CONGRESSIONAL SCREENING OF “DESPERATE HOURS”

(Extensions of Remarks in the Congressional Record)

BY HON. TOM LANTOS OF CALIFORNIA - IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

• MR. LANTOS.-- Mr. Speaker, I am honored today to mark a special occasion, the screening of the film documentary ``Desperate Hours,'' the story of Turkish assistance to European Jews seeking to flee the Holocaust. Produced and directed by Victoria Barrett, the film will be shown at 7:15 p.m. in room HC-7 in the Capitol. I am proud to be a co-sponsor of this event.

• What most ennobles Turkey for me is Its role as a savior of so many Jews during the two greatest Jewish tragedies of the past millennium, the Inquisition and the Holocaust. During the Inquisition of the late fifteenth century, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezit invited the fleeing Jews of Spain and Portugal to find comfort in his realm. The 500th anniversary of this episode--both sad and redemptive--was marked by Turkish Jews and non-Jews alike in 1992.

• The documentary ``Desperate Hours'' commemorates Turkey's rarely cited role in that other Jewish tragedy--the greatest crime of the bloody twentieth century--the Holocaust. Turkey's efforts were as important and dramatic as they are little known. Turkey offered refuge to hundreds of Germans--non-Jews as well as Jews--during the 1930s. Its diplomats in France, often without waiting for instructions from the capital, conferred Turkish citizenship on thousands of desperate Jews trapped in Nazi-occupied and Vichy France. In some cases Turkish diplomats, at great personal risk, stared down Gestapo officers to protect their new fellow citizens, as was the case with the saintly Necdet Kent. All this, while Nazi troops stood poised on Turkey's borders.

• My wife and I were saved by Raul Wallenberg. I am pleased that the Turkish versions of Wallenberg are at last receiving their due.

• The intimate links between Turks and Jews continue, of course, to this day. A community of some 25,000 Jews thrives in contemporary Turkey. Tens of thousands of Turkish Jews living nearby in Israel cherish their links to Turkey. All of this is a testament to the Muslim-Jewish friendship that has been a hallmark of the Turkish historical experience.

• In recent times, Turkish-Jewish friendship has been enriched and deepened by the close relations Israel and Turkey have forged in recent years. Journalists have focused on the security relationship--and that indeed is important--but the non-security aspects of this relationship are growing even more rapidly: burgeoning commercial trade now worth over a billion dollars a year, Israeli tourists by the hundreds of thousands flocking annually to Turkey, and a vibrant intellectual exchange between Turkish and Israeli universities.

• No other Muslim society rivals Turkey's record regarding the Jews; in fact, few societies of any type anywhere in the world do. ..I strongly commend all those associated with the film ``Desperate Hours'' for helping to elucidate and publicize one of the most important chapters in the long, dramatic, and mutually rewarding history shared by the Jewish and Turkish peoples.