Necdet Kent

Necdet Kent
Born
İsmail Necdet Kent

(1911-01-01)1 January 1911[1]
Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
Died20 September 2002(2002-09-20) (aged 91)
Istanbul, Turkey
NationalityTurkish
Alma materNew York University
OccupationDiplomat
Known forClaims of saving lives of Jews during World War II
ChildrenMuhtar Kent
AwardsTurkey's Supreme Service Medal

İsmail Necdet Kent (1 January 1911 – 20 September 2002) was a Turkish diplomat, who claimed to have risked his life to save Jews during World War II. While vice-consul in Marseilles, France between 1941 and 1944, he allegedly gave documents of citizenship to dozens of Turkish Jews living in France who did not have proper identity papers, to save them from deportation to the Nazi gas chambers. These claims, first published in an appendix to Stanford J. Shaw's book Turkey and the Holocaust (1993),[2] have not been independently verified; no survivors or their descendants have confirmed the account.[3] Marc David Baer and other historians have documented several inconsistencies in Kent's story; Baer concludes that it is "manufactured" and Uğur Ümit Üngör calls it a "complete fabrication".[4][5][6][7]

  1. ^ everyone in Turkey at that time had a year of birth but not a date of birth
  2. ^ Baer 2020, p. 193.
  3. ^ Baer 2020, p. 199.
  4. ^ Baer 2020, pp. 193–194.
  5. ^ Bahar, I. Izzet (2014). Turkey and the Rescue of European Jews. Routledge. p. 190. ISBN 978-1-317-62599-5.
  6. ^ Guttstadt, Corry (2008). Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-521-76991-4.
  7. ^ Uğur Ümit Üngör. "Üngör on Burak Arliel, 'The Turkish Passport' | H-Genocide | H-Net". networks.h-net.org. Retrieved 25 December 2020.