The role of civil society
in disclosing the Auschwitz Protocols
Xavier Cornut, Cercle Carl Lutz
In December 2019, Cercle Carl Lutz gave a two-day seminar to more than 300 guides of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was the first training course on the key role of the civil society in the disclosure of the "Auschwitz Protocols", in June 1944.
On April 7th, 1944, two Slovak Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Birkenau. They wrote a 32-page report with precise cartographic and technical details on the extermination system of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, as well as on the construction of the ramp at the very heart of the camp, intended to welcome deportees from Hungary. Both witnesses were key because they had access to documentation; Wetzler himself, through his role in the storage facility “Kanada”, had visual access to the most sensitive parts of the complex, including the crematoria.
"At the end of February 1943 a new modern crematorium and gassing plant was inaugurated at BIRKENAU. The gassing and burning of the bodies in the Birch Forest was discontinued, the whole job being taken over by the four specially built crematoria. The large ditch was filled in, the ground leveled, and the ashes used as before for fertilizer at the farm labor camp of HERMENSE, so that today it is almost impossible to find trace of the dreadful mass murder which took place here."
«Auschwitz Protocols»
April 1944
What would later be called the "Auschwitz Protocols" (Vrba-Wetzler report) were drafted with the help of Jewish underground networks in Bratislava. Sent to the Jewish community in Budapest, the Protocols caused consternation and accelerated rescue actions on site. Neutral diplomats and Allied chancelleries also received the secret reports. But it did not provoke the expected decisive reactions from governments.
The Vice-Consul of Switzerland in Budapest, Carl Lutz (1895-1975), was as a neutral civil servant, representing 14 foreign nations at war with Hungary, including the United States, Great Britain and El Salvador. Lutz was already active in the protection of Jews. Shocked by the content of « the Auschwitz Protocols » that he had received in May 1944, and having realized that his own government will not react, Lutz decided without authorization to give the document to a passing visitor, a Romanian diplomat accredited in Switzerland, named Florian Manoliu, asking him to bring the document back to Geneva. The final recipient was to be George Mandel-Mantello (1901-1992) from the Consulate General of El Salvador in Geneva.