BHR-116

Brit-Am Historical Reports (4 November, 2014, 11 Cheshvan, 5775)

Contents:
1. The Positive Role of Switzerland.
The Holocaust's Foremost Unsung Hero
Moshe Kraus saved tens of thousands of Jews. Why has no one heard of him?
by Emily Amrousi
2. Interesting Non-Jewish American Observations on Kashrut, the Gulf War, etc.
Sometimes it takes one to know one.
by Daniel Asor
3. Gestapo impostor tricked British Nazi sympathizers in WWII
by GREGORY KATZ
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1. The Positive Role of Switzerland.
The Holocaust's Foremost Unsung Hero
Moshe Kraus saved tens of thousands of Jews. Why has no one heard of him?
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/The-Holocausts-Foremost-Unsung-Hero.html
by Emily Amrousi

Extracts:

In 1986, a 78-year-old man named Moshe Kraus died in Jerusalem. ...

Historians are divided on the exact number, but the most conservative estimate talks about at least 40,000 people, and some estimates are even as high as 100,000 Jews who escaped the Nazis in Hungary thanks to this daring man.

The year is 1944. The Nazis are stepping up the pace and sending more and more Jews to their deaths in efforts to quickly complete the extermination of Hungary's Jewry. A spacious glass factory located at 29 Vadasz Street in Budapest is granted extraterritorial status under the auspices of Switzerland. Some 3,000 Jews barricade themselves inside this building, dubbed the Glass House, for three months.

More and more homes in Budapest are turned into Swiss "safe houses," barring entry to Germans and the local complicit Hungarian authorities, and housing thousands of Jews. The Swiss embassy grants 40,000 Jews certificates making them foreign Swiss nationals. Tens of thousands of additional documents are forged while the Swiss turn a blind eye. Young, brave Jews disguised as Nazi officers roam the streets handing out these documents to Jews, and all of this is orchestrated by Kraus.

Among the Glass House survivors are many prominent Jews, including Moshe Shkedi, the father of former commander of the Israeli Air Force Maj. Gen. Eliezer Shkedi. "My father lived because of the Glass House," Shkedi says. "His parents and all his brothers were murdered. The important message is that not only Christians saved Jews during the Holocaust. Jews also managed to save thousands."

For Hungary's Jews, the Holocaust started long after Europe's skies became saturated with smoke from crematoriums. Some 20,000 Jews who fled the Nazis in occupied countries sought refuge in Budapest, which was considered safe. But in March 1944, after the German invasion of Hungary, the Nazis began sending Jews from outlying Hungarian towns to extermination camps in Poland. Within the span of eight weeks, about half a million Jews from the Hungarian periphery were sent to their deaths, at a pace of about 12,000 per day. Entire communities were wiped out, one after another.
1.75 million people had been killed at Auschwitz and the camp was preparing for the arrival of 800,000 Hungarian Jews, slated to be killed.

In April 1944, two Slovakian Jewish prisoners managed to escape from Auschwitz. Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler met with the head of the Slovak Jewish Council, Oscar Krasniansky, and gave him a detailed account of what was happening at the death camp. Krasniansky translated their account and compiled a 32-page report (the Auschwitz Protocols) providing, for the first time, accurate and detailed information on the methods and dimensions of the Nazi extermination efforts. Vrba and Wetzler said that at that point 1.75 million people had been killed at Auschwitz, and that the camp was preparing for the arrival of 800,000 Hungarian Jews, slated to be killed.

By the end of May that year, Moshe (Miklush) Kraus had gotten his hands on the Vrba and Wetzler's report. Kraus was one of the heads of the Zionist movement in Hungary and he directed the Palestine Office in Budapest. He added his own report to the Auschwitz Protocols detailing the transport and extermination of the Jews in the outlying Hungarian towns. The report named every individual from every city and district. He then did everything in his power to disseminate the two reports.

These documents made their way to the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, Miklos Horthy, and to all the important political figures in Hungary. An international news agency picked up the story and distributed it, and the reports created quite a stir in Switzerland. Swiss public opinion applied enormous pressure on Horthy. The pope, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Swedish King Gustaf the fifth all sent letters of protest to Budapest. Roosevelt's letter to Horthy included a military threat. As a result, Horthy put a stop to the deportation of Jews.

