When Paper-Pushing Saves Lives

Falsified citizenship and visa documents saved thousands during the Holocaust, and historians and survivors are working to bring recognition to the diplomats who quietly used their nation's stamps and signatures -- some on their own initiative, without the knowledge of their authorities -- to save Jews from Nazi death camps.

George Mantello, highlighted in a recent article by the Associated Press, is believed to have issued Salvadoran citizenship certificates to as many as 10,000 Jews with no connection to the country. Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden saved an estimated 90,000 Hungarian Jews in what the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum calls "one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Holocaust." Hiram Bingham IV, an American diplomat working in France, ignored State Department directives by issuing papers allowing some 2,000 Jews, including artist Marc Chagall, to escape the Nazis; after being transferred to Argentina, he helped track down fugitive Nazi war criminals.

Compared to the 12 million victims of the Nazi Holocaust, such numbers might seem minuscule, but each number represents a face, a name, a family -- someone's mother, father, brother, or sister. And each individual effort represents an important self-less defiance to the overwhelming destructive power of genocide. Most of these individuals did not boast of their work, even after the war, even to their own families.

That their clandestine rescue efforts are coming to light years after the fact is an important reminder of the power of the individual in the midst of mass atrocity.

Photo credit: Holger.Ellgaard