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As early as 1933 Ataturk invited numbers of prominent German Jewish professors to flee Nazi Germany and settle in Turkey. During World War II, Turkey served as a safe passage for many Jews fleeing the horrors of the Nazism, even under intense British pressure not to do so. While the Jewish communities of Greece and Yugoslavia were nearly wiped out by Hitler, the Turkish and Bulgarian Jews survived almost 100%.
THE ANTI-SEMITISM OF NAZI GERMANY prompted Jewish people to seek refuge in numerous places. Among the least known was Turkey, which welcomed highly educated emigres in the hopes of transforming Turkish higher education. These hopes were realized. No other act served republican Turkey's founding fathers' vision of modernizing and westernizing Turkish society more than the development of the country's universities. Without a doubt, the total impact on Turkey's higher education was much greater than the sum of the emigre professors' individual contributions. No other policy served the country's educational reforms more than those invitations that had been extended to Nazi-persecuted German, Austrian, and later German-speaking Czech intelligentsia. No other country had a national policy to salvage so much intellectual capital from elsewhere in order to facilitate the achievement of its own goals and objectives.
In 1933, Turkey had only two universities. Both were in Istanbul, and one was a technical university. Today, the Turkish system of higher education is nationwide, and boasts no fewer than seventy-two public and private universities. Significantly, over 40 percent of the professors are women, who have never encountered a glass ceiling in academic administration. Annually, over 1.7 million students sit for the national university admission examination, and the best of these get the widest choices for acceptance.
In retrospect, just a few decades after the Ottoman Empire had taken its last breath, the general exodus of professors had so depleted Germany's premier higher-learning institutions that the University of Istanbul was rightfully considered and sincerely called "the best German University in the world." According to Onur Oymen, the Turkish government's contract with the emigre professors set salaries "well exceeding" those of the Turkish professors. Oymen pointed out that "the purpose of the Turkish government was to upgrade the academic level of Istanbul University to that of Western European universities." A number of German professors had high reputations in their own countries and participated in major reform projects in Turkey besides their teaching activities. For example, Andreas Schwarz from Freiburg made an important contribution to the adoption of western laws in Turkey in the 1930s. Gustav Oelsner from Hamburg, besides teaching architecture and city planning, played an important role in Turkey's city planning programs. Paul Hindemith was instrumental in building the Turkish State Conservatory in Ankara, Carl Ebert from Berlin founded the Turkish State Opera, and conductor Ernst Praetorius founded the President's Philharmonic Orchestra in Ankara. They gave their students the tools, knowledge, and curiosity needed to effect change and to grow. They fulfilled their contractual obligations to the country that provided them a safe haven by helping to establish Istanbul University, Istanbul Technical University, and Ankara University. These three universities give credit to those emigres who accomplished so much in such a relatively brief time. Their students remember them with honor. Included among those granted honorary degrees over the years from Istanbul University's Academic Senate are Fritz Neumark, Fritz Arndt, Richard von Mises, Curt Kosswig, Felix Haurowitz, and Gustav Oelsner. All of these intellectuals substantially contributed to the reform programs of the young Turkish Republic.
German Jews in Turkey 1933-1935
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