Carl Lutz is credited with saving the lives of 62,000 Jews from the Holocaust by issuing “letters of protection,” a life-saving diplomatic device of his own invention. In addition, he helped 10,000 Jewish children emigrate to Palestine after he became head of Switzerland’s foreign interests section in Budapest in 1942. By 1944, Lutz represented 12 countries in addition to Switzerland, including the United States.

Born in Switzerland in 1895, Lutz emigrated at the age of 18 to the United States, where he was to remain for more than 20 years. Appointed in 1942 as Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, Hungary, Lutz soon began cooperating with the Jewish Agency for Palestine, issuing Swiss safe-conduct documents enabling Jewish children to emigrate.
Once the Nazis took over Budapest in 1944 and began deporting Jews to the death camps, Lutz negotiated a special deal with the Hungarian government and the Nazis: he had permission to issue protective letters to 8,000 Hungarian Jews for emigration to Palestine.

Lutz then deliberately misinterpreted his permission for 8,000 as applying to families rather than individuals, and proceeded to issue tens of thousands of additional protective letters, all of them bearing a number between one and 8,000. He also set up some 76 safe houses around Budapest, declaring them annexes of the Swiss legation. Among the safe houses the most famous one was the Glass House, an old glass factory building at Vadász utca 29. Over 3,000 Jews found refuge and protection from their prosecutors at the Glass House during World War II. The Glasshouse is now open for visitors as a museum, that is documenting the history of Carl Lutz and his actvities.

After the war, Lutz was initially reprimanded for having gone too far in his efforts, but was vindicated and honored by the Swiss government in 1957. He retired from the Swiss consular service in 1961.

For risking his life to help Jews during the Holocaust, Lutz in 1964 became the first Swiss national named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the Jewish people’s memorial to the Holocaust.

Lutz died in Bern, Switzerland, in 1975.

At the entrance to the old Budapest ghetto, a wall-monument was erected to him in 1991. Although more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, 125,000 survived, half of them thanks to the efforts of Carl Lutz.

Source: Hungarian Embassy, FDFA Switzerland