Table Of ContentAgnes Hirschi, Charlotte Schallié (eds.)
Under Swiss Protection
Jewish Eyewitness Accounts
from Wartime Budapest
"Celia und Lutz Zwillenberg Fonds",
Jüdische Gemeinde Bern (JGB)
Agnes Hirschi, Charlotte Schallié (eds.)
UNDER SWISS PROTECTION
Jewish Eyewitness Accounts
from Wartime Budapest
Translations by
Dahlia Beck, Lauren Thompson, and Noga Yarmar
ibidem-Verlag
Stuttgart
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
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abrufbar.
Cover picture: © Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zurich. Reprinted with kind permission.
ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-(cid:26)(cid:19)(cid:27)(cid:28)-(cid:19)
© ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
Stuttgart, Germany 2017
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Table of Contents
Timothy Snyder
Foreword.......................................................................................................................9
Agnes Hirschi and Charlotte Schallié
1.INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................13
Translators’ Notes...................................................................................................21
Editors’ Notes............................................................................................................25
Timeline.......................................................................................................................27
François Wisard
2. CARL LUTZ IN BUDAPEST........................................................................31
Context and Milestones of the Rescue Activities of Carl Lutz
and His Team
3. THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT...............................................................49
Paul Fabry
“Carl Lutz stood out like a monument—He wasan example
oMfo wrdheacth caain F bleei sdcohnere”..............................................................................................51
“JeOann t Ghree neninseteteinenth of March 1944, all of uswent underground”......67
however
“DWavei dtr Gieudr to save whoever we could, wecould”......................79
“Every moment, every slip of papermeant human life”.........................93
4. PROFILES OF SURVIVORS: INTERVIEWS BY AGNES HIRSCHI
(2000–2017)...................................................................................................105
Klári Barna
“VKelráar iB, ealnlá Akr(raosw to Cldro bsys Tmáamna iss Bloeollkáikn)g for you”.......................................107
“During the bombardments, we hid ourselvesin the pantry”..........111
5
Eva Bino(as told by Peter Bino)
“AEgvnae sn Heveeffrn seproke about her childhood”......................................................119
“IvSáhne Sráefnudsoerd to let the star be sewnonto her clothing”.......................125
“The Red Cross and the Swiss legationhadretrieved us
fRraobmb ia J ódzesaetfh S mchawrcehit”z.e..r.........................................................................................131
“AIn wdrilél nSiervteesr forget the horrors of the war years”..................................137
“ETvhae S Azimrmeraiican air raid saved our lives”.....................................................141
“AIg wneass Ttoeoic hyomuanng to understand the situation”........................................149
“In my breadbasket, I would smuggle lettersfor the prisoners”.....155
5. TESTIMONIES.............................................................................................163
Irena Braun Lefkovic
“TIz dipidp onroath g Civoeh eunp trying to get tono. 29 Vadász utca”..........................165
“AIg tnoeosk H tehlele droll, [ ], and we startedmaking our way home”...........183
“IdI iwt Hasir psrcohufedld of the smallyellow star”.........................................................189
“Our skirts were filled with the money our wise grandmother
hAagdn esse Hwinrs icnhtio our hems”...................................................................................201
“HTehdev am Kaant zwho changed my life”.....................................................................209
“I remember it was a house built of glass”.................................................221
6
Naomi Katz
Hatikvah
“Shmulik played the accordion and we all sang on
tShhem suheilp K’sa dtzeck”......................................................................................................231
“EMstye rf aKtaeu wfmasa nthe exception”.............................................................................241
“Unlike adults, I don’t think we, the children,realized the
sMitouradteicohna wiLaás stzhlaótK orfe lmifee rand death”.............................................................251
“JuTdhieth m Moivreiamme nMta bteég(aans ttoo lpdr boyv Jidane ouss M waittéh)false documents”............261
“I didn’t know for what I was liberated.The only reason
wAganse ms My sisoann”.............................................................................................................277
“MWored wecehrae it Nhee ulamsat nonnes to get insidethe Glass House”.........................283
“MAirrtyhaumr PWaelgisiz paid with his life forhaving saved us”..........................291
“PAentedr sPuodlldaeknly they called me sayingthat my father came back”......301
Kiddush
“To this day, Ihave not been able to understand how she
mAlaexnaangdeedr t Soc fhinleds imngye frather’s cup”................................................307
“On October 20, at five o’clock in the morning,
mRayb Hbio Alorcthauurs tS bcehgnaenie”r...........................................................................................313
“I had many Christian friends who came to our home; all that
cMhoasnhgee Sdh oanv iMt arch 12,1938, when the Nazis took over”....................325
“Our mother convinced us to stay withAunt Hannah
under Swiss protection”.....................................................................................335
7
Shulamit Shtauber
“We were forced out of the bunker with tear gas and shoved
nPaetkeerd T ianr tjahne snow”...............................................................................................341
“The last time I saw my mother”....................................................................347
6. TRIBUTES AND LETTERS.......................................................................351
Charles Gati
“SRteevmene mThboemriansg G1e9i4g4er and Carl Lutz”.............................................................353
“GWeoer gwee Sroem leoftg ywiith what is the most precious:our lives”...................361
“GTeroifbfruetye Ltoeo Cnaarrld L Tutiezr”..........................................................................................365
LMeitctheare tlo V Ceartrel sLutz (1945).................................................................................369
“Diplomats are not expected to be heroestaking risks”......................375
7.APPENDIX: EXCERPTS FROMSWISS COLLECTIVE
PASSPORTS NO. 1 & NO. 2...........................................................................379
GLOSSARY................................................................................................................387
8
Foreword
To return to Holocaust is to pass through the recollections of an indi-
vidual human being, a survivor whose memories lead us to the ques-
tion of survival but only begin to suggest the answers.We speak now,
perhaps too easily, of“human rights,”but the individual Jews threat-
ened by Germans (and by their neighbors) had no such rights. They
survived when someone attached them to a political community.To
be reduced to the bare human condition, as Hannah Arendt under-
stood, was to die. Germany killed Jews by separating them from
states, sometimes gradually as with its own Jewish citizens, some-
times rapidly by invasions intended to destroy statehood as such.To
survive, a Jews had to escape this process.
Carl Lutz was a Swiss diplomat in Hungary, and an account of
his actions is the history of human and diplomatic recognition in a
time and place where sovereignty was uncertain and Jews were being
murdered by the tens of thousands. After the Soviet Union and Po-
land, countries invaded by Germany whose Jews lost citizenship,
Hungary was the home to the largest Jewish community in Eastern
Europe. Before March 1944 Hungary was a Germany ally that had
passed anti-Jewish legislation, directly killed Jews beyond its borders
in certain cases, and exploited Jews in labor battalions in ways that
often led to their death in large numbers.
Until Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, it had not
implemented a policy designed to kill its Jewish citizens as such.
When Germany sent its armed forces into Hungary, it dispatched its
own experienced deportation authorities.It also changed the nature
of domestic politics, receiving cooperation from Hungarian police
and otherinstitutions that led to the deportation and murder of most
of the Jews of the Hungarian provinces.UnderWestern pressure and
aware that Germany would lose the war, the Hungarian head of state,
Miklos Horthy, ordered an end to the deportations on July 6.This left
the Jews of Budapest, the Hungarian capital, as the largest group of
Jews still alive whom it was still the German aim to kill.Most but not
all of these Jews were citizens of Hungary.
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