This letter was sent from Pehle to the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Munir Ertegun. [Fun fact: Ertegun’s sons founded Atlantic Records.]
In the 1920s, several hundred Turkish Jews moved to France. Over the next 20 or so years, they lost citizenship based on various Turkish laws (about returning at various points, registering with the embassy, etc). During the war, though, the idea the they might be Turkish–and therefore the protected citizens of a neutral nation–was the only thing that might save them. Pehle needed Ertegun to step in with his government, save the Turkish Jews in France, and–eventually–assist in their emigration back to Turkey in order to save them from deportation
