Corry Guttstadt. Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Translated from German by Kathleen M. Dell'Orto, Sabine Bartel, and Michelle Miles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 353 pp. – I. Izzet Bahar. Turkey and the Rescue of European Jews. New York and London: Routledge, 2015. 308 pp". AJS Review. 39 (2): 467–470. doi:10.1017/S0364009415000252.
  6. ^ Baer 2020, p. 4.
  7. ^ Baer 2020, pp. 124, 129.
  8. ^ Smith et al. 1995, pp. 6, 11.