László Karsai

Carl Lutz-a Righteous Gentile

Theo Tschuy: Becsület és bátorság (Honour and Courage: Carl Lutz and the Jews of Budapest). Miskolc, Well-Press 2002, 224 pp.

...

Prior to the 19th of March, 1944, the German occupation of Hungary, Lutz was already occupied with saving Jews, even if this was not the most predominant amongst his activities as vice-consul. The British authorities in Palestine were willing to grant entry permits to a certain number of Jews, and the Hungarian authorities were inclined to provide exit permits to those in possession of a Palestinian immigration permit. Thus, the chosen few (around ten thousand people, according to new sources uncovered by Tschuy in Swiss archives) received passports and were allowed to travel to Palestine by boat after crossing Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
It was the Jewish Agency for Palestine which passed the Palestinian immigration permits on to Zionists in Budapest, who were in day-to-day contact with Lutz, as one of the representatives of British interests.
But all this was to change completely with the German occupation of Hungary. The Germans were intent on deportations and mass killings, and the Hungarian authorities proved to be efficient and, at times, unequivocally keen supporters of these methods. It was at this time that Vice Consul Lutz realized that he was facing evil incarnate. Thus, his heroic battle against the German and Hungarian authorities for the lives of the Jews began. His superiors in Berne abandoned him almost completely during his struggle. Despite the fact that after Stalingrad, El-Alamein and Kursk, opening a new front in the Alps was the last thing on the Germans' mind, they were still preoccupied with the issue of preserving Swiss neutrality. Switzerland's policy on refugees during the Second World War was characterised not so much by fear of the Germans as by traditional xenophobia, considerable anti-Semitism, bureaucratic inclinations and apathy towards the fate of the persecuted in general.
Theo Tschuy speaks reproachfully of the accusation that has been levelled against Hungarians in some previous books on this subject, namely that, unlike the Danes, the Hungarians could not be counted on to show collective resistance against the Germans, and that they had no intention of saving the lives of the Jews. Those who allege this are inclined to forget about a few historic events and examples. The Danes surrendered to the Germans in 1940 without so much as firing a shot. In return, the Nazis stationed only a relatively small occupation force in the country of their Arian-Viking neighbours. It must be said, Denmark had not shown much tolerance for the Jews during the previous centuries. They numbered less than 8000 in 1943, including those who had fled to the country from Germany since 1933.
There were approximately 800 000 Jews in the Hungary of 1941. The Danish Jews had an escape route open to them; at that time, Sweden was less keen on collaboration with the Germans than it had been before, and was willing to open its borders to a few thousand refugees. In Hungary, however, Edmund Veesenmayer, whose description by Tschuy as a demonic personality possessing the power of Himmler or of Hitler himself is significantly exaggerated, was actively engaged in assisting the work of Adolf Eichmann and his detachments in carrying out the final solution. The entire Hungarian state machinery, 20 000 gendarmes, thousands of police officers, civil servants, railway workers and soldiers, numbering around 200 000 in total, took part in purging the Jews from the country. The majority of Jewish men were members of forced labour units. In this situation it would have been impossible to organise a revolt or even escapes among the Jews, especially since the majority of Hungarian Jews refused to believe the reports about Auschwitz, even in 1944.
Lutz attempted to make use of the only option that was open to him. In theory, the British authorities in Palestine had authorised the mass influx of Jews from Hungary. Prior to the 19th of March, 1944, the Hungarian authorities were inclined to allow a few thousand Jews to leave the country. What is more, probably to Lutz's surprise, Veesenmayer apparently even agreed to 7000-8000 Hungarian Jews receiving exit permits. This was when the frantic manufacturing of documents began, and various passes of safe conduct (Schutzbriefe and Schutzpasse) were made out in large numbers. Those lucky enough to be entered on the lists received documentation and a letter of safe passage, stating that their name appears on the register of those leaving the country. Unlike Jenoý Lévai, the first historian to deal with the Holocaust in Hungary, Tschuy does not conceal the fact that during the issuing of the safe conduct passes, there were serious disagreements between Lutz and Raoul Wallenberg, who only arrived in Budapest on the 9th of July, 1944, after the mass deportations have already taken place in the countryside. From the perspective of international law and diplomacy, Swedish letters and passes of safe conduct were just as worthless as the Swiss ones. The holders of Swedish papers were not granted permission by the Germans to leave the country either under the Sztójay government (May 22-August 29, 1944) or the Szálasi regime (October 15, 1944-April 1945).
After the war, instead of decorating him or at least promoting him to minister, Lutz's Swiss superiors ordered an investigation into his activities involving the alleged mass forging of documents. Tschuy does not mention it, but it remains a fact that Lutz had spoken out about the mass forging of Swedish documents even before 1945. He had informed the Hungarian authorities about this late in the fall of 1944, perhaps in the hope that the Arrow-Cross men would pay less attention to the Swiss pas-ses of safe conduct, which had appeared in rather excessive numbers. Incidentally, despite Lutz's claims, Swiss documents were easier to come by than Swedish ones. At the Emigration Department of the Representation of Foreign Interests in the Swiss Legation's "Glass House" in Vadász Street, the Zionist forgers were continuously
