Tag #123571 - Interview #97435 (Albert Arditi)

By the time I was a senior, however, anti-Semitic events at school had significantly increased. That year, all seniors had to participate in a graduation project called the diploma project. For this purpose, a German professor was brought to ITU to help the students. His name was Kohl Bonatz, and his son was an SS Officer. After the War ended, his son was arrested, and it was a matter of time before they arrested him as well. One of the professors in Turkey, Emin Onat Bey, who at the same time was the Rector of our university, thought it would be more beneficial for both parties if Mr. Bonatz was brought to Turkey to teach instead of languishing in prison. Mr. Bonatz was a very educated, knowledgeable man. I remember being extremely afraid when I first saw him. At that time, my psychological wounds from the War were still fresh. The interesting thing about those times was that - contrary to what I had expected - I did not see gentlemanly behavior from my Turkish professors. It was instead Professor Bonatz, whose demeanor towards me was decent. When I look back on the anti-Semitic experiences I went thorough during the diploma project, I see that the Turkish professors were the ones who exhibited those types of behaviors, not Professor Bonatz.

For the diploma project, the students were given a task to come up with a plan to build a hotel (its interior, exterior - the works…). The project was expected to be beneficial to passengers arriving to and leaving from the Yesilkoy airport. After I completed a 3-4 page paper, I presented it to my professors. They looked through everyone’s project, and separated mine from the others. One of them told me “If you would, can we please put your project up on the board so that your classmates could benefit from your insights?” I was extremely happy, but later on, I found that I had failed. The professors had failed two more students like me; one of them was Russian, and the other was a Jew living in Izmir. We all wanted to resubmit our project, but the situation was getting worse. We realized the professors were determined to fail us. Therefore, we decided to take the problem as far as the Minister of Education at the time, Hasan Ali Yucel. He was both a customer and a good friend of my father’s. After hearing us out, he had to put in a good word on behalf of us to the university professors. Only then, were we allowed to graduate.