Chaim Yisroel Eiss

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Chaim Eiss

Chaim Yisroel Eiss (born September 16, 1876 in Ustrzyki ; † November 9, 1943 in Bern ) was a Polish-Jewish merchant in Zurich , an ultra-Orthodox member of the Jewish diaspora and one of the founders and leaders of the Agudat Jisra'el movement . During the Second World War he was involved in saving Jews from the Holocaust using forged Latin American passports. He worked with Latin American consuls and with the Polish embassy in Bern to produce the passports. Eiss first delivered the lists of persons to the embassy for which the passports were issued. He then smuggled the forged documents into Poland, which was under German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945 . He also coordinated humanitarian aid for the Jews. It is estimated that several thousand Jews were saved thanks to his work. Eiss' testimony is one of the main sources of information about the activities of Aleksander Wacław Ładoś and other Polish diplomats in Switzerland who participated in the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust.

childhood

Eiss was born in 1876 in Ustrzyki in what was then Galicia as the son of ultra-Orthodox parents Mojżesz and Myriam (née Kessler). His father worked as a businessman. Eiss had ten siblings, all of whom died in childhood. The name Chaim (in German "life") had a symbolic meaning. He was self-taught and did not attend a state school. “I didn't learn a trade either because my father wanted me to be a rabbi . For this reason, I was only concerned with religious studies ”- Eiss said later. In 1900 Eiss came to Switzerland , where he intended to start studying. In the end he started working as a peddler and then founded a shop on Müllerstrasse in the Aussersihl district in Zurich . Eiss married Adele Holles. The couple had ten children. The Eiss family lived in Winterthur since 1916 . The descendants of Eiss still live in Switzerland and Israel to this day.

Saving the Jews from the Holocaust

As one of the founders and leaders of the religious party Agudat Jisra'el , Eiss maintained very good contacts with ultra-Orthodox Jews in Central Europe . He also quickly understood the aims of the Third Reich in relation to European Jews. Since 1940, Eiss coordinated the illegal exchange of letters between the ghettos in occupied Poland and the Agudat offices in London , New York and Istanbul . Its main goal was to save as many Jews as possible from the Holocaust. Eiss created a whole network with which documents such as passport photos, forged citizenship certificates and letters were smuggled into the ghettos. He was also one of the people who helped finance the acquisition of the forged passports of Latin American countries. Thanks to the copies of the passports, their holders were not taken to the extermination camps but to the internment camps, where they could be exchanged for the Germans interned by the Allied states. In May 1943, Eiss was interrogated by the Swiss police. According to his testimony, the Polish embassy in Bern played the main role in the illegal production of Latin American passports. Eiss' statements are the main source of information on this subject. Eiss admitted that he gave the Polish consul Konstanty Rokicki the money to buy the blank passports. Rokicki bought the documents from Paraguay's honorary consul Rudolf Hügli . They were filled out at the Polish consulate and submitted again to Consul Hügli for authentication. Hügli also made copies of the passports, which were then smuggled into the ghettos. Before the police got on the trail of Eiss, they interrogated Hügli and the employee of the Polish embassy Juliusz Kühl in January 1943 . Both confessed to having taken part in the passport operation (Hügli also admitted that he had accepted bribes from the Polish diplomats). Possible reasons why the activities of the Ładoś group were uncovered by the police include: information about the activity obtained by the Gestapo in the Będziner ghetto , reports from one of the Paraguayan consuls or the entry of some passport holders to Switzerland. The multi-stage mechanism of passing on the bribes enabled the conspiratorial nature of the operation to be ensured for several months. After the operation was uncovered, the Polish envoy Ładoś argued to the Swiss authorities that the forgery of the documents was carried out in the Polish embassy, ​​that is, on the territory under Polish jurisdiction, and in an emergency. According to Ładoś, sending certified copies of false passports was not a criminal offense under Swiss law. Following the intervention of the Polish envoy, the authorities refrained from bringing the Polish and Jewish participants in the operation to account. It should be noted, however, that by autumn 1943 Germany's defeat in the war seemed almost certain.

Death and inheritance

Chaim Yisroel Eiss died of a heart attack in November 1943. His death, but also the fact that most of the Latin American consuls had finished their missions, meant that the passport operation became considerably less intense. The only one who continued to produce passports, including those for Holocaust victims in Hungary, was the consul of El Salvador José Castellanos , later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations . The envoy Ładoś, in turn, demanded in a dispatch to the Polish government- in- exile in London that they increase the pressure on the Latin American countries and convince them to recognize the passports temporarily. Despite the efforts of Poland (and the Holy See ), most countries refused to recognize the passports or did so after a long delay. El Salvador and Paraguay , however, officially recognized the forged passports in the Polish embassy, ​​so many of their holders were able to survive.

literature

  • Rachel Grünberger-Elbaz: The moving revelations of the Eiss archive: About a previously unknown Swiss rescue operation for Jews in World War II. In: Audiatur Online. August 31, 2017.
  • Agnieszka Haska: “Proszę Pana Ministra o energiczną interwencję”. Aleksander Ładoś (1891–1963) i ratowanie Żydów przez Poselstwo RP w Bernie. In: Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały. 11/2015.
  • Mordecai Paldiel: Saving One's Own: Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust. University of Nebraska Press, 2017.
  • Monty Noam Penkower: The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust. Wayne State University Press, 1987.
  • Chaim Shalem. “Remember, there are not many Eisses now in the Swiss market”: Assistance and Rescue Endeavors of Chaim Yisrael Eiss in Switzerland. In: Yad Vashem Studies. Vol. 33, 2005.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harry A. Goodman's letter to Polish MFA, January 2, 1945. The Sikorski Institute, London.
  2. ↑ a b c d Poles helped buy Jews ransom from the Nazis. The Allies were against it. In: Website of the Polish Embassy in Switzerland, February 12, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c d Jędrzej Uszyński: Ambasador Ładoś i jego dyplomaci - niezwykła akcja ratowania Żydów z Holocaustu. In: Website of the Polish Embassy in Switzerland, 2017 (Polish).
  4. ↑ a b listening protocol from Eiss Israel, b. 16. 9. 76, 13 May 1943. Swiss Federal Archives, Dossier RR Hügli, E 4320 (B) 1990/266.
  5. ↑ Notice du Chef du Département politique, M. Pilet-Golaz in the Dodis database of Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland , Bern, October 13, 1942.
  6. ↑ Poselstwo RP w Bernie do MSZ RP, Depesza No. 727/4/2, Berno, 4 stycznia 1944 r.
personal data
SURNAME Eiss, Chaim Yisroel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ice, Chaim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-Jewish merchant in Zurich
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Ustrzyki Górne
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1943
Place of death Bern