Carl Lutz

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Carl Lutz (1944)
Cover letter from 1944, drawn by Carl Lutz. Today in the collection of the Jewish Museum in Switzerland .
Memorial for Carl Lutz in Budapest

Carl Robert Lutz (born March 30, 1895 in Walzenhausen (AR) ; † February 12, 1975 in Bern ) was a Swiss diplomat who carried out the greatest rescue of Jews during World War II . Together with resistance fighters, Carl Lutz managed to save a total of 62,000 Hungarian Jews .

Through his efforts, half of Budapest's Jewish population survived and was not deported to the Nazi extermination camps during the Holocaust . Lutz was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. From Yad Vashem he received the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations .

Early life

Lutz grew up in Walzenhausen in a pious family who attended the Methodist Church . In 1913 he emigrated to the United States. He wanted to become a pastor, but because of his shyness, he gave up this career aspiration. From 1920 he worked in the Swiss embassy in Washington, DC and later in the consulates in Philadelphia and St. Louis .

Together with his wife Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser , the later UNICEF Vice-President, whom he had met in the USA during his time at the Swiss consulate in St. Louis, he went to the consulate in Jaffa in the League of Nations mandate area of ​​Palestine , where he was until 1940 Consular officer worked. The Lutz couple witnessed the dramatic unrest between Arab and Jewish Palestinians and immigrants from Europe.

The consulate took over the foreign representation of the German consulate general in Jerusalem in the British mandate area . Lutz was responsible for looking after Germans in Palestine until he was recalled to Bern in 1940.

Budapest 1942–1945

After a short stay in Berlin , he was transferred to the embassy in Budapest as vice-consul under the ambassador Maximilian Jaeger in 1942 . He became known for his commitment to Hungarian Jews , which saved over 60,000 people - around half of all surviving Hungarian Jews - from deportation and the Holocaust .

He achieved this in his position as head of the “Foreign Interests” department at the Swiss embassy by issuing protection passports and letters of protection for Jews who wanted to emigrate to Palestine from May 1944 . This saved them from deportation to Auschwitz , because the Hungarian gendarmerie and the Eichmann command respected these papers, whereby Lutz's previous activity in Palestine, the defense of German diplomatic interests towards Great Britain in 1940, played a role.

The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg , who came to Budapest in July 1944, found out about the Swiss man's approach and worked with him to rescue Budapest's Jews. Wallenberg's work became known worldwide through the case of his mysterious disappearance, on the other hand Lutz remained for a long time unappreciated as a kind of disorderly official in Switzerland.

Post War and Death

After the war, his behavior was judged to be correct in a review of all embassy activities, but the designation of the legally issued protective papers as "Swiss passports" was assessed by the police department of the Federal Political Department as an "overstepping of competencies" without any formal complaint . After his divorce from Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser in 1946, Lutz married the Hungarian Jew Maria Magdalena Grausz in 1949, whom he had met in Budapest in 1944 as a refugee with her daughter and employed as an employee.

In 1952, Lutz represented the mostly Australian and German relatives of those buried in the Sarona cemetery when their remains and tombstones were reburied in the course of Tel Aviv's expansion to Jerusalem.

From 1945 to 1954 he was stationed in Bern and Zurich for the Federal Political Department (Section for Foreign Interests). From 1954 to 1961 he was the Swiss Consul General in Bregenz .

Lutz fought all his life for state recognition of his exceptional achievements, which he was denied. In 1975 he died lonely and bitter and is buried in the Bremgarten cemetery in Bern (46 ° 57'1.5 "N, 7 ° 25'12.3" E).

Commemoration

Carl Lutz Society

On August 16, 2018, the Carl Lutz Society was founded in Bern as an association under Swiss law.

Carl Lutz Memorial in the “Schweizerwald” near Tiberias / IL

In the "Swiss Forest" south of Tiberias on the Sea of ​​Galilee there is a lookout point in honor of Carl Lutz. The memorial commemorates Carl Lutz and at the same time wants to strengthen the importance of civil courage for our society. The inauguration on November 23, 2007 was also accompanied by several people who had survived through a letter of protection from Carl Lutz, as well as the Swiss ambassador to Israel. The memorial was erected by the Swiss B'nai-B'rith lodges and the Jewish National Fund Switzerland on the initiative of the Augustin Keller lodge in Zurich.

Carl Lutz Foundation

The Carl Lutz Foundation was established in Budapest in 2004 a. a. founded by Georg Vámos. She wants to preserve the memory of Carl Lutz's rescue operation and the Zionist youth resistance movement of the Chalutzim , which supported Lutz's efforts to save Jewish lives. The foundation supports research work and the issuing of publications. In addition to the permanent exhibition there, it also presented versions of information boards in different languages ​​as a traveling exhibition around the world.

