Even though Turkey remained neutral during World War II ( until its symbolic declaration of war on Nazi Germany on 23 February 1945 ) and officially forbade granting visas to German Jews , individual Turkish diplomats ( such as Necdet Kent , Namık Kemal Yolga , Selahattin Ülkümen and Behiç Erkin ) did work hard to save Jews from The Holocaust . Stanford Shaw claims that Turkey saved 100,000 , while another historian Rıfat Bali claims Turkey saved 15,000 and another historian Tuvia Friling , an Israeli expert on the Balkans and the Middle East , claims 20,000 . In his book Arnold Reisman , accepts a figure of 35,000 comprising 15,000 Turkish Jews from France , and approximately 20,000 Jews from Eastern Europe
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
History of the Jews in Turkey