Between July and October of that year, before Horthy was deposed and the Arrow Cross Party rose to power, Kraus gave his all to try to include as many Jews as possible in the mathematical trick he had devised with the help of the Swiss. How did so many thousands of Jews manage to evade the Nazis' awareness? At the core, it was a feat of bureaucratic sleight of hand on a massive scale.

At the time, a British-issued immigration certificate, simply referred to as a "certificate," granting entry to Palestine, was viewed as a protective shield. Anyone in possession of such a certificate was considered a British citizen protected by the Swiss legation in Hungary, because Switzerland represented Britain's diplomatic interests in Hungary at the time. At the end of 1943, the Hungarian government recognized the rights of 1,500 holders of such certificates.

Kraus, together with other Palestine Office workers, approached Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who was stationed in Budapest as vice-consul and headed the office that represented British interests. Lutz was sympathetic to the Jews, having served in the Swiss consulate in Jaffa. He and Kraus had the idea to turn the 1,500 individual certificates into family certificates, including the families of 1,500 Jews in these protective documents - 7,800 people in all.

A month and a half after the Nazi occupation, when ghettos were at their peak in the outlying towns, Kraus and Lutz, with the help of anti-Nazi Hungarian foreign office workers, thought up yet another manipulation: They turned the 7,800 certificates back into individual documents, applying them to families as well, allowing them to save about 40,000 people, all of whom now possessed immigration documents issued by Switzerland. The International Red Cross, Britain and Switzerland recognized the 40,000 documents. The Nazis officially recognized only 7,800, but Kraus continued his efforts to get Nazi recognition for the full 40,000.

Lutz gave the certificate holders protective passports or "Schutz-Passes" - which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and thus prevented their deportation. The documents issued by the Swiss consulate in Budapest stated that the Swiss embassy's department of foreign interests confirms that so and so appears in a collective Swiss passport, and should be treated as having a valid passport. The collective passport included tens of thousands of names.

Five hundred Glass House employees who handled these documents were made into Swiss embassy employees, enjoying all the consular benefits: they were exempt from wearing the yellow star, and some of them were allowed to use the embassy vehicles and the consular telephone as part of their "consular" work. Kraus himself traveled in a car bearing the Swiss flag, driven by a Swiss driver.

The Swiss consulate in Budapest was too small to take on such an enormous operation. Arthur Weiss, the Jewish owner of the Glass House, gave Kraus the keys to his enormous factory, and Lutz issued Swiss diplomatic immunity to the building. A Swiss flag was hung at the entrance. "I chose the Glass House because I feared that there would be a lot more trouble and I knew that this building could hold a lot of Jews in a time of need," Kraus wrote years later.

In October 1944, Horthy is deposed and the Pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party takes power. A ghetto is established in Budapest and all the city's Jews between the ages of 16 and 40, excluding foreign nationals, are told to report to work camps. Hungary's national radio station announces three times a day that individuals holding Swiss documents are exempt from reporting for duty and can move freely during all hours of the day (Jews were forbidden from exiting their houses for more than two hours each day).

Thousands of Hungarian Jews clamor to the Glass House in search of Swiss papers, including Jews already slated to cross the border into Germany. A photo taken by an unknown photographer during that time depicts masses of people crowding the building's doors holding out their arms.
Beyond the 40,000 certificates, now tens of thousands are issued forged documents.

Lutz and Kraus step up their rescue efforts. Beyond the 40,000 certificates, now tens of thousands are issued forged documents, printed both inside the Glass House and elsewhere on paper stolen from the same printing house that printed the valid documents for the Swiss. The documents provide a sense of security, but in some cases they are recognized as forgeries by the authorities and their holders are sent to the extermination camps.

When Eichmann and the S.S. seek to bring all the Jews in the Budapest ghetto to prepare them for transportation to extermination camps, Kraus approaches Lutz and asks him to grant additional houses extraterritorial status. Lutz purchases 76 houses in Budapest and gives them Swiss immunity. Thousands of Jews possessing Swiss documents are given refuge in these safe houses. These houses are seen as Swiss territory in every respect, and their inhabitants are protected from being deported or taken to work camps. The Red Cross provides them with food and basic supplies.

