TORONTO — The heroism of a Muslim Turkish ambassador who saved Jewish lives in Nazi-occupied France was the subject of a sharp but friendly debate between a Jewish researcher and Turkey’s consul general in Toronto.
Levent Bilgen, Turkey’s consul general in Toronto, left, and Arnold Reisman. [Uluc Ozguven photo]
The encounter, which took place recently at Temple Sinai Congregation during Holocaust Education Week, pitted Arnold Reisman against Levent Bilgen.
Reisman, the author of An Ambassador and a Mensch: The Story of a Turkish Diplomat in Vichy France, claimed that Behic Erkin’s decision to rescue some 3,000 Jews of Turkish origin was personal and altruistic, but at variance with official Turkish policy.
Behic Erkin
“It’s my position, in all friendship and respect, that there was not a policy by the Turkish government to help Jews,” said Reisman, a professional engineer who survived the Holocaust in Poland and immigrated to the United States after World War II.
Bilgen, a Turkish diplomat who was posted to Turkey’s embassy in Israel from 1999 to 2002 before assuming his current position in Toronto, sharply disagreed with Reisman.
Far from being a loose canon, he asserted in a rebuttal, Erkin acted in accordance with directives from the Turkish government.
Bilgen claimed that Reisman’s presentation was implicitly disrespectful of Turkey’s genuine efforts to help Jews during the Holocaust and was part of a “sinister” campaign to defame and harm Turkey.
The object of their clash, Behic Erkin, was Turkey’s ambassador to France from 1939 to 1943. He arrived in Paris several weeks before the outbreak of World War II and about nine months before Germany’s conquest of France.
Born in 1876 in Istanbul, Erkin was a close friend of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of the Republic of Turkey after World War I and the first president of Turkey.
During World War I, when Ottoman Turkey was aligned with Germany, Erkin won a German Iron Cross medal for bravery. Later, he fought in Turkey’s War of Independence and served in Ataturk’s cabinet as a minister.
From 1928 to 1939, he was Turkey’s ambassador to Hungary, and on the eve of World War II, he was hand-picked by the Turkish president, Ismet Inonu, to be Turkey’s envoy to France.
Reisman, who until recently was a professor of operations research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, began his lecture on an upbeat note by saying that Turkey, a neutral power during the war, should be commended for having come to the assistance of Jews in their darkest hour.
As the United States and Canada dithered while Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were murdered, Erkin and his staff worked hard to rescue Jews in France who had Turkish passports or an ancestral connection to Turkey, said Reisman, who started taking a serious interest in Turkey after visiting that predominantly Muslim nation as a tourist some years ago.
By his estimate, France was home to 20,000 Jews with Turkish roots when it was invaded by Germany in 1940. Jews of Turkish descent comprised slightly more than six per cent of France’s Jewish population at the time.
About eight per cent of such Jews were deported to German concentration camps, he said.
In saving some 3,000 Jews, Erkin contravened Turkish policy, he said. “In Turkey today, the politically correct view is that it was the policy of Turkey to help Jews.” But in fact, Erkin risked his career to assist Jews.
In German-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, he noted, Turkey did not extend assistance to Jews with Turkish roots out of fear of angering Germany.
On the island of Rhodes, however, Turkey’s consul general, Selahattin Ulkumen, incurred the wrath of the Nazis by rescuing about 50 Jews, Reisman acknowledged. After the war, he noted, Ulkumen was honoured by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile.
In an explanation of Erkin’s unilateral behaviour, Reisman suggested he had a well-established record for acting independently and traded on his excellent connections in Turkey.
As well, German officials in France deferred to Erkin, not wishing to offend Turkey, which maintained cordial diplomatic and substantial commercial relations with Germany throughout the war.
Finally, the Germans were in awe of Erkin’s status as one of the very few foreigners who had ever won the coveted Iron Cross medal.
According to Reisman, the pro-German Vichy French regime pressured Turkey to recall Erkin in 1943. Shortly afterward, he said, Erkin submitted his resignation. He died in 1961.
Reisman said Erkin deserves to be recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile, and will support all such efforts.
Taking the floor again after Reisman’s talk, Bilgen said Erkin was not recalled after three tours of duty, since he had already reached retirement age.
In an allusion to Reisman’s accusation that Turkish diplomats in Greece and Yugoslavia had not come to the aid of Jews, Bilgen said moral judgments are improper in light of the difficult circumstances that prevailed in those countries during that period.
Turkey allowed Jewish refugees to transit through Turkish territory and permitted the Jewish Agency to maintain an office on its soil, he said.
Turkey’s centuries-old bonds of friendship with the Jewish people cannot be broken, notwithstanding current political tensions between Turkey and Israel, Bilgen said.
Reisman, in an attempt to credit Turkey for humanitarian work, praised the Turkish government for having admitted 190 German Jewish refugees, all academics, fleeing Nazism. And he absolved Turkey for the Struma tragedy. The Struma, a passenger ship filled with hundreds of Romanian Jews bound for Palestine, was ordered out of Turkish territorial waters and then sunk by a Soviet submarine. Reisman blamed Britain, the mandatory power in Palestine, for the Struma disaster.
