Mavi Boncuk |
Chaim Barlas, the Istanbul - based head of the "Committee for the Rescue of the Jews in Nazi - occupied Europe," organized under the auspices of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Photographed in 1944.
Born in Brest-Litovsk,Belorus on 18 DEC 1898 to Moshe Josef Barlas and Sheina Feige Shortzein. Chaim Barlas passed away on 1982 in Jerusalem, Israel.
EXCERPT FROM: Istanbul Intrigues by Barry Rubin, 1950-2014 Published: 1989
The British government's behavior was shameful. Early in the war, it encouraged Balkan states to block Jewish emigration and pressured the Greek, Panamanian, and Turkish governments to prohibit ships sailing under their flags from carrying Jewish refugees. A Foreign Office bureaucrat wrote, "The only hope is that all the German Jews will be stuck at the mouths of the Danube for lack of ships to take them." When one refugee ship, the STRUMA, sank with the loss of 769 people because no country would accept them, British Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley told Parliament that his government could not "be party to any measures which could undermine the existing policy regarding illegal immigration into Palestine in view of the wider issues involved." The British even tried to prove that the Germans were behind the escape efforts. "It is a pity that we cannot find an authentic Nazi at the bottom of it,” wrote the British ambassador to Greece, since that would provide a useful excuse for turning back refugees. During the war's first three years—when hundreds of thousands of Jews tried to escape from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and the Nazis were willing to let them go—the British allowed only 10,000 into Palestine. The Zionist movement smuggled in another 9000. When the ill-fated STRUMA arrived in Istanbul in late 1941, the Turks would not let its passengers land unless Britain guaranteed that they could proceed to Palestine. Otherwise, they would be sent back to Romania. Following London's instructions, Knatchbull-Hugessen said they were not wanted in Palestine, but he added on his own that instead of returning the ship to German-controlled territory, "let her rather go toward [the Mediterranean]. It might be that if [the refugees] reached Palestine, they might despite their illegality receive humane treatment." The ambassador's decent words outraged some of his superiors. A Colonial Office official in London wrote that the Turks were discouraging the refugee ships "and then the Ambassador goes and spoils the whole effect on absurdly misjudged humanitarian grounds." Another bemoaned the waste of "a heaven-sent opportunity" to return the refugees to Romania. Colonial Secretary Lord Moyne complained that if these people escaped it would have the "deplorable effect [of] encouraging further Jews to embark." While Prime Minister Winston Churchill was more willing to save refugees' lives, he often did not act to control what he himself characterized as "the usual anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic channel which it is customary for British [official] to follow." As late as June 1944 a senior Foreign Office official warned against "letting the Germans flood the Middle East with Jews in order to embarrass us. There is fortunately not much sign of it yet.” But Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann knew they had to fight alongside Britain as this offered the only chance of defeating Hitler. Thousands of Zionists volunteered for service with the British forces, while Arab leaders were secretly or openly allying with the Nazis. In exchange for this help, the Zionists wanted British aid in rescuing Jews from Europe. Their advanced post was the Istanbul "delegation" led by Jewish Agency representative Chaim Barlas. His younger colleagues, known collectively as "the boys," had the mission of circumventing officialdom. The murderous regulations blocking the escape of refugees were hard to cope with through either proper channels or circumlocution. States would not let Jews leave or pass through unless they had exit permits, transit visas, and guaranteed destinations. The Turks permitted few refugees to enter their country and none to remain. The prerequisite for admission was an entrance certificate for Palestine, which the strict British quota on Jewish immigration made difficult to obtain and slow to come. Thus, along with the official Aliya (immigration) movement, the delegation set up "Aliya Bet," a parallel structure for "illegal" immigration. Beginning in late 1942, about twenty young Jews, including Yehuda Pomerantz, Menahem Bader, Akiva Levinsky, Teddy Kollek, and Ehud Avriel, came from Palestine to Turkey for rescue, immigration, and intelligence work. Istanbul's location and neutrality made it the ideal advanced base for reaching into occupied Europe. Istanbul, Kollek said, provided "a narrow crack in an otherwise impenetrable wall." Except for Barlas, all these men lacked official standing and thus were nominally a timber buyer, Kollek a hazelnut merchant, and Avriel a journalist. Of course, Emniyet officials knew exactly what was going on; and after the war they showed Levinsky two thick books of reports and photographs about his activities. But the delegation was protected by its alliance with British intelligence. Major Arthur Whittall, another member of that ubiquitous Anglo-Istanbul family, served as the British liaison man. Flashing a whimsical smile, he explained: "We shall help you get the sources. Do your best to get us their information." If an "illegal" refugee ship arrived, the delegation's Greek agent would come to the man in charge of receiving the passengers and announce: "Police says arms on board. Had to stop and search." The proper response was "How much?" Using an expression in Ladino, the Hebrew-Spanish language of Turkish Jews, the agent would reply, "Todos comen," meaning "Everybody eats." The Turkish official would then specify the size of his grocery bill and, in exchange, would look the other way as the refugees disembarked. Members of the delegation also met refugees arriving on the trains from Bulgaria. The agents made valuable contacts on the station platform while waiting alongside police and customs officials. Often one of the terrified escapees would hide and