The Auschwitz Protocols: Ceslav Mordowicz and the Race to Save Hungary's Jews by Fred R. Bleakley

Author:Fred R. Bleakley [Bleakley, Fred R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 20th Century, Holocaust, Wars & Conflicts, World War II, General, Biography & Autobiography, Jewish
ISBN: 9781637582626
Google: 4XWfzgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1637582625
Publisher: Wicked Son
Published: 2022-04-04T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Mavericks to the Rescue

The wheels were already turning on other missions that would eventually propel the reports of the recent escapees onto the world stage. If the Allies would not stop the trains to Auschwitz, Salvadoran diplomat George Mantello and British spy Elizabeth Wiskemann would try some novel ideas to end the slaughter.

On the morning of May 22, 1944, Florian Manoliu, a Romanian diplomat, was having coffee in the dining car of a train with a diplomatic pouch on his lap. It was filled with citizenship papers, money, and medications for Jewish relief agencies in Budapest. They had been given to him by his friend Mantello, a Salvadoran diplomat in Switzerland. Manoliu had volunteered to deliver the supplies to Budapest and to ensure that members of Mantello’s family, including his wife, were alive and well in Hungary (The family’s name was Mandl; George had changed his name when he became a diplomat.)

After switching trains in Vienna, Manoliu took another to Bistrice, a city in northern Transylvania (part of Hungary) about 250 miles from Budapest. There he hoped to find Mantello’s family. Manoliu learned from an official that they had been deported by train to a concentration camp in the northeast just two days earlier. He was crestfallen to hear the news. But to avoid suspicion he replied, “Good. We must do the same in our country.”¹ Manoliu found the upscale home of the Mandls occupied by a Christian family. All over town white flags hung from houses, meaning that Bistrice was judenrein, free of its nearly 8,000 Jews. Over the next few days, Manoliu hired a car and driver to take him to other northern Transylvanian towns, where he saw the same white flags hanging everywhere. But where had the region’s Jews been taken?

He hoped to learn more by continuing on to Budapest. Arriving on the morning of June 18, he went to the Romanian consulate, where he knew he could confide in the consul general about his mission. Manoliu added that he had a letter of introduction to Miklós Krausz of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. The consul general directed him to Carl Lutz, head of the Swiss Division of Foreign Interests, which offered diplomatic immunity for officials of countries not aligned with the Axis. “You will also find Miklós Krausz there,” the consul general said. That afternoon, Manoliu met Lutz, finding him sympathetic to the plight of the Jews and eager to receive the contents of Manoliu’s pouch. Handing it over, Mantello asked, “Tell me what you know or think is going on with the deportations?” Lutz hesitated. “You better ask Miklós,” he replied, referring to Miklós Krausz. Lutz then led Manoliu to the basement.

Down the stairs, Manoliu entered a large, crowded room, where he was surprised to see some twenty people, mostly women, clacking away at typewriters. “Those are citizenship papers for Hungarian Jews to claim Palestine as their home,” Lutz explained. He introduced Manoliu to Krausz, who was looking over the finished documents and supplying the typists with new blank ones.

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