Awards (honors)

Exhibitions

See also

Members of the

literature

  • Heidi Eisenhut: Carl Lutz. In: Appenzellian yearbooks. Volume 140, 2013, pp. 44-65.
  • Alexander Grossman : Just the conscience. Carl Lutz and his Budapest action. Story and portrait. Verlag im Waldgut, Wald 1986, ISBN 3-7294-0026-6 .
  • Iván Sándor : Searching for clues. An investigation. Novel. Translated from the Hungarian by Katalin Fischer. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-423-24722-1 .
  • Theo Tschuy : Carl Lutz and the Jews of Budapest. 1995, ISBN 3-8582-3551-2 .
  • György Vámos : Carl Lutz (1895–1975). Swiss diplomat in Budapest in 1944. A Righteous Among the Nations. Éditions de Penthes, Geneva 2013.
  • Agnes Hirschi, Charlotte Schallié (Ed.): Under Swiss Protection - Jewish Eyewitness Accounts from Wartime in Budapest . Interviews with Jews whom Carl Lutz saved in Budapest during the Second World War. Verlag ibidem, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-8382-1089-6 .
  • Erika Rosenberg : The glass house. Carl Lutz and the Rescue of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Herbig, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-7766-2787-9 .

Movies

motion pictures

Documentaries

  • Daniel von Aarburg: Carl Lutz - The forgotten hero. Broadcast DOK , SRF 1 on August 28, 2014 (51 minutes)
  • Daniel von Aarburg: Carl Lutz - the forgotten hero , documentary (91 minutes). World premiere on 21./22. June 2014 in Budapest
  • Documentation: Carl Lutz, Der Retter. In the series Vergissmeinnicht, France, 2016, 26 min, by Jacques Malaterre, Jean-Yves Le Naour, led by Gabriel Laurent (French and German); arte, first broadcast on January 14, 2017. (With a comment by the historian Krisztián Ungváry . Also on youth, from 1942 on children sent from Hungary (approx. 10,000), the 7,800 letters of protection that were issued several times - renting the glass house for the Jewish Agency and others 72 buildings until October 15, 1944, the coup of the Arrow Cross and their murders on the banks of the Danube.)

Web links

Commons : Carl Lutz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Rolf Stücheli: Carl Lutz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . Retrieved April 11, 2017.
  2. ^ A b Agnes Hirschi: Carl Lutz and the Jewish resistance in Hungary. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 13, 2005, accessed January 10, 2015 .
  3. ^ Bernhard Odehnal: Carl Lutz saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust ( Memento from September 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Tages-Anzeiger . May 3, 2012.
  4. ↑ To those who have gone before us, commemorating: German cemeteries Haifa and Jerusalem / In memory of Those who have gone before us: German cemeteries in Haifa and Jerusalem. Bentleigh, Vic .: Temple Society, 1974, pp. 1 f. No ISBN.
  5. ↑ To those who have gone before us, commemorating: German cemeteries Haifa and Jerusalem / In memory of Those who have gone before us: German cemeteries in Haifa and Jerusalem. Bentleigh, Vic .: Temple Society, 1974, p. 44. No ISBN.
  6. ↑ Anita Schmid: Carl Lutz: Late honors. Interview with Agnes Hirschi. In: Amnesty - magazine for human rights. March 2014, accessed May 8, 2017 .
  7. ^ Unknown photos by Carl Lutz. In: NZZ. June 22, 2014, accessed May 8, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Carl Lutz duped the Nazi hierarchy. In: SRF , DOK . August 31, 2014, accessed on May 8, 2017 (interview with Daniel von Aarburg).
  9. ↑ Nico Menzato: The Forgotten Holocaust Swiss hero. In: look . 16., updated August 23, 2018.
  10. ^ Website of the Carl Lutz Society .
  11. ↑ Honor for Carl Lutz: A hero at the right time. In: Israel interlining. 29th November 2017.
  12. ↑ Opening ceremony November 23, 2017: Les Glassman video playlist .
  13. ^ Carl Lutz Memorial. Augustin Keller box.
  14. ↑ Michael Genova: From Officials to the Savior of Jews. In: St. Galler Tagblatt . 22nd August 2013.
  15. ^ Jörg Krummenacher: Walzenhausen's respect for Carl Lutz. In: NZZ. August 16, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Ruth Wittwer: Late honor for the Swiss Holocaust hero Carl Lutz. In: SRF. March 3, 2014, accessed May 8, 2017 .
  17. ^ A meeting room in the West House of Parliament now bears the name of Carl Lutz. Federal Council , February 12, 2018, accessed on February 12, 2018 .
  18. ^ Andreas Oplatka: Visa for Life, Diplomats as Saviors - an exhibition in Budapest (until the end of June 1999) ( Memento of November 4, 1999 in the Internet Archive ). In: NZZ. June 18, 1999 (stored at kirchen.ch ).
  19. ^ Gaby Ochsenbein: Carl Lutz: The courageous diplomat from Appenzell. In: Swissinfo . December 6, 2006, accessed January 10, 2015 .
  20. ^ Thomas Gull: Moral courage and humanity - an exhibition about Gertrud and Carl Lutz. University of Zurich , September 21, 2007, accessed January 10, 2015 .
  21. ↑ Peter Abelin: Agnes Hirschi - stepdaughter of the Savior Carl Lutz. In: Infosperber. April 1, 2018.
  22. ↑ Carl Lutz - the forgotten hero. In: swissfilms.ch.
  23. ↑ The forgotten Swiss hero. In: Tages-Anzeiger. June 24, 2014.
  24. ↑ More on the documentation series at arte ( Memento from January 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Lutz, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lutz, Carl Robert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Walzenhausen
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1975
Place of death Bern