Title

Aleksander Lados

Authors

Object ID

2023.1.13

Object Name

Photograph

Files

Description

front: image of smiling man in suit and tie

back: “Editors: This radiophoto just received from Switzerland ties in with the Himmler story, recently sent you by International News Service.

RC1030578-Watch your credit-International News Photos Slug (Lados)

Polish Minister aided refugees Switzerland……M. Lados (above), Polish minister in Switzerland in 1941, who aided Jewish refugee groups by obtaining South American passports.”

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

Aleksander Lados was a Polish-born diplomat and politician who headed the Polish Legation to Switzerland and led the eponymous Lados group. He was instrumental in saving Polish Jews in German-occupied Poland from murder in the death camps by providing them with illegal Paraguayan passports. The scheme involved bribing the consul of Paraguay Rudolf Hugli, who would provide the blank Paraguayan forms to be fabricated into passports with the names of Polish Jews. The money came from Jewish and Polish donors, the lists of Jews from Jewish organizations in Switzerland. Finally, the completed passports would be smuggled into Poland and the Netherlands.

Members of his team included Konstanty Rokicki, Abraham Silberschein, Stefan Ryniewicz, Chaim Eiss, and Juliusz Kuhl. Recha Sternbuch also supported this work. Lados himself provided diplomatic cover. The Lados group produced what is estimated to be several thousand illegal passports and citizenship papers which were tantamount to documents of protection for Jews in Polish ghettos bound for eventual deportation to death camps.

Dimensions

8 1/2 x 6 3/4"

Keywords

Alexander Lados, Rudolf hugh, Abraham Silberschein, Juliusz Kuhl

Subcollection

Diplomats

Recommended Citation

"Aleksander Lados" (2023). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2023.1.13.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1921