Turkish Diplomat Selahattin Ulkumen; rescuer of Jews Dies

His house in Rhodes was bombed in retaliation, and his pregnant wife later died from injuries.

The Jerusalem Yad Vashem Holocaust museum awarded Ulkumen the title of Righteous Among the Nations in 1990.

"All I did was carry out my duty as a human being," Ulkumen told the Vatan newspaper in an interview.

In 2001, Ulkumen and two other diplomats, Necdet Kent and Namik Kemal Yolga, were honored with the Supreme Service Medal – Turkey’s highest honor – as well as a medal from Israel for saving Jews. Israel’s ambassador to Turkey at the time, Uri Bar-Ner, expressed thanks at the ceremony for saving "our Jewish brothers at the darkest moment in history."

The diplomats were known as the "Turkish Schindlers," after Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist whose efforts to save more than 1,000 Jews from Nazi death camps were recounted in Steven Spielberg’s "Schindler’s List."

Kent, who gave Turkish citizenship to dozens of Turkish Jews without identity papers, died last year. Yolga gave identity papers to Jews in France.

Ulkumen retired from Turkey’s foreign service in 1979.

A funeral service was scheduled Monday at Istanbul’s Levent Mosque.