Matter of conscience.
A small-town
preacher Carl Lutz.
As the Nazi reign of terror bore down on the Jewish population in Hungary, there was a Swiss diplomat stationed in Budapest by the name of Carl Lutz. Vice Consul Lutz, introverted but skilled in diplomacy, was serving as the head of the Section for Foreign Interests for the Swiss Legation. As he witnessed the deportations and threats to the Jewish population, he decided to act.
Lutz would soon launch one of the largest rescue efforts implemented during the Holocaust. Yet, his rescue operation cannot be understood in isolation. Rather, his actions in Budapest in the waning months of the war were influenced by his earlier life and career experiences far from the banks of the Danube.
Carl Lutz emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in 1913, hoping to forge a career as a Christian pastor or missionary. During a short stint at a small, parochial college in America’s rural heartland, the future diplomat realized that his lack of public speaking skills and eternal perfectionism would preclude him from preaching fiery sermons to large audiences. A small-town preacher Carl Lutz would never be.
Lutz turned to the diplomatic service and graduated from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 1924. He spent the next decade serving in various diplomatic appointments throughout the country, once even returning to the American heartland he’d left years earlier. Lutz stayed in the United States far longer than he anticipated and did not return to the other side of the Atlantic permanently until the mid-1930s.
Beginning in early 1936, Lutz served as a diplomat in Mandatory Palestine, a territory then under British rule. Although he had initially hoped to return to Switzerland, Lutz’s appointment in Palestine proved to be of great consequence for his later efforts in Budapest, a fact he could not have known at the time. After the Second World War began in September 1939, approximately 2,500 Germans found themselves trapped in the British territory. Germany asked Switzerland to appoint a neutral arbiter to mediate the return of the displaced citizens and Lutz was assigned to handle the task. He successfully negotiated the release of all 2,500 Germans, impressing his superiors and colleagues. Praise for his skilled work even reached the Führer’s office in Berlin. Lutz then aided Jews in Palestine with German passports. He was able to procure protective papers from the British, which allowed their holders to remain in exile in Palestine and distributed them among the population.
As of March 18, 1944, Hungary remained the last area under the influence of Nazi Germany in which the “Final Solution” had yet to be implemented. That changed a day later when the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded Hungary and swiftly undertook the genocidal aims of the Third Reich against the Hungarian population. By early July, around 438,000 Hungarian Jews were forced onto trains and sent mostly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately 90% were murdered shortly after arrival.
Amy Lutz
Carl Lutz in Budapest. FORTEPAN / Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zürich / Agnes Hirschi