George Almond-Mantello

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George Mandel-Mantello (born December 11, 1901 in Lechnitz , Bistrița , Transylvania , Austria-Hungary ; died April 25, 1992 in Rome ) was "First Secretary of the Consul" of the Republic of El Salvador in Geneva from 1942 to 1945 .

Life

The textile manufacturer György Mandl was in Vienna in 1938 when Austria was annexed , and in Prague in 1939 when the rest of the Czech Republic was occupied. He knew what the Nazis were capable of, so he devoted himself to saving Jews from the Shoah . György Mandl was attaché of Charles II of Romania to the Hungarian imperial administrator Miklós Horthy . In 1939 he took on Salvadoran citizenship and worked at the Salvadoran consulate in Bucharest.

The part of Romania in which György Mandl's family lived belonged again to Hungary after the Second Vienna Arbitration on August 30, 1940. At the end of 1941, Mandel-Mantello was in Bucharest. El Salvador broke off relations with Romania and Mandl had to leave Hungary. Mandl was arrested by the Gestapo in Rijeka and was imprisoned in Zagreb for a few months. He managed to escape to Geneva via Bucharest.

First Secretary to the Consul

In August 1942, the consul of El Salvador Arturo Castellanos gave him asylum and the name George Mandel-Mantello. With the approval of the government of El Salvador, Mandel, as honorary consul of El Salvador, issued around 10,000 nationality certificates for El Salvador free of charge. With these nationality certificates it was not possible to leave the country like with passports, but they served as letters of protection from the ICRC . Because the Republic of El Salvador had no representation in Hungary, the Salvadoran government asked the Swiss government on July 4, 1944, whether the Salvadorans could be represented by the Swiss consulate in Budapest. After the approval of the Swiss government, the Salvadoran Foreign Minister sent the following telegram: “To Your Excellency Minister Marcel Pilet-Golaz , Federal Councilor, Head of the Federal Office in Bern, we thank the citizens of El Salvador in legal and private interests in Hungary for their generous respect Many of the blank customers were later sent to Budapest, where the Swiss Vice Consul Carl Lutz organized protection for thousands of Jews in an abandoned glass factory.

Publication of the events in Auschwitz

Mantello received an abridged version of the Vrba - Wetzler report, which reported in detail on the events in Auschwitz, through Florian Manoliu, the Romanian counselor in Bern, from Miklós (Moshe) Krausz, the representative of the Jewish Agency in Budapest, together with a memorandum on the ghettoization and deportation of Jews in some parts of Hungary on June 19, 1944. Mantello acted independently of the Swiss and international Jewish organizations, he distributed the material received from Krausz to leading Swiss religious leaders, politicians, academics and journalists. The Hungarian-speaking secretary of Walter Garret, the Zurich correspondent of The Exchange Telegraph Co. Ltd. , translated the documents into English. With this public relations work in 1944, Mantello tried to stop the deportation of Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz , which was forced by Adolf Eichmann . The publication led to Franklin D. Roosevelt , Gustav V (Sweden) and the Nuncio Angelo Rotta on behalf of Pius XII. campaign for the Hungarian Jews at Miklós Horthy . Mantello convinced the King of Sweden to send Raoul Wallenberg to Hungary in order to create extraterritorial institutions for Jews with Swedish passports.

literature

  • David Kranzler : The man who stopped the trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's finest hour . Foreword by Joseph I. Lieberman . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2000

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Kranzler p. 9
  2. ↑ Georges Mandel-Mantello 1939 to 1945 , at raoul-wallenberg.de
  3. ^ Rory Caroll: Call to honor El Salvador's rescuer of Jews after war role rediscovered , in: The Guardian , June 19, 2008
  4. ↑ Randolph L. Braham : The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary . Columbia University Press, 1994
personal data
SURNAME Almond-Mantello, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian resistance fighter, First Secretary of the Consul of the Republic of El Salvador in Geneva (1942–1945)
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Bistrița
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1992
Place of death Rome