last train to istanbul

'Last train to Istanbul'

This book (not available in English on Amazon, though the Turkish

version 'Nefes Nefese' is) by the Turkish author Ayse Kulin is set in

France and Turkey before and during the second world war. The daughter

of a well-to-do Turkish family married a Turkish Jew, much to the

disapproval of her family, and they decided to go to France to get

away from home. This was a mistake. The family's other daughter is

married to a Foreign Office official who is very wrapped up in his

work trying to keep the Allies and the Germans off the backs of Turkey

- both sides want Turkey to join their war effort. Turkish diplomats

in France do their best to rescue Turkish Jews, often retrieving them

from their arrest cells and even camps stating that they are Turks

first and in secular Turkey there is no discrimination on the grounds

of religion. Finally they develop an audacious plan to get groups of

Turkish citizens, Jewish or otherwise, out of France.....

It's an interesting book; although it is fiction, it appears to be

based on real events - the book opens with a list of consuls who

rescued Jewish people in various countries. It offers yet another view

point on the holocaust and about how people were spirited out towards

safety. The number of people involved in all these rescues, from

different parts of the globe, is really very considerable - the Swede

Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest (who later disappeared, reportedly to

have died in a Russian prison camp), the Japanese consul Sugihara in

Lithuania, the Turkish consuls in France, Germany, Budapest, Prague

and other places.... if you think that nowadays immigration officials

are extremely nitpicky about passports just consider how many forged

passports and dodgy visas, for very good reasons, floated around the

world at the time. Would the victims of today's genocides, Rwanda,

Darfur, have such support, or would they be put into detention camps

following their arrival in a safe country, only to be deported back

home at the earliest opportunity? Times have certainly changed.

The literary value of the book is not so high - no complicated

language; here the story line dominates. At the same time it does not

come over all sentimental as some books of the 'overcoming adversity'

type easily drift into. It is eminently (and fairly quickly) readable.

For me it was also nice to get more descriptions of Istanbul. The book

was for sale in all Istanbul bookshops with English language books, so

it must be a bit of a bestseller.

There are one or two moments where the facts might not have been fully

straight - I am not convinced that the average plodding German Gestapo

person would have been familiar with what is a Turkish Jewish name and

what isn't. Also at some stage our refugees pick up a newspaper in

Germany with news that the Russians have allowed the Czechs and the

Poles to train in the Soviet Union. I find it hard to believe that

such news would have been available to the German population during

the war.

Posted by violainvilnius at 8:07 PM

Labels: books