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Polish Diplomats in Switzerland during Holocaust Provided Jews with Forged Passports
(Jerusalem Post) Jeremy Sharon - Six Polish diplomats working out of the Swiss capital Bern sought to provide Jews in Poland with forged South American passports, mostly from Paraguay. In some cases the passport holders were allowed to live outside the Jewish ghettos or were sent to internment camps instead of Nazi death camps. According to Polish ambassador to Switzerland Dr. Jakub Kumoch, up to 1,500 Jews who received the Polish-forged documents are confirmed to have survived the Holocaust. Then-Polish Ambassador to Switzerland Aleksander Lados, who served in Bern in 1940-45, oversaw the passport forgery efforts. The initiative came from Juliusz Kuhl, a Polish Jewish diplomat in Bern, together with Chaim Yisroel Eiss of Agudat Yisrael in Zurich and Abraham Silberschein. Polish diplomat Konstanty Rokicki was responsible for obtaining the blank South American passports and filling them out. The passports were also used by Jews in the Netherlands and Germany. The initiative was ended in 1943 when the Swiss authorities became suspicious and demanded that it be shut down.