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The History Podcast
Half-Life: 4. Young Republic
00:29:06
Joe travels to Turkey where his great-grandfather was employed, it seems, making gas masks
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- [00:01]
Joe Dunthorne
BBC Sounds music radio podcasts.
- [00:12]
Eleanor McDowell
On the evening of 7 October 1935, my German Jewish great grandfather Siegfried was on a sleeper train halfway across Turkey. He had left his young family back in Istanbul while he went on ahead to make arrangements for their new life. As the sun set, he looked out at the beautiful emptiness of the Anatolian plateau. Sand, stone, brush, low hills dotted with huts and sheep and goats. Far behind him was their old life in Germany, where the anti Semitic Nuremberg Laws had just been passed. From the train he could see the outlines of the mountains and approaching somewhere in the distance, the young capital of the Turkish Republic.
- [01:02]
Joe Dunthorne
We are heading now towards Ankara into one of the sets of mountains. There's a tiny sliver of moon that's just risen up and hopefully is going to light the mountains as we go through them.
- [01:17]
Eleanor McDowell
I wanted to arrive by sleeper train the same way my great grandfather did. My radio producer Elela and I had bunk beds in a cabin.
- [01:27]
Tanar Akcam
Can you describe the outlines of the mountains?
- [01:30]
Joe Dunthorne
Oh yes I can. There's very large mountains. I like that. The snow, obviously there's snow. It's nice. Snow is nice and mountains are nice and together they're extra nice.
- [01:56]
Eleanor McDowell
These are the profound insights you only get from first hand research. We slept and woke up on the outskirts of Ankara just as my great grandfather did.
- [02:10]
Joe Dunthorne
Well, I'm thinking of Siegfried a little bit because when he was first coming to Ankara from Istanbul, he stayed in the sleeper carriage.
- [02:22]
Eleanor McDowell
He was traveling on his own and.
- [02:26]
Joe Dunthorne
As he arrived in the city he realized he'd been locked into the cabin. And so his first memory of arriving.
- [02:33]
Eleanor McDowell
In Ankara was of banging on the.
- [02:36]
Joe Dunthorne
Door to be let out.
- [02:46]
Eleanor McDowell
This is Half Life. I'm Joe Dunthorne and you're listening to episode four, Young Republic. My great grandfather came to Turkey to work for the Turkish Red Crescent, a long standing charitable organization equivalent to the British Red Cross. And though Siegfried was still working with gases, this time it was not about poison gas, but civilian gas masks helping to protect ordinary citizens from danger. This was a role he could be proud of and it became one of the well known details in my family history, his pivot from weapons production to humanitarian work. And I'd been happy to believe that until my mum translated his letters from Turkey. They told a less comforting story. The gas mask factory where he worked had been on a hill outside the city. Searching online I noticed that a business called the Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation now had the same address. This company, mke, also runs a military history museum in Ankara. It had a number of Five star online reviews, including one from a local guide who described it as a good place for kids to see and touch guns. We walked through the museum's gardens, passing rows of enormous machines that loomed like exhibits in a dinosaur park. There were contraptions for pressurizing ammunition shaping, howitzer barrels, deep hole drilling. One thing I noticed was that almost all of them were German made. Inside the museum, I started to find traces of my great grandfather. A machine built by his old employers in Berlin, and the boxy gas masks he produced in his new factory in Ankara. It felt weird to see his work in this context in a museum full of the latest sniper rifles and a naval cannon that can fire 80 long distance shells a minute. At the grand opening of the gas mask factory in 1935, the Turkish Prime Minister gave a speech. The gas mask is today no longer a weapon of the army, but a tool of every home and business, he said, though the photos showed him flanked by men in military uniform. And behind those men was someone I recognised, my great grandfather's old boss from Oranienburg, Professor Kvarzabard. I then found an old black and white photo of the gas mask factory. The picture showed a single lane track winding up towards some scattered brick buildings. It could almost have been a farmhouse and stables, except for the one unusually prominent chimney.
- [05:50]
Joe Dunthorne
We just got off Mamak Station in the east, I think, of Ankara.
- [05:57]
Eleanor McDowell
I had come here with little expectation of actually finding any remnant of the gas mask factory. At most I was expecting to stand on a suburban street and use my powers of imagination to bring back memories of plumes rising from an industrial smokestack.
- [06:14]
Joe Dunthorne
What was, according to the photo, just a few buildings on a Hill in 1935 and is now a busy suburb with loads of people getting off the metro there. And now we're walking up the hill to the location of the well, what we hope will be the former kasmask factory.
