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The Polish Diplomats Who Rescued Jews during WWII
(JTA) Cnaan Liphshiz - Growing up, Heidi Fishman, 56, a Jewish author from Vermont, knew she was alive thanks to her maternal grandfather Heinz Lichtenstern's Paraguayan passport. But Fishman begin to wonder how the passport got to her grandfather, a German-born Jew with no known ties to Paraguay. She learned last year that the passport was one of thousands of forgeries that four Polish diplomats in exile in Bern, Switzerland, had risked their lives to prepare and distribute to hundreds of recipients, with help from two Polish Jews. The operation required bribing South American diplomats at the risk of being handed over to the Nazis by the Swiss authorities - who were on to the rescuers' game and not happy about it.