Necdet Kent
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İsmail Necdet Kent (1911-2002) was a Turkish diplomat who risked his life to save Jews during World War II.
He was posted as Consul General to Marseilles between 1941 and 1944, gave Turkish citizenship to dozens of Turkish Jews living in France who did not have proper identity papers to save them from deportation to the Nazi gas chambers.
On one occasion in 1943, Kent boarded a train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp after Nazi guards refused to let some 70 Jews with Turkish citizenship disembark. After more than an hour on the train, the guards let Kent and the Jews leave.
A Jewish worker at the consulate had alerted him that 80 Turkish Jews living in Marseilles had been loaded into cattle cars for immediate transport to certain death in Germany. The Jews were crammed one on top of the other in the wagon, which was meant to transport cattle. "To this day, I remember the inscription on the wagon: 'This wagon may be loaded with 20 heads of cattle and 500 kilograms of grass'". Overcome with sorrow and anger at the sight, Kent approached the Gestapo commander at the station, and demanded that the Jews, whom he said were Turkish citizens, be released. The official refused to comply, saying that the people were nothing but Jews.
Undeterred, and in a leap of courage and human benevolence, Kent turned to the Jewish worker from the consulate and said, "Come on, we're getting on this train, too." Pushing aside the soldier who tried to stop him, he jumped into the wagon. The German official asked him to get off, but Kent refused. The train started to move, but at the next station, German officers boarded and apologized to Kent for not letting him off at Marseilles; a car was waiting outside to take him back to his office. But Kent explained that the mistake was not that he was on the train - but that 80 Turkish citizens had been loaded on the train. "As a representative of a government that rejected such treatment for religious beliefs, I could not consider leaving them there," he said. Dumbfounded by his uncompromising stance, the Germans ultimately let everyone off the train.
"I cannot forget the embraces, the expression of gratitude in the eyes of the people we rescued and the inner peace that I felt when I go to bed in early morning", he said.
But Kent's heroism was not limited to this one action. In contrast to some of the other foreign consulates stationed in Marseilles, who began imitating the Nazis' disdain toward Jews, Kent issued Turkish identity documents to scores of Turkish Jews living in southern France or who had fled there and did not hold valid Turkish passports.
At one point, Kent went to Gestapo headquarters to protest against the latest abominable action that had begun in Marseilles: the stripping of males in the middle of the street to determine whether they were Jews or not. The consul-general rebuked the German commander and notified him that circumcision did not necessarily prove one's Jewishness. "When I saw the emptiness in the commanders eyes, I realize that he did not understand what I am saying. And I said that I will accept to be examined by their medical staff."
In 2001, Kent and two other diplomats, Namik Kemal Yolga and Selahattin Ulkumen, were honoured with Turkey's Supreme Service Medal as well as a special medal from Israel for rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.
After World War II, Kent served at Turkey's consulate in New York and was ambassador to Thailand, India, Sweden and Poland.
Necdet Kent is father of Muhtar Kent, since 2008 President of The Coca Cola Company.