- [06:43]
Eleanor McDowell
In 1935. When my great grandfather first arrived here, Ankara was a city inventing itself, the new capital of the Turkish Republic. At the end of World War I, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his troops had pushed back the occupying allied forces, eventually establishing the Republic of Turkey in October 1923. As President, Ataturk wanted this new state to be thoroughly secular, modern and with a single language. In the early 1930s, there was a poster campaign that read citizens speak Turkish. He banned the Arabic script in 1932, so that in a stroke, new history books needed to be written.
- [07:35]
Joe Dunthorne
We're just passing another Shop selling military clothing. It's definitely a bit of a theme for this part of town. Keeping our eyes peeled for the weapons factory.
- [07:58]
Eleanor McDowell
As my family built their new life here, they found a ready made community of German Jews. The Turkish government had been actively offering jobs to specially selected experts, exiles from Germany who could help establish modern universities, hospitals and orchestras. This was why hundreds of the world's leading musicians, architects, surgeons, anthropologists, botanists, conductors and physicists were all now living in Turkey. My great grandfather was disappointed that he had not been one of those specially chosen experts and received no invite. So instead he came here with the help of his German employers who had business interests in Turkey. The two countries had a strong and long standing trade relationship. In 1936, more than half of Turkey's exports were sold to Germany. There was ideological kinship too. Hitler referred to President Ataturk as his shining star in the darkness and viewed Turkey as a hyper nationalist state engaged in a similar project to his own. Even today I was unsettled to notice in the railway station bookshop, the big half price stacks of Mein Kampf for sale. I flicked through a copy, hoping it was the critical edition, but it wasn't. In 2005, Mein Kampf sold enough copies in Turkey to put Hitler's name on the bestseller.
- [09:30]
Joe Dunthorne
Listen, it's getting a little fenced off up here, which may mean we're getting close. I'm now walking alongside a big blue barbed wire fen.
- [09:45]
Tanar Akcam
I don't know if this is. I think this might just be like.
- [09:49]
Jamal Tasha
A new leisure center.
- [09:52]
Joe Dunthorne
Oh my God, you're right. It's not weapons factory, it's a tennis court.
- [10:00]
Eleanor McDowell
The half built structure behind barbed wire was the foundations of a new sports complex. Tennis, swimming, five a side football cages. I felt like I was imagining dark histories everywhere in order to make more of our research trip. But as I walked further up the hill beside high concrete walls topped with razor wire, I began to worry that no imagination would be necessary.
- [10:28]
Joe Dunthorne
I really enjoy all the places we've been visiting today. It just strikes me now, well, this is definitely a military installation to our right because it's got a big sign with a soldier on it and about 3 meter high concrete walls and then another 2 meters of fencing with razor wire on top. Ah, here we are. Oh my.
- [11:16]
Eleanor McDowell
It turned out that Siegfried's former gas mask factory was easy to find on account of it still being a factory for gas masks and other military equipment. We stopped outside a security kiosk where an armed guard was standing beside a large video screen that showcased the Company's latest products. From the pavement, we watched gun turrets swivel and blast tracer fire into the night. Uniformed men applauding as distant objects burst into flames. A gunship launching into the sea. A fist sized artillery barrel pointing down the lens of the camera. And a man with a grenade launcher, his expression hidden behind the insectoid eyes of the latest full face gas mask. Back in our hotel, we did some more research on MKE's own website. We learned they were the state's leading manufacturer of military hardware, producing everything from air portable howitzers to the whole family of light arms ammunition. They were proud of their long history in Mamak, having emerged from the gas mask factory of 1935.
- [12:39]
Joe Dunthorne
Oh, hi Mum.
- [12:40]
Tanar Akcam
Hi. Got it.
- [12:42]
Joe Dunthorne
Well done. How you doing?
- [12:43]
Tanar Akcam
Right, not too bad. How are you?
- [12:48]
Eleanor McDowell
Kind of criminal.
- [12:50]
Joe Dunthorne
We went to the gas mask factory, you know, because that's where he worked.
- [12:54]
Tanar Akcam
Oh yeah.
- [12:55]
Joe Dunthorne
Oh my God, it is terrifying. Yeah, basically. So it's still essentially doing the same work that it has always been doing. It's a weapons manufacturing large and extremely profitable weapons manufacturer. And when we walked up there, they have, as in their car park or in the front of their car park, a huge video screen, like a trailer for all their latest weapons and a guard with a gun standing beneath it and a big. And a big sign that says no photos while they, you know, they. This video showing swiveling, you know, mounted guns and military boats being launched and things blowing up. Like a kind of holly Hollywood trailer for.
- [13:49]
Tanar Akcam
And what happened to you? Were you allowed to just stand there and watch it?
- [13:53]
Eleanor McDowell
I was terrified.
- [13:53]
Joe Dunthorne
That's what happened. I was wanted to get out there. The moment I saw it, I couldn't.
