A Swiss man saved 60,000 Jews

A Swiss man saved 60,000 Jews

The Editor, Prague, 25.5.2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7DJO6DffmE

Nazi persecution

During World War II, the “Final Solution” (i.e. the Nazis’ systematic execution of the Jews) cast a deadly shadow over the Jews in Hungary as well. Carl Lutz, vice-consul of the Swiss legation in Budapest, saw how in the spring of 1944, ‘political events began to unfold rapidly. The invasion of the German army triggered both political persecution and that of the Jews, who in Budapest began to besiege our representation in panic-stricken masses’.

And in the midst of this barbarism, 49-year-old Carl Lutz, a Swiss man of character, in the face of such genocide, disregards all official rules and conventions, risking his career and even his life to save many thousands of those condemned to death. Following his conscience alone, his action is considered the ultimate civilian heroic act of saving Jews during World War II.

Karl Lutz, a hero who faces the face of evil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6VXogArK20

“What is special about the Lutz case,” writes historian Georg Kreis, “perhaps lies precisely in the fact that an ordinary person, after an equally ordinary career, suddenly finds himself faced with an extraordinary challenge, that he accepts it, and, what is more, almost seeks it out, and that the rest of his life is from then on characterized by this singular challenge.” At the beginning of 1942, he took up his post in Budapest as vice-consul and head of the “Foreign Interests Section of the Swiss Legation”, responsible for a dozen countries suffering from the war along with Hungary. Life was still comparatively good in this “Paris of the East”, Lutz is a respected diplomat and lives in the style inherent to his position. His work is very demanding, and even more so after the invasion and the “furor of unbridled deportations” by the Germans (according to historian Krisztian Ungvary).

“I was constantly preoccupied with the question of how I could help people without becoming persona non grata to the government to which I was accredited. I was looking for a legal way to protect the growing masses,” Lutz later wrote.

The solution he finally came up with was as bold as it was ingenious: issuing letters of protection en masse. Lutz acted without the knowledge or backing of the Swiss Confederation. He deceived the Hungarian authorities and the German occupiers, kept his cool in difficult situations, developed entrepreneurial qualities, and earned an almost messianic reputation among the Jews.

The struggle against time

As a representative of British interests, the Swiss Lutz had earlier issued permits for Jews to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine, when it was still possible to leave Hungary.  He then negotiated for weeks with various government offices, as well as with SS Brigadeführer Edmund Veesenmayer and Adolf Eichmann: Lutz managed to get a quota of 7,800 certificates issued from Palestine, which had already been authorized by Great Britain for Jews seeking protection. This ensured that they were safe from being shot in Budapest or transported to extermination camps. And he also registered them in a collective emigration passport, both with the official stamp of the Swiss legation.

In this way, Lutz placed the Hungarian Jews under the protection of Switzerland, “without administrative apparatus, without financial means and without official mandate”. His gesture encouraged a considerable number of legation staff assistants and members of the Zionist resistance. His wife Gertrud played a central role in this operation.  Other diplomats, such as the Swiss delegate of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) Friedrich Born, the Swede Raoul Wallenberg and the papal nuncio Angelo Rotta also followed his example and issued letters of protection. The rescue of the Hungarian Jews is a joint venture and a race against time.

An unrecognized heroic sacrifice

But the “bitterest disappointment of his career as a civil servant” was yet to come. He was not called to report his stay in Budapest, nor was he thanked. The ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the Swiss authorities also became apparent in 1949, when Carl Lutz wanted to re-examine two Budapest collective passports that he had handed over to the archives. The denial of access to them was based on the fact that the police department had come to the conclusion “that it was not permitted to label the identity documents in question as Swiss collective passports”.

The Swiss government makes Carl Lutz’s gesture known only later, and not coincidentally, but at a time when Switzerland is under international pressure because of suspicions of involvement in the “shadows of World War II”. In 1995, Foreign Minister Flavio Cotti officially honors the Swiss savior of the 60,000 Jews as a “silent but great hero.” And he quotes a phrase from Carl Lutz that remains an urgent and timeless interpellation: “If there are so many countries that break the law to kill, there must be a country in which the law is broken to save”.  Lutz no longer pursued a career in the diplomatic service and in 1961 retired as consul in Bregenz. He died of a heart attack in 1975, aged 80. https://thinktanklatam.org/la-conciencia-como-libertad-ante-la-verdad/

Source: review of NZZ Zurich, article in German of 21.5.2024