A Call for Change: On Verification of a Candidate’s Merit for Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Award

Abstract

Turkish diplomats saved Turkish Jews living in France from certain death during World War II. The totality of recent findings of contemporaneous documents from various US government archives confirm that the intervention in behalf of French Jews with Turkish origins was not the policy of the Government of Turkey at all but the determined undertaking of members of the Turkish diplomatic corps in France. They acted independently against the extant policy of Turkey’s government. Their actions risked the wrath and ire of their own government as well as those of Germany and Vichy France. Their careers and often their lives were at risk and their diplomatic peers representing western countries offered no support. Most of these diplomats individually and collectively deserve to be given Yad Vashem’s Righteous Gentile Award. Those who make the determination have in the past demanded first hand survivor testimony attesting to specific life-saving acts. Although they have been shown as “proof of the pudding,” the fact that comparatively few of France’s Jewish community having Turkish origins were deported and died in Eastern Europe’s concentration camps and crematoria – 3.5% versus 22% for all of France, the decision makers are still bound by the traditional rules to determine the merit of each case. However, because the pool of witnesses who could testify to having been saved by a Turkish diplomat in France has been significantly reduced by the passage of time, to serve fairness and justice the method of deciding on a candidate’s merit must be reviewed and revised. This paper offers decision makers an alternative (not mutually exclusive) methodology which is based on the systems approach.