manufacturing these documents. Lutz did nothing to prevent this, even though he was fully aware of what the brave Zionist resistance fighters were up to in the slight and at times the wholly illusory protection of diplomatic extraterritoriality. These were people who did not take up arms and did not want to die a glorious death. Instead, they decided to add to the confusion until units of the Red Army liberate Budapest.
Of course, the mass forging of documents had a detrimental effect on the value of all passes of safe conduct, to the point where a person's life was in great danger if they were found to be in possession of a Swiss Schutzbrief. On the other hand, however, it is also true that the Arrow-Cross men sometimes executed the holders of the most genuine papers on sight, whilst at other times the most primitive counterfeits worked to save lives.
If Ferenc Szálasi was really no more than a raging lunatic intent on eliminating or murdering all Jews, as Theo Tschuy claims, then it is difficult to comprehend why he allowed Lutz, Wallenberg, the Nuncio Angelo Rotta, Friedrich Born, the Budapest representative of the International Red Cross, Giorgio Perlasca, the Italian diplomat and others engaged in saving the lives of the Jews to set up the "international" or "protected" ghetto in the vicinity of Szent István Park and Pozsonyi Road. If Szálasi's only goal was the deportation or mass execution of the Jews, then why did he halt the deportations in November 1944 and authorise the creation of the huge ghetto around Dohány Street? The answer is rather simple. The Arrow-Cross leader longed to be recognised by the neutral countries as the legitimate head of state. This was the most potent weapon in the hands of people like Lutz, Wallenberg and their colleagues. As long as diplomatic recognition was important to Szálasi, as long as he was hopeful of receiving not only de facto, but also de jure recognition for his regime, Hungarian authorities continued to tolerate diplomatic deceptions with the help of various safe conduct documents.
In the spring of 1945, the Soviet liberating/occupying forces arrested two Swiss diplomats and carried them off to Moscow. They were freed a year later in return for the release of former Soviet prisoners of war who had escaped to Switzerland. Mean-while, Lutz and his colleagues were ordered to leave the country. Theo Tschuy's consternation is perceptible when he records the fact that Lutz's superiors refused to accept so much as a report from him, and kept the activities of their offical in Budapest a secret from the world. What is more, it was not only the Swiss authorities who showed a complete lack of appreciation for Lutz's heroic, brave and exceedingly efficient deeds. The fate of the Jews during the Second World War was shrouded in universal indifference and silence until Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961. After rejecting the post of consul in Baghdad that was initially offered to him, Lutz ended his diplomatic career as consul in Bregenz in 1961.
Just as Tschuy's account of Lutz's childhood and early years is convincing, so is his description of the career of his protagonist after 1945 succinct. The last few pages are devoted almost entirely to events that prompt sadness. The people in Israel, who owed him and his colleagues their lives, felt gratitude and affection towards him. A street was named after him in Haifa as early as 1958. But since the Swiss authorities refused to acknowledge, let alone honour what he had done for the Hungarian Jews in 1944-45, Lutz tried to achieve international recognition himself. He lobbied for a Nobel Peace Prize, engaging in a lengthy correspondence. Yad Vashem only honoured as Righteous Among the Nations relatively late, in 1965. According to Hungarian archival sources, at the beginning of the 1960's Lutz also contacted the Hungarian authorities, arguing - quite rightly - that he had placed more houses under Swiss or international protection than Raoul Wallenberg had done, but still had not had a street named after him. It was only after his death that he received a tiny plaque near the Great Synagogue in Budapest.
To the historian, the quarrelling over the number of Hungarian Jews actually saved, which has been going on for the last few decades, seems utterly pointless. The members of the Zionist resistance claim that they had saved the more than 100 000 people who survived in Budapest. At the Wallenberg commemorations it is regularly asserted that the martyred Swedish diplomat saved tens of thousands persecuted people. According to those who wish to clarify the role of the historical Churches during the Second World War, the Jews were hidden in churches, monasteries and convents. Szálasi's supporters point out his approval of the creation of the Budapest ghettos. But the murderous rampage of the Arrow Cross only ended with the appearance of the Red Army.
Theo Tschuy accepts the notion that after 1945, the extermination of the Hungarian Jews was hushed up in Hungary. In reality, however, thousands of articles, essays, diaries, memoirs and books appeared in Hungary and all over the world between 1945 and 1948 and after 1956 about the Holocaust in Hungary. The Nobel Prize awarded this year to Imre Kertész points to the quality of Hungarian literary works on the subject, not to mention the scores of historical works discussing the Holocaust, which is unparalleled in the whole of Eastern Europe. This specialist Hungarian-language bibliography has now become richer with a new and important work by a Swiss author. One can only hope that as a result, many will become acquainted with the life of a man who demonstrated that it is possible and worthwhile to rise up against the tyranny of evil, even in the darkest of times.

 

László Karsai
is Professor of History at the University of Szeged and author of, among others, Holokauszt (2001). The above is the Afterword of the Hungarian edition of Carl Lutz und die Juden von Budapest (1995) by Theo Tschuy. A shorter English version exists entitled Dangerous Diplomacy: The Story of Carl Lutz, Rescuer of 62,000 Hungarian Jews (2000).