Stefan Ryniewicz

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Stefan Ryniewicz

Stefan Jan Ryniewicz (born December 26, 1903 in Tarnopol , Galicia in Austria-Hungary , † March 9, 1988 in Buenos Aires , Argentina ) was a Polish diplomat, a. a. Deputy of the Polish envoy in Bern from 1938–1945. He was a member of the Ładoś group - an informal group of Polish diplomats and representatives of the Jewish organizations that illegally produced large numbers of Latin American passports to save Jews from the Holocaust . Ryniewicz played a crucial role in attracting diplomats from other countries to the passport operation.

Live and act

Ryniewicz was born in Tarnopol . He attended a grammar school in Lviv . In the late 1920s he married Zofia nee Zasadni. The couple had two sons: Jan Christian (1931–1989) and Tomasz Maria (1934–1983), who later used the name Vanryn. The descendants of Ryniewicz now live in Argentina and the USA .

In 1928 Ryniewicz began working as a staff member and then as head of the consular department of the Polish embassy in Bern , where he worked until 1933. He then worked in the office of Foreign Minister Józef Beck and from 1935 to 1938 consul and head of the consular department of the Polish embassy in Riga , Latvia . On December 28, 1936, he took part in a plane disaster under Susiec , in which he was injured. From December 1938 to July 1945 he worked again in the Polish embassy in Bern - first as 1st secretary and then as counselor. From 1940-45 he was deputy to the envoy Aleksander Ładoś .

Ładoś Group and "Passport Affair"

1940-1945 Ryniewicz was involved in the activity of the Ładoś group , which produced the Latin American passports for the Jews in ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland . Thanks to passports, their holders were able to survive the final solution - they were not sent to extermination - but to internment camps, where they could be exchanged for the Germans imprisoned in the Allied states .

The blank passports were bought for bribes from the honorary consul of Paraguay and Bern notary Rudolf Hüggli . A Jewish employee of the Polish legation Dr. Juliusz Kühl then took them to the consular department at Thunstrasse 21, where they were filled out by the consul Konstanty Rokicki . The information on filling out the passports - the lists of names with photos - were smuggled out of the ghettos in occupied Poland by two Jewish organizations: RELICO by Abraham Silberschein and Agudat Israel by Chaim Eiss . The envoy Aleksander Ładoś and Ryniewicz provided diplomatic protection for the entire operation.

In January 1943, the Swiss police interrogated Rudolf Hügli and, after a few months, Kühl, Eiss and Silberschein. The details of the modus operandi of the Ładoś group come mainly from these four people.

After the group was uncovered by the police, Ryniewicz intervened with the head of the Swiss police, Heinrich Rothmund , who was considered the main architect of the Swiss policy on foreigners at the time. Ryniewicz informed the police chief that the participants in the operation were acting on humanitarian grounds. He convinced Rothmund to end the investigation. Although Rothmund underlined his strongly negative attitude towards the operation ("I very vigorously explained the dangerousness and untenability of passport maneuvers"), Silberschein was released from custody and the Polish diplomats were not brought to justice. The conversation between the envoy Ładoś and the Swiss Foreign Minister Marcel Pilet-Golaz could also have helped in this matter .

At the end of 1943 the Nazis deported the majority of the holders of Paraguayan passports from the internment camp in Vittel to Auschwitz-Birkenau , where they were murdered. The government in exile of Poland and the Holy See then asked Paraguay, as well as other Latin American governments, to temporarily recognize the passports. In 1944 Paraguay complied with this request, which was arguably crucial for the rescue of hundreds of passport holders who were still in the Bergen-Belsen internment camp .

The exact number of people saved thanks to the Ładoś group is not known. According to Agudat Israel , one can speak of “several hundred people”, while journalists Zbigniew Parafianowicz and Michał Potocki estimate the number of those rescued at 400 people. It should be noted that these people were mostly religious Jews who had little chance of surviving the Holocaust era.

Knowledge of Latin American passports was widespread in the Warsaw Ghetto and they were even the subject of the poem “Passports” by Władysław Szlengel . However, the passports were only associated with the Jewish organizations from which the documents were delivered directly. Little was known about the role of the Polish embassy in Bern in producing the passports. The participation of Ryniewicz and Rokicki in the operation was only proven in August 2017, after the articles in the Polish Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and the Canadian daily newspaper Daily Globe & Mail appeared at the same time .

Next life

When the Polish embassy in Bern was taken over by the coalition government (Ładoś and Kühl were their supporters), Ryniewicz gave up diplomatic work and spoke out in favor of the Polish government in exile . Nevertheless, relations between Ryniewicz and Ładoś as well as Kühl remained good. All of them stayed in Switzerland , where they ran an economic activity together. They finally separated after Kühl left for the USA and Ładoś and Ryniewicz for France . Ryniewicz later moved to Argentina , where he was chairman of the Polish Club (Club Polaco) in Buenos Aires . At the same time he conducted his economic activity, u. a. as operator of a car wash, continues.

On December 31, 1972, Ryniewicz was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta - probably for his work in the Polish diaspora in Argentina and not for his services during his time in Bern, which were unknown. The award certificate signed by the exile president Stanisław Ostrowski does not contain any justification for the award of the medal. Ryniewicz died in Buenos Aires on March 9, 1988 and was buried in the Boulogne cemetery.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nieznane zdjęcia i dokumenty na temat Stefana Ryniewicza
  2. ↑ Chaim Eiss interrogation, May 14, 1943, Federal Archives Bern
  3. ↑ Abraham Silbershein interrogation, September 1, 1943, Federal Archives Bern
  4. ↑ Julis Kühl's interrogation, May 22, 1944, Federal Archives Bern
  5. ^ Heinrich Rothmund's note on a meeting with Stefan Ryniewicz, September 6, 1943, Federal Archives Bern
  6. ↑ Marcel Pilet-Golaz: Note about a meeting with Aleksander Ładoś, October 13, 1943, Federal Archives Bern
  7. ^ Harry A .: Goodmann's letter to the Polish MFA, May 2, 1945, the Sikorski Institute, London
  8. ↑ How a Polish envoy saved hundreds of Jews in Bern
personal data
SURNAME Ryniewicz, Stefan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ryniewicz, Stefan Jan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarnopol , Galicia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1988
Place of death Buenos Aires , Argentina