- [13:57]
Eleanor McDowell
Believe it because we were thinking it.
- [13:58]
Joe Dunthorne
Was gonna be one of those things where you just kind of, oh, maybe it was here. Who can tell? It looks so different now. But no, it was like, oh, right, yeah, this is where it was. Yeah, that's right. So we trotted off down the hill very quick.
- [14:16]
Eleanor McDowell
I'd only decided to visit Mamak after reading the letters my mum had translated. The ones between my great grandfather in Ankara and his old boss back in Berlin. This was where I learned that his new life was not quite the fresh start he made it out to be in his memoir. It was also around this time that my sciatica flared up to the point where I couldn't sit down for more than a few seconds and was only comfortable when lying flat on my back or pacing around like a zoo animal.
- [14:49]
Tanar Akcam
And how's your sciatica? That's the other question.
- [14:52]
Joe Dunthorne
Still. I'm in a bit of pain. The mornings are still quite bad, but.
- [14:57]
Eleanor McDowell
I've been medicating hard through this trip.
- [14:59]
Joe Dunthorne
And that has helped. All the different pills.
- [15:03]
Eleanor McDowell
The gas masks my great grandfather made were not primarily for civilians. The first 20,000 went to the Turkish army. And while in his memoir he wrote that he stayed entirely away from chemical weapons in Ankara, the letters tell a murkier story. His gas mask factory was next door to a poison gas factory. This made sense because he continued to conduct tests with nitrochloroform, phosgene, tear gas and hydrogen cyanide, the results of which he shared with his boss in Berlin in 1937. Half his wages were still being paid from Germany. This is my mum's translation of a letter that Siegfried wrote to his old boss, Professor Kweizebat in Berlin. Among Siegfried's work correspondence there was one letter to his old boss that stood out. We would like to order larger quantities of the chemicals the department. It was dated 10 April 1937 and was labeled confidential, paid for by the Turkish government. The information in it was so sensitive that he didn't even trust it to the company post room and so had it delivered by hand. In it he explained in carefully guarded language that his colleagues in Ankara wanted to buy chemical weapons, all paid for by the Turkish government. He wrote that his co director would soon be traveling to Germany for further discussion. This letter came as a complete surprise to me. I wondered if it maybe wasn't as ominous as it seemed. Perhaps I was again seeing darkness where there wasn't any. I speculatively typed Turkish Government, German Chemical Weapons 1937 into Google. This was how I learned that Turkish historians have recently uncovered documents which show that just four months after my great grandfather's letter, the Turkish government did approve the purchase of German chemical weapons. And more than that, they used them as part of a series of brutal military operations in the east of the country.
- [17:28]
Joe Dunthorne
Maybe we could just start.
- [17:29]
Eleanor McDowell
If you could just introduce yourself, that would be very helpful.
- [17:33]
Professor Kweizebat
So I'm Tanar Akcam. I'm a history professor and currently I'm holding the directorship of Promise Armenian Institute Armenian Genocide Research Program at ucla.
- [17:48]
Eleanor McDowell
I'd sent my letter to Professor Tanner Akcam and was surprised how quickly he wrote back. He explained to me about the dersim massacres of 1937 and 38, events which for a long time had been completely erased from Turkey's official history. Professor Akcam had a lot of experience dealing with these Kinds of erasures. Having been the first Turkish scholar to publicly acknowledge the Armenian genocide of 1915.
- [18:18]
Professor Kweizebat
I mean the official position of Turkey regarding Armenian genocide is a total denial. This is the default court of Turkish government policy. Nothing happened 1915. If something happened, it's Armenians fault. But in Darsim case, Tayyip Erdogan, today's president of Turkey, he made a talk in Turkish parliament where he first time showed the official documents that clearly indicates killing operation against the civilians. And he apologized. Half fake, it was not a sincere apology. But he said if an apology needed, here I am apologizing.
- [19:11]
Eleanor McDowell
In a televised speech in in 2011, Erdogan described the Dersim massacres as a disaster that should now be questioned. With courage he took the opportunity to criticize his opposition, the party of Ataturk, for their role in the killings while holding aloft military documents on which Ataturk's name was signed. The Turkish government now accepts the massacre of 13,806 civilians. But historians not aligned to the government suggest the death toll was three or four times this number.
- [19:50]
Professor Kweizebat
We call it genocide. This is really a very classical example of a small scale of genocide. 1937-38.
- [20:02]
Eleanor McDowell
Professor Akcam told me that a particularly contentious part of this history relates to the use of German made poison gas. Government documents from 1937 show the president and Prime Minister jointly signing off on the purchase by secret negotiation of 20 tons of German tear and mustard gas. But what was still missing in the available documents was confirmation from whichever German company provided the chemical weapons documents like the one my great grandfather wrote.
