Page 45 of The Righteous

JULIA AND THERESA arrived early for their scheduled meeting with Carl and Gertrud.

To start the day off on the right foot, they brought a bag of Esterházy tortes with a thermos of hot chocolate.

“I’m anxious to see what plans the Swiss have approved,” Theresa said.

“Carl said they have tools. I wonder what that means.”

“I’m anxious to talk to Gertrud and learn what she has in mind for housing the refugees,” Julia said.

They didn’t have long to wait. Carl and his assistants, Paul and Martin, all joined them and took a seat around the conference table. “Uh-oh,” Julia said. “We may be short on hot chocolate. I only brought four cups. Thankfully, I did buy a dozen tortes.”

Carl poured himself a cup of hot chocolate and took a pastry. Then he looked at Theresa and said, “Just as a reminder, when we’re done here, Gertrud would like to talk to you about Budapest real estate.”

Carl set a box on the table and opened it.

Inside was a sheaf of papers. The papers were an off-white color.

Each page had a Swiss seal on the top and the Swiss stamp of authority on the bottom.

Theresa took one out and examined it. It was titled Die Schweizerische Gesandt—The Swiss Ambassador.

The page had two columns of writing. The one on the left was in German, the official language of Switzerland.

Theresa read it out loud for Julia. “‘Department of Foreign Interests. Emigration Collective Passport. This valid passport is registered in Switzerland therefore he (she) considered to be the relevant owner.’” Theresa shrugged one shoulder.

“That is a bit confusing, but translating German to English is a little clumsy. Sorry. I think what it means is that the named person is the owner of an official Swiss emigration passport and therefore would be immune from German legal process. He or she is entitled to protection by the government of Switzerland. There is a space in the middle of the page for the individual holder’s name.

Did I translate it correctly?” she asked.

Carl smiled. “Yes, you did. You are holding a Swiss letter of protection, which should keep the named holder immune from German arrest. There are a thousand of those letters in this box. The section for the holder is left blank.”

Julia picked one up and examined it. “This is different from the documents Theresa and I have,” she said.

Carl answered, “That is because your identification is that of a Swiss administrative assistant to the Swiss embassy in Budapest.”

Julia patted the box. “These are marvelous, but how do you plan on distributing them? Who should get one?”

“That is a good question,” Carl said. “We only have a thousand right here. I believe that the Swiss government has authorized more, but we don’t have them yet.

They should arrive soon, but there will only be a few thousand more, far short of the nine hundred thousand needed to protect the entire Jewish population in Hungary.

My superiors feel that if we indiscriminately flood Hungary with a million Swiss protection letters, the Germans will consider them a form only, and they will lose their effectiveness.

That won’t work at all. The function of these letters is to protect a Swiss citizen, or a person who is designated to be under Swiss protection, who has immigrated into a foreign land.

It is a notification that the holder remains under the protection of the Swiss government.

Other countries in the world, including Germany, will respect and abide by Swiss declaration of protection and will recognize their immunity from local restrictions.

Accordingly, German citizens are also immune if they were to travel to Switzerland with a German letter of protection. ”

“Excuse me,” Theresa said, “but how can one thousand people in Hungary be Swiss immigrants entitled to protection?”

“Good question,” Carl responded. “But the SS squads that are roaming through the countryside don’t know who is and who is not under Swiss protection.

They don’t know who is here on an emigration visa.

If they see a person’s name on an official Swiss letter of protection, they will let them pass.

This should work just fine for a thousand people. Five thousand could work too.”

“So who gets the magic letter?” Paul asked. “What I mean is, to whom do we distribute these letters?”

“The better question might be: Where will the SS squads be arresting people?” said Martin.

“That’s where we need to pass out the letters.

We should try to get there first. The SS isn’t here in Budapest. Why don’t I drive out into the country and learn where the SS is operating and arresting people, or where they are taking them?

If they move people from the countryside into a town, in what part of town are the people staying?

