The Passports of Life: A Ładoś Group Story event focuses on the brave wartime effort, which was orchestrated by a group of diplomats led by Aleksander Ładoś, the Polish government-in-exile’s de facto ambassador to Switzerland.
The event, which will take place on Thursday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, will feature a play performed by actors from the Adam Asnyk High School in Łódź, central Poland, a special performance by cantor Symcha Keller, the New York City premiere of Polmission, a movie about the Ładoś Group, and a Q&A session with the movie director, according to the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Poland’s Pilecki Institute in 2019 released a list of names of more than 3,000 Jews who were provided with fake passports by Polish diplomats based in Switzerland during the war.
The Bern-based group, led by Ładoś and including Jewish activists, is credited with helping potentially thousands of Jews escape from Poland at a time when the country was under Nazi German occupation.
Aleksander Ładoś (1891-1963). Image: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain]
Among those helped by the Bern-based group in the early stages of the war was Yosef Burg, a Jewish man who later became one of the founding fathers of the state of Israel, according to a report.
Poland’s government in August 2018 announced the recovery of a historical archive documenting the effort in which its diplomats helped rescue Jews from the Holocaust during World War II.
The collection originally belonged to Chaim Eiss (1867-1943), an Orthodox Jewish activist who was a member of the Bern-based group led by Ładoś.
One of the Polish diplomats who was a member of the group, Konstanty Rokicki (1899-1958), was last year posthumously recognised by Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial centre as a Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The Israel Hayom newspaper has described Ładoś as an “unsung hero” who led a massive effort to save thousands of Jews from extermination during the Holocaust.
Thursday's event in New York begins at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place, in lower Manhattan.
Image: Polish Cultural Institute in New York
Thursday, December 1, at 7 p.m. ET
Museum of Jewish Heritage
36 Battery Pl, New York, NY, 10280
(gs)
Source: instytutpolski.pl, IAR, PAP, polskieradio.pl