Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser

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Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser (born March 7, 1911 in Rechthalten ; † June 29, 1995 in Burgdorf BE ) was a Swiss humanitarian activist and UNICEF Vice-President.

Life

Gertrud Lutz, the daughter of a cheese maker, did an internship in England after studying at the commercial schools in Bern and Friborg. In 1930 she emigrated to the USA . 1931–1934 she worked as an office clerk at the Swiss Consulate in St. Louis ( Missouri ), where she met her future husband, Carl Lutz . They returned to Switzerland together and married in Bern in January 1935. They then traveled to Jaffa in Palestine , where Carl Lutz was employed as a consular officer. Gertrud worked as an unpaid office worker. In 1937 the couple moved to Tel Aviv, where they witnessed the civil war between Palestinians and Jewish immigrants. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Carl Lutz took over the diplomatic representation of the interests of the Third Reich. Gertrud took care of the German women, children and elderly people who were interned in the assembly camps and prisons. In cooperation with the British administration, she was committed to the German internees even after her husband's departure in autumn 1940. She remained alone in Palestine until October 1941.

From January 1942 until spring 1945 Gertrud Lutz lived with her husband in Budapest , where Carl Lutz was the head of the department for foreign interests at the Swiss legation. In this function he represented up to 14 states that were at war with Hungary, including Great Britain with all dominions and a Palestinian mandate. Until the National Socialist occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, Lutz was able to issue around 5,000 emigration visas to Palestine for the Jewish population and, from summer 1944, the so-called collective protection passports and protection letters. His wife Gertrud took part in the rescue operations of over 62,000 persecuted Jews.

During the Soviet blockade of Budapest between late December 1944 and mid-February 1945, Gertrud Lutz took care of more than 50 people who were hiding in the basement of the Swiss consulate. At the beginning of April 1945, the Lutz couple were allowed to leave for Switzerland with other diplomats. Carl Lutz separated from his wife and divorced in 1946 in order to be able to remarry.

Thanks to her experiences from Palestine and Budapest, Gertrud Lutz was able to join children's aid.

1946–1948 she worked as a delegate for Swiss donations in Yugoslavia, Finland and Poland. 1949–1950 she headed the delegation of the newly founded UNICEF in Poland. She spent an enormously successful time in Brazil, where she led the UNICEF mission from 1951 to 1964. From 1965–1966 she worked in Turkey before she was appointed to Paris as Vice President and Director of UNICEF for Europe and North Africa.

During the Biafra War of 1968–1970, Gertrud Lutz moved her job to Geneva in order to be able to work more closely with other aid organizations. They looked after around one million children at risk and continued to help in Nigeria during the post-war period. Gertrud remained connected to the Paris headquarters even after her retirement in 1971.

In "unretirement", as she called her later years, she first got into political activity and took over responsibility for school maintenance in her place of residence in Zollikofen BE 1972–1974 - as the first female councilor in the Bern canton. She had to withdraw from political life thanks to her commitments to UNICEF. She was a member of the UNICEF committee until 1988, which she also represented at international conferences.

plant

Gertrud Lutz worked in humanitarian aid for more than 50 years, often as the only woman on men's committees. As a delegate of the Swiss donation and UNICEF, she saved war-damaged and disadvantaged children from starvation, and organized feeding and recreational programs for sick children and young people. She founded homes for children and mothers as well as health centers, trained nursing staff, collected money for her charitable campaigns with lectures and supported the women's movement in Europe and Africa.

She also remained loyally connected to her employees from the time in Budapest and ensured that her commitment during the rescue of the Jews was recognized. Gertrud Lutz was particularly committed to the book and film projects about Carl Lutz as well as to the processing of his estate, which she brought to the archive for contemporary history at ETH Zurich. Your own estate is in the Gosteli Foundation in Worblaufen BE.

Homage

In 2018 a “Carl Lutz” meeting room was inaugurated in the Federal Palace. The memorial plaque reads: “This room is dedicated to all employees of the department who, like Carl Lutz, Harald Feller, Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser, Ernst Vonrufs and Peter Zürcher in Budapest from 1944 to 1945, have shown a great humanity that inspires us Must be an incentive. "

Awards

  • 1960–1985 she was made an honorary citizen of the Brazilian provinces of Mato Grosso and Goiás; Several children's and maternity homes and health centers were named after her
  • 1978 Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial
  • 1988 honorary member of UNICEF

literature

  • Alexander Grossman: Only the Conscience, Carl Lutz and his Budapest Action, History and Portrait . Wald, Im Waldgut 1986. ISBN 3-7294-0026-6
  • Theo Tschuy: Carl Lutz and the Jews of Budapest . 1995. ISBN 3-8582-3551-2
  • Helena Kanyar Becker (Ed.) Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser: diplomat and humanist , exhibition catalog, Basel and Bern 2006, ISBN 3-85953-043-7
  • Helena Kanyar Becker: I was far from humanitarian ramblings, Gertrud Lutz Fankhauser , in: Displacement, Transfiguration, Responsibility, Swiss Refugee Policy in the War and Post-War Period, 1940–2007, Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.), Basel and Zurich, 2007, p -38-49, ISBN 978-3-7965-2404-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser: un ange entreprenant . In: Le Temps . August 19, 2014 ( letemps.ch [accessed February 12, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Le Juste Carl Lutz a sa salle au Palais fédéral . In: Tribune de Genève . February 12, 2018 ( tdg.ch ).
personal data
SURNAME Lutz-Fankhauser, Gertrud
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Keep right
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1995
Place of death Burgdorf BE