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Polish diplomats in Bern tried to save 10,000 Jews during Holocaust: report

27.02.2020 13:01
New research has revealed that Polish diplomats based in Switzerland during World War II attempted to save 8,000 to 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust by providing them with fake Latin American documents, according to the World Jewish Congress.
Photo: Radio Poland
Photo: Radio Poland Julian Horodyski

An English-language book listing the names of Jews helped by Polish diplomats during the war was to be presented on Thursday at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.

The Ładoś List gives details of people of Jewish origin who received fake passports from a group of Polish diplomats who aimed to save them from the German Nazis.

The book is named after Aleksander Ładoś, a Polish diplomat who during the war led an informal group based in Bern, Switzerland, which fabricated passports for Jews.

The Ładoś List was published in Polish in December by Poland’s Pilecki Institute.

The English version of the book is a comprehensive publication presenting previously unrevealed details about the so-called Ładoś Group, as well as a full index of the names of the 3,253 Jews who received or were meant to receive the fake documents, the World Jewish Congress said on its website.

Up to 46 percent of the 3,253 Jews who received the Polish-forged documents are confirmed to have survived the Holocaust, and several dozen of them are still alive, according to the Congress.

But the real number of the survivors is much larger, the World Jewish Congress cited Jakub Kumoch, the Polish ambassador to Switzerland and the editor of the study, as saying.

 “We estimate that the Ładoś group contributed to the rescue of between 2,000 and 3,000 people,” Kumoch said, as cited by the Congress, adding that thousands more Jews are believed to have benefited from these efforts, though their names remain undocumented.

The Ładoś List was on Monday unveiled at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London.

On Friday the book was to be the subject of a meeting at the Mandell JCC Innovation Center in the US state of Connecticut.

The publication of The Ładoś List is the result of two years of painstaking research by the Warsaw-based Pilecki Institute, together with the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, the World Jewish Congress added.

The Congress is an international body representing Jewish communities in 100 countries to governments, parliaments and international organizations.

(pk)

Source: worldjewishcongress.org