make his own way to the delegation's office. But everyone had to have an entry stamp to get an exit permit. In such cases, Simon Brod was called upon to make arrangements through the magic of "Todos comen." Brod was a Turkish Jewish merchant who had been impoverished by the tax but who refused to be paid for his services. He would list his expenses on cigarette packs which he would then throw away while chain-smoking through the day. Brod was a little man with a chubby, rosy face crowned with silver hair. Avriel describes his eyes as being "like the heads of steel-blue pins that darted around to take in every new situation; they could be angelic one moment and scornful the next." Always the first to find out what was going on and the last to give up, he was particularly adept at smoothing relations between the delegation and the Turkish authorities. Levinsky recounts a typical example of harassment. He lived with a Jewish family who had to sleep on the floor, since all their beds had been confiscated. They were all asleep with the lights off, late one night, when the front doorbell rang. Two policemen stood outside. "There is light," they said. A blackout violation was a misdemeanor; three meant deportation. Levinsky called Brod, and the next day someone appeared at the family's door to accept the policemen's "tip." No offense appeared on the records. At first, the delegation worked out of Istanbul's Continental Hotel, but there were too many prying eyes around. It soon moved into three centers: a five-room apartment called "the Palestine Office," Barlas's headquarters, and a center for unaccompanied child refugees. The Jews from Palestine and local volunteers— speaking fourteen languages among them—worked from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. There was a huge amount of paperwork, and the corridors were always full of people. Everyone awaited travel documents or news of relatives; each day's mail call was taken for what it was: a matter of life or death. Some of the delegation's activities centered on Turkish Jews. After the tax oppression, many of the younger people wanted to leave the country. Levinsky taught Hebrew to small classes that produced teachers for groups eventually totaling 800 students, and he gave lectures preparing those who were leaving for Palestine. The situation in Europe, Barlas wrote Jerusalem, was truly devastating. "If I use the word desperate it is not enough to express the cruelty and the torture and above all the risk of being shot as a dog to which are exposed all our poor brethren in Romania" and the other occupied countries. Nothing in history had ever equaled "the killing of Jews by ten thousands and their transportation without food and water, their exile in this part of the year without permitting them to take with them their own winter garments." Those Jews still in Bucharest were fired from their jobs, dispossessed of their businesses, and placed under humiliating restrictions. "The cries [of] S.O.S. for immediate help [are] pouring from Romania and it is heartbreaking to know that you are not able to help." Beginning in September 1942, the Zionist delegation in Turkey launched its rescue effort by sending thousands of letters through the post and by courier into Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia to establish contacts with the Jews there. To show these people that they were not forgotten, Kollek later commented, was almost as important as the actual work of rescue. Prewar mailing lists of Zionist and other Jewish organizations and publications were scoured for names and addresses. Letters requesting information were phrased so that, to the censor, they would seem to have been written by the recipients' relatives. Thousands of responses told heartbreaking stories of roundups and deportations to concentration camps from which no one ever returned. Using simple codes so that their letters would pass censorship, the respondents begged for food parcels and passports. Hebrew words were transliterated into the Roman alphabet to disguise their news—"escape," for example, was indicated by "tiyul," meaning "a trip.” If fifty people in a city were said to have attended a wedding or party of some long-dead Zionist leader or Jewish cultural figure, it meant that 50,000 had been murdered there. After contacts were made, attempts to send aid followed. Couriers smuggled funds in the form of diamonds, gold coins, or local currency into the occupied lands to sustain the impoverished Jews. Some Turkish and Latin American diplomats helped, though only for a large fee. The Polish underground's couriers and the parcels sent home by Polish engineers working in Turkey were used to reach Poland. Contact with Greece was done through the British caïque shuttles. All the information obtained was shared with the British. The Zionists also provided them with a number of other services. For example, Kollek rang up Bucharest on the telephone every other day to get the weather report as guidance for Allied planes. He also obtained information on bombing damage and the names of captured fliers. Because of the urgency and difficulty of reaching Hungary, the delegation had to use experienced smugglers and known double agents as couriers. These included Gyorgy, who claimed his own involvement might "whitewash part of my soul.” In fact, he gave information to the Germans, but at least he also delivered the mail, money, and immigration documents which otherwise would not have gone through. In the Zionist efforts to rescue Jews, the Germans were often not the greatest obstacle. Refugees could obtain exit permits from their own country only after they received visas from each state they had to cross. These states, in turn, required evidence that Turkey would admit them. But the Turks would not give an applicant an entrance visa unless there was proof that the British would allow the person into Palestine. All this paperwork had to be pried from unsympathetic governments and slow-moving bureaucracies, transmitted through poor wartime communications, handled on minimal funds, and delivered to people who may have been deported or driven into hiding. To secure British cooperation, moreover, the Zionists had to persuade London that the refugees would be a prime intelligence source. The