said Jakub Kumoch, now Polish ambassador to Turkey.
Ambassador Kumoch also added that “the unspoken history” is, in his opinion, the “perfect subtitle”: 'The silence of Ładoś places a burden on our studies on the Holocaust and ourselves. There are streets named after Wallenberg all over the country, but not a single Aleksander Ładoś street. By publishing this monograph, the Auschwitz Museum partly rectifies this injustice many years after the death of the Polish ambassador, who during the Holocaust was often referred to by his Jewish colleagues as “Righteous Among the Nations,” - says Kumoch.
The publication is divided into four chapters. The beginning of the book describes the activity of the Polish Legation in Bern from September 1939 to April 1940, when Łados’s predecessor, Tytus Komarnicki headed the post. Further chapters cover the period from May 1940, i.e. during the time of Ładoś. The publication also addresses the international activities of the Polish Legation in Bern. The last chapter deals with the Polish Legation as an information centre about the Holocaust.
“Dr. Drywa describes Ładoś in much more detail than previous authors, including myself. While we focused mainly on the phenomenon of Latin American passports, the researcher shows the operation in a much broader perspective. It deals in detail with, among other things, the unprecedented issue of Ładoś’s telegram - information about the Holocaust and the rescue from the Holocaust sent by Jewish organisations using the infrastructure of Polish Legation. Mr Ładoś was the one who permitted the use of Polish cyphers. Some of them bear his notes,” said Jakub Kumoch.
The researcher began working on the publication in autumn 2008 with queries in Swiss archives, including the Schweizerische Bundesarchiv in Bern, Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich - afz.ethz.ch in Zurich (collections: Historisches Archiv der Schweizerischen Israelische Gemeindebundes, Saly Mayer Archiv-des American Jewish Joint Distribution Committe New York (1939-1950) and Memoiren von Dr Julius Kühl). In addition, she conducted a query in the Library and Archive of the Polish Museum at Rapperswil Castle and met with the author of the book "Poles - Jews - Swiss", Paul Stauffer, who briefly touched upon a number of issues related to the activities of the Polish Legation in Bern between 1939-1945. In Poland, she primarily examined the collection of the Polish Legation in Bern between 1939-1945, located in the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw, as well as the materials found in the Military Office of Historical Research in Warsaw.