Selahattin Ülkümen, the Turkish Righteous among the Nations

The history of the Holocaust is far from complete. Even with more than seven decades of Holocaust research and writing behind us, there are many specialist topics within Holocaust historiography that have not been dealt with in detail, including the role of Turkey. This has caused the researchers of the Holocaust in other countries to often include limited, outdated, and sometimes incorrect data about Turkey in their studies. Within the flood of publications on Holocaust history that has been rising since the 1990s, and which has maintained its momentum ever since, studies on the role of Turkey remain comparatively underexplored. Selahattin Ülkümen, a Turk, is the only Muslim diplomat who thus far has been designated as “Righteous among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Authority) in Jerusalem for saving, at his own risk, the lives of 42 Jews in Rhodes from the Nazis in 1944. Thus momentarily thrust into prominence, he excites a certain curiosity. However, current scholarship has failed to reveal a single monograph or even an article in periodical literature on him. Neither Turk nor Westerner has devoted more than a few pages to his exploits. References to him in other sources are slight and fall short of explaining a satisfactory explanation of his deeds. The remarkable story of Ülkümen is an important but little-known aspect of Turkish history in the Second World War period. He is an individual who has not received the attention he deserves. This book serves to fill this historiographical void. It draws on the previously unused files of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Yad Vashem Archives, and available primary and secondary sources in Turkish, English, and French.