delegation was willing to try any route that offered hope for escape. When Afghanistan's ambassador to Turkey commented in 1942 about his country's difficulties in recruiting technicians, doctors, and engineers, Barlas immediately proposed that Afghanistan hire Balkan Jews for these positions. Even the ambassador was unable to get the necessary transit visas. Neutral ships could not be found to carry refugees, so the delegation tried to find its own boats. It convinced the United States and Britain to explore whether Romania would lease two large passenger liners sitting idle in Istanbul's harbor since the war began. Bucharest refused, fearful that the ships might be lost. The Red Cross said it had no money to buy them. Once refugees arrived in Turkey, they had to be housed and fed for weeks or months before they were put on the Taurus Express to Syria and thence to Palestine. Brod worked selflessly and endlessly to find them places to stay, clothing, food, and toys for the children. It was also hard to find funds, since the British forbade sending money from Palestine and the Turks closely controlled all currency transactions. The delegation was financed by smuggling diamonds into Istanbul in toothpaste tubes, shaving cream bottles, and hollowed bars of soap. Secret reports were sent home by similar methods. One secretary's moral reputation was damaged because she constantly bought condoms to keep dry the papers sent in this manner. An elderly black-suited Greek man, who looked more like a country parson than Istanbul's black-market financial wizard, was hired to turn diamonds into cash and foreign currency into Turkish pounds. Every tiny gain was a victory. After months of pleading and pressure from the delegation, the British persuaded the Turks to grant transit visas to nine families a week beginning in Apri11943. This step allowed about 1350 people to get out of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania between April and December. Another 312 escaped from Greece on British caïques. About 2100 people already in Turkey, including Turkish Jews, were sent on to Palestine. These estimates undercounted those rescued by "illegal" methods. Still, as Barlas commented, "The results of the immigration in numbers are in no comparison with the tragic situation of Jewry in the enemy-occupied countries, but taking into consideration the almost unsurmountable difficulties, I may say that it is a miracle that even this small number has escaped from the hell." Roncalli was one of the Jews' sincerest allies, although he, too, made compromises. When New York's Cardinal Spellman visited Roncalli's house in 1943, he was shocked by something he saw in its courtyard. Spellman shouted, "Hey Giuseppe, what are you doing with a bust of Mussolini out here? This is terrible." received visas from each state they had to cross. These states, in turn, required evidence that Turkey would admit them. But the Turks would not give an applicant an entrance visa unless there was proof that the British would allow the person into Palestine. All this paperwork had to be pried from unsympathetic governments and slow-moving bureaucracies, transmitted through poor wartime communications, handled on minimal funds, and delivered to people who may have been deported or driven into hiding. To secure British cooperation, moreover, the Zionists had to persuade London that the refugees would be a prime intelligence source. The delegation was willing to try any route that offered hope for escape. When Afghanistan's ambassador to Turkey commented in 1942 about his country's difficulties in recruiting technicians, doctors, and engineers, Barlas immediately proposed that Afghanistan hire Balkan Jews for these positions. Even the ambassador was unable to get the necessary transit visas. Neutral ships could not be found to carry refugees, so the delegation tried to find its own boats. It convinced the United States and Britain to explore whether Romania would lease two large passenger liners sitting idle in Istanbul's harbor since the war began. Bucharest refused, fearful that the ships might be lost. The Red Cross said it had no money to buy them. Once refugees arrived in Turkey, they had to be housed and fed for weeks or months before they were put on the Taurus Express to Syria and thence to Palestine. Brod worked selflessly and endlessly to find them places to stay, clothing, food, and toys for the children. It was also hard to find funds, since the British forbade sending money from Palestine and the Turks closely controlled all currency transactions. The delegation was financed by smuggling diamonds into Istanbul in toothpaste tubes, shaving cream bottles, and hollowed bars of soap. Secret reports were sent home by similar methods. One secretary's moral reputation was damaged because she constantly bought condoms to keep dry the papers sent in this manner. An elderly black-suited Greek man, who looked more like a country parson than Istanbul's black-market financial wizard, was hired to turn diamonds into cash and foreign currency into Turkish pounds. Every tiny gain was a victory. After months of pleading and pressure from the delegation, the British persuaded the Turks to grant transit visas to nine families a week beginning in Apri11943. This step allowed about 1350 people to get out of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania between April and December. Another 312 escaped from Greece on British caïques. About 2100 people already in Turkey, including Turkish Jews, were sent on to Palestine. These estimates undercounted those rescued by "illegal" methods. Still, as Barlas commented, "The results of the immigration in numbers are in no comparison with the tragic situation of Jewry in the enemy-occupied countries, but taking into consideration the almost unsurmountable difficulties, I may say that it is a miracle that even this small number has escaped from the hell." Roncalli was one of the Jews' sincerest allies, although he, too, made compromises. When New York's Cardinal Spellman visited Roncalli's house in 1943, he was shocked by something he saw in its courtyard. Spellman shouted, "Hey Giuseppe, what are you doing with a bust of Mussolini out here? This is terrible."
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