A Protective Letter [Schutzbrief] issued by the Swiss Embassy in Budapest signed by the Righteous Among the Nations Karl Lutz for the Jewish girl Vera Szamekiu, daughter of the doctor and the Romanian diplomat Oskar Szamekiu. Budapest, December 9, 1944. An extremely rare document, printed in a special version for Vera and her son due to their Jewish father’s closeness to the embassy, and due to his personal ties with Carl Lutz himself! It is rare to find such permits issued for children.
A typewritten letter, in German and Hungarian, on letterhead of the Foreign Interests Department of the Swiss Embassy (Schweizerische Gesandtschaft, Abteilung für fremde Interessen), which was managed by the diplomat Carl Lutz; With the passport photo of Vera and her mother. It is written that Vera Szamekiu, Daughter of Oskar Szamekiu, is under the protection of the Swiss Embassy. The letter is hand signed by Carl Lutz, as well as by the seal of the Swiss Embassy in Budapest (in German and French), and by the hand signed of the secretary of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry in Budapest, and it is intended to protect Vera from acts Hostilities that could have occurred on the part of the Hungarian government allied who joined the Axis powers in World War II. Protective Letters with Lutz’s personal signature are extremely rare.
With the conquest of Hungary by the Nazis in 1944, the systematic extermination and deportation of Hungarian Jews began. Lutz, who supported the Jewish cause during his service at the Swiss Consulate in Jaffa between 1935 and 1941, and was very friendly with Moshe Kraus, director of the Palestine Office in Hungary, who organized the immigration on behalf of the Jewish Agency, responded to his request to help save Jews and began to work for salvation of Budapest Jewry. Among other things, he issued Swiss “sponsorship letters” to Jews with certificates. After negotiations with high-ranking Nazi officials, and with the consent of the Hungarian authorities, he issued about 8,000 letters of sponsorship – one for each Immigration visa holder. He later passed on the sponsorship letters to the entire family of the certificate holder, and thus tens of thousands of Jews were included under the protection of the sponsorship letters. In addition, thousands of sponsorships were forged on paper stolen from the SS office. On another level, Lutz and Krauss worked to make sure that Western governments, and later, public opinion in these countries as well, would understand what was going on in the extermination camps. Lutz saved over 60,000 Jews through the sponsorships he provided and the sheltered homes in which he housed the survivors. In 1964, Lutz was among the first to win the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem. In 1991, a memorial monument was erected in his memory at the entrance to the Budapest ghetto.
[1] leaf. 30×21 cm. Fold marks. Slight tears in the margins. A few stains. Good condition.
