Where are the Turks?

When I read the article “The Jews of jihad,”  (Nov. 13) about the amazing relationship, trust and respect between the Turks and the Jews in Turkey, I could not help but remember reading how Turkish diplomats in France and Rhodes put their own lives at risk rescuing Jews, mainly scientists, musicians, medical workers and artists of Turkish origin.

Where are those Turks now?

Rouhama Danto
Toronto

Judaism and the right to die

Dr. Michael Gordon is quoted propagating the common misconception among both physicians and members of the public that in order to achieve comfort, the opioids used have a secondary effect of shortening life (“Balancing Judaism and the right to die,” Dec. 4). 

In reality, evidence from clinical trials clearly shows that when properly administered, opioids have no effect on breathing, and do not hasten death.

Palliative care can provide a way to allow natural death in comfort and dignity. It is not and should not be the mandate of a physician to take away life or assist in doing so.

If assisted death is decriminalized, it should be left to other professionals. The sacred trust between doctor and patients mandates this. 

Hershl Berman, MD
Palliative Care Specialist, Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto 

Rescue vs collaboration

Gaylen Ross compares the actions of Rezso Kasztner with Oskar Schindler, asking why one is considered a hero, while the other, a leading member of the Hungarian Jewish community, has been labelled a collaborator (“When rescue is not collaboration,” Dec. 4). This is a disingenuous comparison that does not reflect the realities of each of their situations.

The people who Schindler saved were not his friends or political allies, and he was never in a position to be able to protect more people than he did. Kasztner on the other hand, was in a position of influence and power within the Hungarian Jewish community and did make personal decisions regarding who would get on the train to be saved, or not. The operation was not about saving as many Hungarian Jews as possible, but about looking after the relatives and children of the members of the Central Jewish Council and the Budapest Vaadah.

Kasztner willfully withheld information about the massacres of Jews across Europe, from the Jewish population of Hungary. He justified this in part by claiming that it would have been impractical to copy and distribute the Auschwitz Protocols report by the thousands across the country, and that the Jews would have had limited opportunities for revolt and/or resistance, in any event. 

This knowledge and the power to withhold or distribute it to the Jewish community at large, placed Kasztner in a unique position to at least try to make the maximum effort possible to save as many innocent people as possible. Instead, he got caught up in his own agenda and possibly heightened sense of self-importance and made a decision that no individual person should have taken upon themselves – to deny hundreds of thousands of men, women and children the opportunity to try to escape, fight back in some way, or fend for themselves in the face of such an unprecedented threat to an entire community. 

Perhaps his assessment was accurate, but we will never know, because these people were denied the opportunity to try to protect themselves by the decisions made by one man.

Zoltan Moor, a member of the Hungarian Zionist movement, and a passenger on the Kasztner train, made the following entry in his notebook on May 11, 1945: “Somebody, perhaps more than one person, will surely write the history of the liquidation of Hungarian Jewry. The Hungarian Zionists will certainly add a couple of pages to that story. I wonder if they will not forget to include their own mistakes, their own crimes.” 

Peter Mann
Hampstead, Que.