Protection Letter of a Jew Subject of the Swiss Embassy, initiated by Karl Lutz to rescue the Jews of Hungary

Protection Letter of a Jew Subject of the Swiss Embassy, initiated by Karl Lutz to rescue the Jews of Hungary

Official Protection Letter on behalf of the Swiss Embassy representation of the immigration department for foreigners - the Swiss Confederation. Budapest (Hungary) November 6, 1944. Official confirmation for the Jew Vamos Jozsef stipulating his freedom of movement everywhere: "We confirm that Vamos Jozsef  is a subject of the Swiss Embassy in Budapest and as such is under the embassy's protection... We call on the authorities to support him in carrying out his work and ensure his free movement. No official action should be taken against him without the knowledge of the embassy. Budapest, November 1944", signature, and ink stamp. Hungarian and German column by column.

Through this document and thousands of its kind, the Swiss diplomat, one of the most prominent Righteous Gentile - 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 have 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 Gentile" by Yad Vashem. In 1991, a memorial monument was erected in his memory at the entrance to the Budapest ghetto.

30x21 cm. Fold marks. Good condition.