We can pass out letters there and they will be immune from transfer, won’t they? ”

Carl shrugged. “Maybe, if they are not held in a guarded lockup. If they are staying in parts of town all huddled up in a ghetto, then I think it would be impossible to pass out the letters.”

Julia spoke up. “Well, we know for a fact that the SS is in the town of Gyongyos, the one near Aunt Pearl. The SS is definitely in that section and arresting people. That is where they stopped our car. Couldn’t we pass the letters out to people that live there?”

Carl shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that area.

The SS went through there, conducted their sweep, arrested Jewish families, and has now put them on a train.

Those families are gone. They are now on their way to Poland.

Trains have been taking prisoners north for days now.

At the rate of a thousand or more each day. ”

Julia and Theresa were shocked. “How do you know this?”

“We have sources.”

“So in the past ten days, over ten thousand people have been sent to the death camps?”

“I’m afraid so. Probably more.”

Theresa’s mouth was wide open. “Ten thousand innocent people will now be gassed to death.”

Carl closed his eyes and nodded. “Remember, the public doesn’t know that yet. We don’t have independent proof.”

“Then how will we know where to pass out the letters? Who is at risk? How do you know who is Jewish and subject to being taken? The SS has the official Hungarian register, but we don’t.

There are very few Orthodox temples in the outlying districts.

I wouldn’t know where to begin to seek them out.

We can’t just drive down the street handing them out blindly, without knowing who the recipients are. ”

“We know that there are at least a thousand Jews who have already fled the countryside and are now roaming the streets in Budapest,” Carl said.

“Half the Jews in Hungary live outside of Budapest. I would have to believe that a thousand more are fleeing every day. A lot of them come to the Great Synagogue to sleep. We could pass out letters at the synagogue.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Theresa, “but the ones at the synagogue are mostly family groups—like a father, a mother, and their little ones. If you approach a family of five, are you going to prepare and pass out five letters of protection?”

“Why not?” said Paul.

“Because it makes no sense,” Julia said, “and believe me, I know about immigration visas. They are not issued to babies. Are you going to say that the Swiss Department of Foreign Interests has interviewed this three-year-old, issued a valid immigration passport to her, registered it in Switzerland, and that the child is now the certified passport owner, immune from arrest?”

“We could.”

“But we only have a thousand letters. They’ll be gone by tomorrow morning,” Julia argued. “Carl just said we’re not going to get nine hundred thousand letters from Switzerland. They would become ineffective.”

“I have a better idea,” Carl said. “In the space in the middle of the page where the passport holder’s name is to be inserted, what if we wrote the family name?

What if we issue the letter of protection to the family as a whole?

Families travel together, don’t they? For example, the registered owner could be the Strauss family. ”

“I don’t believe they issue those letters to groups or families,” Paul said. “I’ve never seen it. Maybe Bern wouldn’t verify the letter.”

“How do you know?” Carl said. “Has the matter ever come before the Swiss authorities?”

“I’ve never seen one,” Paul said, “but then, I haven’t seen letters like this at all. I never needed one. I have a Swiss birth certificate.”

Carl held up his index finger. “Suppose we issue one to the Strauss family and we list the names of the mother, father, and each of the children right on the face of the letter? Wouldn’t that work?

If they call here to the Swiss embassy to check, we would be sure to let them know that the family visa is valid. ”

“I like that idea,” Julia said, “but I have a question. What about the family’s uncles and aunts? Like Aunt Pearl. Maybe she’s traveling with them. Could she be included too? And her children, the cousins too? Would that work?”

“Why not?” Paul said. “If it’s good enough for the children, then a family letter should cover the whole family. Do we think some SS Scharführer is going to take the chance of overstepping his bounds and arresting someone with a Swiss family passport in violation of German law?”

Carl smiled. “Then right now, in front of us, we have a thousand letters in this box. Conceivably, that could cover a thousand families, which means several thousand individuals. I have been promised eight thousand letters by the Swiss government.”

“Fabulous,” Theresa said. “Who knows how many that could protect? We could take them to the Great Synagogue and cover everyone in there. I don’t think there are more than fifty families.”