ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapter 3 , the image of Turkey as a savior-nation was widely disseminated with the publication of Shaw’s book Turkey and the Holocaust in 1993 and his various articles on the story of rescued Jews from Nazi German-occupied France. Books, articles, movies, and novels were produced using Shaw’s works explicitly or implicitly as a reference. In particular, the documentary movie Desperate Hours, about the rescue of Turkish Jews from France, was screened frequently at international conferences on Turkish Jewry and at social and cultural Jewish gatherings in the United States. Despite its lack of scientifi c rigor, this movie played an important role in disseminating information about the event on a wide scale. A recent documentary movie The Turkish Passport , whose production took four years, 1 was shown for the fi rst time at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2011 and propelled this message to an even larger audience. Indeed, commercial screening of this fi lm was launched in 31 theaters in 15 Turkish cities in the third week of October 2011. The story of the rescue of Jews of Turkish origin in France by Turkish diplomats became the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, as well as of special programs on television. In an effort to publicize its message to a wider international audience outside Turkey, the fi lm was entered into several local and international fi lm festivals and it won awards in some of them. 2
An important part of several publications about this topic, especially the two documentary movies, was testimony by some of the Turkish Jews who were able to return to Turkey and by some of the Turkish diplomats who served in France in the war years. As fi rsthand witnesses to the events in German-occupied France in those years, they vividly presented their memories in interviews. Their description of the highly protective and caring attitude of Turkish diplomats to Jewish citizens of Turkey living in France is the most impressive and persuasive part of all of these works. In watching these documentary movies, it is diffi cult, if not impossible, to not be touched by the feelings of gratitude expressed by the Turkish Jews who could return to Turkey and by their statements that they owed their survival to Turkey and her diplomats. The testimony of two veteran diplomats who happened to still be living in the 1990s was also striking. In their accounts, they described how they benevolently protected and saved not only Jews of Turkish origin who
had regular or irregular status, but also Jews of other nationalities, at the risk of their careers and even their lives. In this chapter, we will review these testimonies and interviews and research how well they agree with the realities of occupied France during the war years as refl ected by archival documents.
