Other diplomats who saved lives

Other diplomats who saved lives

Some of the diplomats who, like George Mantello in Geneva, played a role in helping Jewish and other refugees to flee the Nazis:

Hiram Bingham IV: U.S. consular official in Marseille, France, who defied State Department regulations by issuing visas, safe passes and letters of transit to Jews and other refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Credited with helping to rescue about 2,000 people, including the artist Marc Chagall and author Leon Feuchtwanger between 1940 and 1941. Passed over for promotion after World War II, he was posthumously honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz: German naval attache in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1943, he secretly alerted the Danish resistance that the Nazis were planning to deport Danish Jews. More than 6,000 Jews — more than 90 percent of the total in Denmark — were transported overnight by sea to neutral Sweden. Among them was pianist-comedian Victor Borge.

Chiune Sugihara: Japanese diplomat in Lithuania, issued about 3,500 transit visas to Jews to get them out of Europe as the Nazi invasion loomed. Upon his return home he was fired from the Japanese Foreign Service.

Dr. Feng Shan Ho: Chinese consul in Vienna, defied direct orders and issued many visas to Jews who then escaped the Nazi occupation of Austria. His visas got many Jews out of concentration camps. His government reprimanded him and removed him from his post in May 1940. An estimated 18,000 Jews got to China, many of them with visas issued by Fend Snan Ho.

Giorgio Perlasca: Posing as Spain’s representative in Hungary after the ambassador was ordered out, he established “safe houses” for Jews and issued protective passes to some 3,000 of them, putting his life at risk.

Carl Lutz, Swiss diplomat in Budapest, 1942-1945, credited with saving thousands of Jews by setting up dozens of safe houses and issuing thousands of letters of safe passage. He helped distribute certificates of Salvadoran citizenship signed by George Mantello at the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva. After the war he was formally chided by his bosses for allegedly overstepping his authority.

Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat, directly rescued 20,000 Jews from the Holocaust by distributing false Swedish passports or sheltering them on diplomatic territory. He also intervened to prevent the annihilation of the 70,000 people in Budapest’s Jewish ghetto. When the Soviet Army entered Budapest he was arrested and never seen again. Moscow later said he died in prison in July 1947 but many suspected he lived in captivity for many more years.

Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial authority; “Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust”, by Mordecai Paldiel; AP research; David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.