- [20:35]
Professor Kweizebat
I mean, if you consider the entire episode as a puzzle, your letter really filled a vacuum that we had an empty spot. Let me tell you what I mean with that. We cannot figure out based on these Turkish government documents whether they finally bought these chemicals. The end chain of Turkish documents is the military attache in Berlin given the assignment to get in touch with German company. Among their SIMI people there is no doubt that it is used. Period. There is no doubt, there is no debate, there is no discussion. And among the critical historians and academic this is also well accepted case. But beyond that, let's say those historians support the government or those conservatives or nationalists. They consider this gas story as a legend, as a myth. Their main argument is that we cannot provide any substantive document, clearly identifies that the gas was used. And your granddad's letter made it clear that the connection went beyond the Turkish government's internal communication, that it went directly to the German company buying the gases. The letter you sent to me, clearly shows that the German companies were aware of the issue.
- [22:43]
Eleanor McDowell
Professor Akcam put us in touch with Jamal Tasha, a man who for decades had been building an archive of oral histories, first hand testimony about the massacres in 1937 and 1938.
- [22:59]
Unknown
I am not like someone who just writes or record them. I go there and I live with them. And if they say something happened in one place, I'll take him or her to that place. That's why I found out so many mass graves and places that the violence took place.
- [23:20]
Eleanor McDowell
He had interviewed hundreds of survivors and visited many sites related to the massacres, including caves where he found human bones still scattered on the floor. Adults and children, unburied and unnamed.
- [23:40]
Unknown
Thinks it was gas because when it was a bomb or anything else, then the bodies will be destroyed. Whereas bodies are, you know, the bones especially are staying on the floor. That's why he thinks they use chemical gas or anything, you know, something like that. So the bodies are still there, the bones are still there. The witnesses of those days says they gave us smoke because they didn't know about gas or chemicals. They just said they gave them smoke. We believe that it is chemical gas, but for people that we interviewed, they called it as a smoke. There was a smoke around us and some of us were killed. In some interviews, woman or man would stop the conversation, stop the interview. He said, that's it. I can't go on. Of course I am. I have been influenced by those stories as well. In the family, they tell me that you are not as same person as before, before the interviews. I can imagine because I have interviewed so many people about the case. I knew the story. So when I entered into the case, I could hear the voices. I thought I could hear the cries for help. Each tree, each river, each hill. I know the story of it, so I feel it. I know there are, you know, thousands of people buried under the land. So it's not only the caves that have mass graves. I know you know, some other places are mass graves as well. So that. That makes me quite sad.
- [25:44]
Eleanor McDowell
Listening to Jamal, I was struck by the resolve of this man who had gone after these stories, no matter how painful they were. I felt my own voice retreating into the back of my throat.
- [26:02]
Unknown
You are going dancing tonight. Allah would all say to him, safely there. I mean, he wishes that he will be there and, you know, take you around.
- [26:11]
Joe Dunthorne
Well, maybe one day we can do that.
- [26:19]
Eleanor McDowell
Traveling eastwards into the mountains, the nerve pain in my back meant that I lay flat across the rear seat of the taxi. There, I had time to weigh things up. When I was exploring the history of my great grandfather's work in Germany, there had always been an underlying awareness of the context. Members of my family had been locked up in Dachau and murdered in Auschwitz. It feels grotesque to even acknowledge that all along I'd somehow been using that as a kind of moral counterbalance. But maybe that explained why it felt so different. Now, traveling east through the country that saved my family from destruction, I kept patting my pockets to make sure I still had easy access to packs of Cocodamol and Naproxen. We were heading towards a small mountain town whose name had been erased from all maps, textbooks and tourist guides. Half Life was written and presented by me, Joe Dunthorne. It was Produced by Eleanor McDowell and mixed by Mike Woolley. The music was composed by Jeremy Walmsley. The story consultant was Sarah Geiss and the executive producer was Alan Hall. It was a Falling tree production for BBC Radio 4 and the History podcast.
- [28:26]
Jamal Tasha
It's a parent's nightmare.
- [28:29]
Unknown
They said, oh, it's a boy and I was holding my hands out ready to cuddle him and they took him away.
- [28:36]
Jamal Tasha
A switch at birth discovered with the gift of a home DNA test.
- [28:41]
Joe Dunthorne
The so called brother that we grew up with wasn't a brother and there's someone out there if he's still alive.
- [28:48]
Jamal Tasha
Is a race against time. I don't want this woman to leave this earth not knowing what happened to her son. The Gift from Radio 4 with me, Jenny Kleeman. Listen now on BBC Sounds.