eProceeding ...

SUMMARY

During the Shoah there were some people who dared to face the Nazis and Fascists and did their best to save doomed and abandoned Jews. Some of the major non-Jewish rescuers who were in Hungary are well known and are legendary, for example Monsignor Angello Rotta, Carl Lutz, Feng-Shan Ho, Giorgio Perlasca, Raoul Wallenberg and Sempo "Chiune" Sugihara. There were also Jews whose dedicated work saved the lives of large numbers of Jews. It is time that these people's amazing deeds be also known. The major rescuers were George Mantello (Mandel Gyuri) in Switzerland, Hillel Kook (alias Peter Bergson) and his group in the USA, Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, Mrs. Gizi Fleischmann and their colleagues in the Bratislava "Working Group" and Mrs. Recha Sternbruch in Switzerland.

Recha Sternbruch was the wife of Yitzchak Sternbruch, a businessman in Montreux, Switzerland (at left of photo). Although Mrs. Sternbruch had children and was pregnant she spend nights in the forest by the Austrian border to smuggle refugees while trying to evade Swiss border guards who had orders to turn back anyone over sixteen and under sixty. She worked with a Swiss police captain, Paul Grueninger, who in 1938 helped her smuggle over 800 refugees into Switzerland. According to historians, unfortunately, the leader of Switzerland’s 17,000 Jews informed on the rescue and Mrs. Sternbruch was arrested and in jail for two weeks. Mr. Grueninger lost his job and pension. After her release from prison Recha Sternbruch continued her rescue efforts largely alone and arranged rescue of over 2,000 Jews. At great risk she smuggled forged Swiss visas to many Jews to cross the German and Austrian borders. Later she obtained Chinese entry visas which enabled their holders to traverse Switzerland and Italy to ports from where they could be smuggled into Palestine.

Thru diplomatic contacts she had access to the Polish diplomatic pouch and coded cables allowing her contacts to Va’ad Hatzalah (Rescue Committee) in the USA and Turkey. One important use of this channel was the Sternbruchs alerting the New York Va’ad Hatzalah on September 2, 1942 to the horrors of the Shoah. This cable first alerted American Jewry to the reality of the Shoah and led to a meeting of 34 Jewish organizations. The Polish diplomatic pouch was also used to send secret messages, money to Jews in Nazi occupied Europe and for bribes for rescue. Recha Sternbruch also developed good connections with the Papal Nuncio to Switzerland, Monsignor Phillippe Bernadini, dean of the Swiss diplomatic community. He gave Recha Sternbruch access to Vatican couriers for sending money and messages to Jewish and resistance organizations in Nazi occupied Europe.

Recha Sternbruch also was the first to obtain South American identity papers and distribute them to Jews whose life was endangered by the Nazis.

In September 1944 Recha Sternbruch made contact with Dr. Jean Marie Musy, a fascist antisemite and former Swiss president and a friend of Himmler, head of the Gestapo. At Recha Sternbruch's request Musy negotiated with Himmler, who was willing to release all Jews then in concentration camps for ransom of one million dollars. On February 7, 1945 Musy delivered the first 1,210 inmates from Theresienstadt and more were promised at two week intervals. According to historians, regretfully, the leader of Swiss Jews sabotaged the plan. 

The Sternbruchs kept negotiating thru Musy to the end of the war. There was an agreement to turn over four concentration camps essentially intact to the Allies in return for a USA guarantee to try to the camp guards as oppose to shooting them on the spot. This saved the lives of many camp inmates. The Sternbruchs also negotiated release of thousands of women from the Ravensbrück camp and release of 15,000 Jews held in Austria.

(Mostly based on Dr. David Kranzler’s article "Three who tried to stop the Holocaust")

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Oct 1, 2004