Routier, Albert Emile, Türkiye'nin Lyon Fahri Konsolosu, Rhone, Fransa 1942
Dosya 13304
“Albert Routier was a French citizen who served as Turkey's Honorary Consul in Lyon. In 1942, Jews with citizenship of neutral countries such as Spain and Türkiye were still exempt from deportation, and so passports or other documents from those countries were life-saving. Despite the restrictive policy of the Turkish authorities, faced with the plight of the Jews, Consul Routier did everything to help Turkish Jews, but at the same time he issued documents in Turkish to people who had no connection with Turkey. Among those he saved were Rabbi Benjamin Assouline, born in Constantine, Algeria, his wife Sarah, and their children Rose (b. 1942) and Jacques (b. 1944). Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, Sarah fled to Lyon, where she met and married Rabbi Assouline. Rabbi Assouline had Arabic documents stating that he was Jewish. Routier produced fake translations, saying that they were a Muslim family named Elma. Other families helped by Routier were Mendel and Perl Mersel, who received documents under the false names Mustafa and Aisha Bekir, and Albert and Batsheva Semmelmann, who became Abdi and Leila Bekir.
On November 26, 1942, an anonymous tip letter reached the Turkish Consulate General in Marseille, stating that Routier was helping Jews, including non-Turkish citizens. Routier wanted to hand in his resignation but decided to stay in his position and continue helping people in need. He remained in this position until mid-1944 and continued his rescue activities.
After the war, the children of the Assouline, Semmelmann and Mersel families, who were born during the war and therefore bore the fake family names given to them by Routier, applied to the French authorities to change their surnames. Jacques Elma thus became Jacques Assouline, Hazelie Bekir became Miriam Semmelmann, and Rıfat Bekir became Alex Mersel.
On November 1, 2016, Yad Vashem recognized Albert Emile Routier as a Just One Among the Nations.
Sources:
[Shaw, Stanford J. Türkiye and the Holocaust: Turkey's Role in Saving Turkish and European Jews from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945. (New York: New York University Press, 1993), p. 62-63, 335. Report submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the activities of the Honorary Consul General of Turkey in Lyon, Turkish Embassy Archive (Paris) File 6127, no. 638 26 November 1942.]
