Carl Lutz

Carl Lutz was born in Walzenhausen, Switzerland. Emigrating to the United States in 1913, he worked his way through Central Wesleyan College in Missouri and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., before joining the Swiss consular service. Stationed in Palestine between 1935 and 1940, Lutz observed British and Zionist administration. In 1942, he was appointed Vice-Consul to the Swiss Legation in Budapest, representing the interests of fourteen countries that had severed diplomatic ties with Hungary, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

When Nazi forces occupied Hungary in March 1944, SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann initiated the rapid deportation of Hungary's Jewish population. Lutz negotiated permission from the Hungarian government and the SS to issue 8,000 Swiss protective letters (Schutzbriefe) for Jewish emigration to Palestine. Like Sanz Briz, Lutz brilliantly interpreted the 8,000 permits as applying not to individuals, but to entire families, printing numbered documents up to 7,999 and then resetting the numbering series to generate tens of thousands of duplicate passes.

Lutz established seventy-six safe houses across Budapest, including the famed Glass House (Üvegház) on Vadász Street, an abandoned glass factory that sheltered more than 3,000 Jews. Lutz personally intervened to pull Jews out of death marches to the Austrian border and off deportation trains. Despite saving half of Budapest's surviving Jewish population, Lutz was reprimanded by the Swiss Foreign Office after the war for exceeding his diplomatic mandate, receiving official national recognition only shortly before his death in 1975.