Lutz's daring plan is adopted by other diplomats hailing from neutral countries. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg turns 28 houses in Budapest into Swedish territory, housing 4,500 Jews. The Spanish, Portuguese and Vatican legations arrive at a similar agreement with the Hungarian authorities: Spain is allowed to hand out 1,500 certificates, Portugal 700 and the Vatican 3,000. Signs are posted on the safe houses declaring that they are under the protection of the legation and that foreigners are not allowed to enter. All the houses protected by foreign legations are dubbed an "international ghetto".

Kraus purchases another factory, a textile mill, and rents the football association headquarters that shares a wall with the Glass House in order to house the thousands of Jews he aims to save. Some 3,000 people crowd into the Glass House alone, sleeping side by side, head to toes, not daring leave the building for any reason. They sleep in every available space, in cellars, hallways, on tables, in attics. On Shabbat they all hold a collective Kiddush.

In November 1944, the systematic extermination of Jews left outside the safe houses begins. Death marches to the Austrian border take 2,000 Jews to their deaths each day, in the blistering cold. Kraus and Lutz debate whether or not to continue issuing Schutz-Passes, because if they were to issue more papers than they were allotted the trick would likely be discovered, jeopardizing the entire operation. In the end they decide to keep going.

Clerks and youth movement members work entire nights signing certificates. Kraus' people and members of the Swedish and Swiss legations go out into the streets, handing out life-saving papers with the ink still wet. They go to the death marches and hand out Schutz-Passes. The Hungarians are forced to release another group of people every time.

According to Kraus' own account, up to 60 or 70 thousand people were in the safe houses. "It emerged that only 32,000 Jews were in the ghetto, while there were some 150,000 Jews in Budapest at the time," Kraus wrote after the war. "That is when the authorities decided to start looking for the missing Jews."

The attacks against the remaining Jews become worse. The Nazis start taking Jews to the banks of the Danube River, stripping them of their clothes and shooting them to death. Their bodies are then thrown into the river.

The Arrow Cross try to enter the Glass House and the other safe houses several times, under the pretext that they are looking for forged documents, but they retreat after Lutz steps in, asserting the buildings' diplomatic immunity.

Didn't the Nazis notice that tens of thousands of Jews became Swiss nationals right under their nose?

"Maybe they did notice, but they couldn't change extraterritorial laws. They wanted to show the world that they respected international law."

"On December 31 members of the Arrow Cross entered the Glass House compound in order to take us to the Danube. I will never forget it, because of the bitter cold. We were outside for two hours, until the Swiss embassy intervened and they were forced to let us go back in. Apparently the ruling rabble wanted to be seen as a legitimate government so they respected the Swiss."

In February 1945, with the liberation of Budapest, it became clear that more than 100,000 Jews in the city had survived. Several days before the liberation, the owner of the Glass House, Arthur Weiss, was caught and murdered by the Nazis. His wife and son survived, and moved to the U.S. after the war.

Carl Lutz was one of the first to be awarded the title "righteous gentile" by Yad Vashem. In 1965, Israel issued a medal in his honor, and a street in Haifa was named after him.

The Swiss government honored Kraus for saving 30,000 Hungarian Jews. But when Dr. Nadivi began her doctoral research on the Palestine Office in Budapest, she could find no information about Kraus in the Yad Vashem archives.

At the end of the war, when the Jewish Agency told Lutz that he would be inducted into the Jewish National Fund's "Golden Book" of honor and that a ceremony would be held to honor him, he thanked them, but informed them that it was Kraus who should receive the honor, because without him, the operation would have never succeeded. As the ceremony neared, Lutz wrote the JNF again asking them to recognize Kraus' contribution. But then, at the lavish ceremony, no one mentioned Kraus. Only Lutz praised him again and again.

Courtesy IsraelHayom.com/ JNS.org
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2. Interesting Non-Jewish American Observations on Kashrut, the Gulf War, etc.
Sometimes it takes one to know one.
by Daniel Asor
http://www.aish.com/sp/so/The_Anti-Missionary.html
Extracts:

At one of the pilot lessons I met a cowboy. When he heard that I'm from Israel, he perked up. "I observe kashrut," he told me, "though not for religious reasons. It's healthier. Rabbis come to our ranch to buy cattle for slaughter. At first I thought they don't know what they're doing, but then I realized they are top professionals. Just by examining the animals, they can tell which are the healthy ones. I'm telling you, they are top professionals!"

