Facing political and public pressure, the Hungarian government suspended deportations on July 8th, 1944. However, departures to Auschwitz were to start again at the end of August 1944, but two days before the fateful date, the front collapsed with Romania's change of side and the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz stopped permanently.
« A destruction camp »
Even though, the Swiss media was museled by State censorship, it braved the restriction and flaunted the report by publishing specific articles on the deportation and extermination system. Media described “gas chambers” and high-capacity “crematoria”. On July 7th , 1944, the Swiss German reference daily “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” explained that « ninety percent of the Jews deported from Hungary were reportedly transported to the Auschwitz camp ».
On July 11th, 1944, the editor-in-chief of the French-speaking “Feuille d'avis de Lausanne” mentioned a « manhunt, herds of human beings parked or rather crowded in cramped premises, loaded into trucks like parcels to the Auschwitz camp in Upper Silesia, so-called concentration camp, actually a destruction camp ("Vernichtunglager") with advanced facilities such as gas chambers and crematoria by furnaces. » In hindsight, the editor-in-chief's conclusion had a terrible meaning:
"Charity, pity, tolerance, the world will sink into deeper upheaval than what is currently being witnessed. If men do not restore these elements of human dignity in their hearts (and their actions) that centuries of struggle and the help of Christianity had assured them. Otherwise, what forfeiture, what defilement!"
The "Auschwitz Protocols" and their disclosure by civil society saved precious months – and lives. They were to be used as evidence during the Nuremberg Trial, in 1945.
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Koło Carla Lutza to szwajcarska organizacja prowadząca badania w dziedzinie historii. Przy wsparciu Beate i Serge’a Klarsfeld oraz Fundacji Toma Lantosa pełniących funkcję Organu Doradczego Koło Carla Lutza organizuje wykłady oraz współpracuje z dużymi Muzeami i organizacjami edukacyjnymi z całego świata. www.carl-lutz.com