İsmail Necdet Kent (1 January 1911 – 20 September 2002) was a Turkish diplomat, who claimed to have risked his life to save Jews during World War II. While vice-consul in Marseille, France between 1941 and 1944, he allegedly gave documents of 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. These claims, first published in an appendix to Stanford J. Shaw's book Turkey and the Holocaust (1993), have not been independently verified; no survivors or their descendants have confirmed the account. Marc David Baer and other historians have documented several inconsistencies in Kent's story; Baer concludes that it is "manufactured" and Uğur Ümit Üngör calls it a "complete fabrication".
Biography
Early life and education
Necdet Kent was born in 1911 in Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire and got his secondary education from Lycée de Galatasaray, as did some of his colleagues in the foreign ministry. He travelled to the United States for his university studies, earning a degree in public law from New York University. He was also briefly a professional footballer for Hull FC.
Career
Returning to Turkey, Kent entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1937. He was first posted as vice consul to Athens, Greece. In 1941, he was appointed to the post of vice consul at Marseille, France, a post which he held until 1944. Many refugees gathered in southern France during the war, and Marseille was a major port of embarkation.
After World War II, Kent continued his career in the Turkish foreign service. He served as Consul General at the Turkish Consulate General in New York City. He also was at different times the Turkish ambassador to Thailand, India, Sweden,
Kent also claimed that he reached out to the Jewish community, issuing Turkish identity documents to scores of Turkish Jews living in southern France, or those who had fled there and did not hold valid Turkish passports.
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation researched the role of Turkish diplomats during the Holocaust, reporting:
Kent has not been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.
Legacy and honors
In 2001, Kent, Namık Kemal Yolga and Selahattin Ülkümen, also Turkish diplomats who had worked in Europe and saved Jews during World War II, were honoured with the Distinguished Service Award of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
See also
- History of the Jews in Turkey
- Behiç Erkin
- Turkish Passport (film)