Protection Letter of a Jew with an aliyah visa, initiated by Karl Lutz to rescue the Jews of Hungary

Protection Letter of a Jew with an aliyah visa, initiated by Karl Lutz to rescue the Jews of Hungary

Protection Letter by the Swiss Embassy in Budapest of the "Righteous among the Nations" - Swiss Confederation. Budapest (Hungary) October 25, 1944. Official confirmation for the jew Dr. HALASZ FERENCZ confirming that his Swiss passport is validly, signed by "Legation de Suisse, Budapest" [Swiss delegations, Budapest]. Through this document and thousands of its kind, the Swiss diplomat, one of the most prominent Righteous Among the Nations - Karl Lutz [1895-1975], saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

 With the conquest of Hungary by the Nazis in 1944, the systematic extermination and deportation of Hungarian Jews began. Lutz, who supported the Jewish cause during his service at the Swiss Consulate in Jaffa between 1935 and 1941, and was very friendly with Moshe Kraus, director of the Palestine Office in Hungary, who organized the immigration on behalf of the Jewish Agency, responded to his request to help save Jews and began to work for salvation of Budapest Jewry. Among other things, he issued Swiss "sponsorship letters" to Jews with certificates. After negotiations with high-ranking Nazi officials, and with the consent of the Hungarian authorities, he issued about 8,000 letters of sponsorship - one for each aliyah visa holder. He later passed on the sponsorship letters to the entire family of the certificate holder, and thus tens of thousands of Jews were included under the protection of the sponsorship letters. In addition, thousands of sponsorships were forged on paper stolen from the SS office. On another level, Lutz and Krauss worked to make sure that Western governments, and later, public opinion in these countries as well, would understand what was going on in the extermination camps. Lutz saved over 60,000 Jews through the sponsorships he provided and the sheltered homes in which he housed the survivors. In 1964, Lutz was among the first to win the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem. In 1991, a memorial monument was erected in his memory at the entrance to the Budapest ghetto.

30x21 cm. Folding marks. Good condition.