Mistaken for Jews: Turkish PhD Students in Nazi Germany

The history and memory of “Turks” in Germany during World War II is a “blind spot” in Turkish-German studies. What still needs to be examined are nonarchival Turkish texts and contexts of that era, especially autobiographical accounts, written in Turkish and German, which complicate our understanding of Turkish, German, and Jewish entanglements, encounters, and exchanges. This article fills this gap by presenting the accounts of citizens of the Turkish Republic who earned PhDs in Nazi Germany and were eyewitnesses to the antisemitic persecution of that era, especially the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9, 1938, which led them to fear being mistaken for Jews.