Embassy Row

’Righteous’ one

Bernard Turiel stood in the reception hall of the Turkish Embassy yesterday and did what he has done countless times since 1944. He remembered the Muslim diplomat who saved his Jewish family from a Nazi death camp.

He would not be alive today if not for the bravery of Selahattin Ulkumen, who, as a 30-year-old Turkish consul general on the island of Rhodes, saved 42 Jewish families through determination, brashness and imagination. Mr. Ulkumen paid dearly for his actions when Nazi planes later bombed the consulate and critically wounded his pregnant wife, Mittrinissa, who died a week after giving birth to a son.

Mr. Turiel, now a 69-year-old lawyer in New Jersey, said his mother, Mathilde, maintained contact with Mr. Ulkumen until he died last year at 89. Mr. Turiel was accompanied by his wife, Lynn; daughter, Karen; and month-old granddaughter, Rachel.

Mr. Ulkumen’s son, Mehmet, and grandson, Altug, also attended the reception that followed a ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Mehmet Ulkumen, now the chief of protocol at the U.N. office in Geneva, said he often asked his father whether his sacrifice had been worth it.

“He would reply, ’If I had to live my life again, I would not change a thing. My son, you must have the courage to stand up for principles,’” he said.

He recalled his father also said that in “Islam, as in Judaism, there is a belief that if you save one life, you save humanity.”

Selahattin Ulkumen had arrived in Rhodes, a former possession of the Ottoman Turkish empire, in 1943. The next year, the Nazis ordered the deportation of the island’s 1,700 Jews. The young diplomat immediately started identifying Jews with Turkish citizenship and demanding that they be turned over to his custody.

He pressed Nazi officials until they agreed to allow the 42 families, about 200 people, to leave for Turkey, which was neutral in World War II. He even invented a law that, he said, conferred Turkish citizenship on non-Turkish spouses, in order to keep some of the families together.

Israel later recognized him as one of “the righteous among the nations,” an honor conferred on non-Jews who saved Jews from the Holocaust. Mr. Ulkumen said his father is the only Muslim to receive such recognition.

Turkish Ambassador Osman Faruk Logoglu, referring to the ceremony that honored Selahattin Ulkumen, said, “We are better human beings after sharing that moment at the museum.”

Lenny Ben-David, former deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy, called Mr. Ulkumen “one brave man,” and Daniel S. Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith, noted that Mr. Ulkumen was a hero of his generation.

“Too many people looked aside,” he said. “They didn’t want to see.”

Banking on Sudan

Sudan yesterday threatened to order the closure of the U.S. Embassy unless Washington helps solve a banking problem that caused the Sudanese Embassy here to shut in August.

The State Department said a deal to allow the Sudanese Embassy to open an account with a private bank will be reached soon. U.S. officials have been trying to help the embassy find a new bank since Riggs Bank closed all of its embassy accounts earlier this year.

The Sudanese Embassy, which closed after it could not pay its bills or it staff, has reopened.

“We are close to a deal,” a senior State Department official told The Washington Times’ Nicholas Kralev.

The Sudanese government, which maintains that the United States is responsible for finding it a new bank, has given Washington until the end of this month to resolve the problem.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the U.S. officials have been “working assiduously to help solve this issue.”

• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison @washingtontimes.com.