Our mother always warned us: "Never, never, never tell that you are Jewish ... You are Turkish. You are Turkish. Incessantly, she was saying that to us.
Yesterday in my Rotary Club meeting I happened to sit next to a young lady from Turkey. Her name is Düden Yegenoglu, and she is Vice President of an international import/export company that facilitates trade between our country and Turkey.
When I told Düden that I was writing a book I asked her if she knew much about Turkey during World War II. To be honest, I knew very little except that Turkey was neutral. Neutral for most of the war … this afternoon I read that Turkey joined the Allies several months before the war was over.
Düden told me a remarkable story about how diplomats who were at Turkish Embassies in several European countries risked their lives to rescue Jews from the Nazis. They were given Turkish passports, put on trains and sent back to Turkey.
A documentary about these events, “The Turkish Passport,” has taken four years to complete. It premiered at Cannes in May. It is competing in the European category for The European Independent Film Festival 2012. I will be watching out on Facebook for its premiere in the U.S. (Hope they publish the news in English.)
I watched the trailer at the official website. It’s like a little documentary all by itself.
One of the survivors describes how, as a child, “Our mother always warned us: “Never, never, never tell that you are Jewish … You are Turkish. You are Turkish. Incessantly, she was saying that to us.”
When the war was over our parents settled down in Florida, and the horrors of the Holocaust became a well-publicized reality. In those early years, our mother would say the same thing to us, “You don’t need to talk about being (half) Jewish. We never know if the Holocaust might come again.”
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