An American F-15 pilot was listening to our conversation. "I'm not Jewish," he interjected, "but during the Gulf War I came to Israel with the Patriot missile defense system. I must say: You are God's nation. The 39 Iraqi scuds that hit Israel miraculously caused no casualties. God is watching over you quite nicely."

Once, my friends at the Florida church asked me to give a lecture about the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. I showed them how to wear a tallit, the prayer shawl, explaining how it wraps the body. I went on to explain that the arm-tefillin is placed alongside the heart.

In medicine, a person is not declared dead when their heart stops pumping, as long as the brain still functions. That's where a Jew places the head-tefillin. Just as there are four kinds of brainwaves, the head-tefillin is divided into four sections.

Questions came pouring from all directions. 'What is the meaning of the knot on the back of the head?'

The answer came in a flash. The brain stem, the "fifth brain" is at the spot of the tefillin knot. The brainstem is the instinctive brain, which orders the heart to pump blood and the lungs to draw air.
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3. Gestapo impostor tricked British Nazi sympathizers in WWII
http://news.yahoo.com/gestapo-impostor-tricked-nazi-sympathizers-wwii-230243946.html
By GREGORY KATZ

Extracts:

LONDON (AP)  At the height of World War II, Hans Kohout wanted to give the Nazis advance word of a top-secret British tactic that could neutralize an enemy's air defenses, leaving major cities exposed to devastating air raids, according to secret intelligence files released Friday.

Kohout, a naturalized British citizen, knew about it from his work at a plant doing defense-related work.

He passed the information to Jack King, who he believed was a Gestapo agent working undercover in Britain. Kohout expected King to give the information to the Nazis, so they could copy the technology.

But King was an impostor working for British intelligence, not the Gestapo, and Kohout's plan fizzled, according to the files made public by the National Archives. The information never crossed the English Channel.

Time and time again, the low-key "Jack King" was able to convince British traitors that he was a Gestapo man, gathering up potentially lethal information intended for the Nazis.

"It was a brave undertaking, mixing with fascists, pretending to be someone you weren't. It was dangerous work that could have gone wrong," said Stephen Twigge, a historian with the National Archives, whose documents revealed that King was actually Eric Arthur Roberts, a bank clerk without special training.

Twigge said King's work helped to neutralize a potential "Fifth Column" that might have damaged Britain's war effort. The files suggest the number of Nazi sympathizers willing to take action against British forces was larger than had been thought, he said.

"He was infiltrating a network, putting himself forward as the middle man in German intelligence," said Twigge. "He managed to flush them out and put a brake on their activities."

One of Roberts' handlers, identified only as T.M. Shelford, said many of the Nazi sympathizers in Britain were motivated by a dislike for Jews.

"Many people who were never members of the fascist parties have been actuated by their anti-Semitic feelings to express the opinion that a German victory would be preferable to a British victory, since the latter would mean a victory for the Jews," he wrote in 1944.

The documents show Roberts had a solid if unspectacular career at Westminster Bank when Security Services asked for him in 1940. His boss sounded surprised by the high priority placed on his services: "What are the particular and especial qualifications of Mr. Roberts,  which we have not been able to perceive,  for some particular work of national importance?" his supervisor wrote.

Roberts vanished for a time, re-emerging as Jack King, who had as one of his duties gently discouraging his contacts from sabotaging British soldiers and military installations.

The files reveal little about Roberts' methods besides proficiency at several languages. But he had only rudimentary German and visited the country only twice before the war.

He did display typical British reserve: Field reports show Roberts was able to contain his utter disgust for those Brits willing to provide information that could easily have led to more carnage on the home front.

In a 1942 report, he described meeting a woman identified as Nancy Brown in the Brighton area along England's vulnerable southern coast. He said her friendly manner made it "almost impossible" for him to believe at first that she would betray her country,  but within an hour she was giving him sensitive military data.

"The fact that the items of information volunteered might have resulted in the deaths of many people counted for nothing," he wrote.

The material Roberts gathered was used by the intelligence service to keep track of active Nazi sympathizers in Britain during the war. Kohout and Brown were never charged with any crime.

Intelligence files do not reveal what Roberts did after the war, Twigge said.

"There was a lot of derring-do and at the end of the war, you basically don't say a single word about it," Twigge said. "And probably no one would have believed him anyway."