Carl Lutz and his colleagues Harald Feller, Peter Zürcher and Ernst Vonrufs contributed to the protection of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from death during World War II.
After the occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Nazi regime and his Hungarian accomplices tried to eliminate the whole Jewish community of Hungary. The Swiss Vice-Consul Carl Lutz, Head of the Foreign Interests Division at the Swiss Embassy in Budapest 1942-45, took a central role in the collective efforts to protect the Jewish community in Hungary from persecution and deportation. Thousands of protective letters ("Schutzbriefe") were issued and great efforts were conducted to enable the emigration of Hungarian Jews to Palestine or Switzerland. Protective letters were also issued by the representatives of other neutral governments in Budapest such as Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden and others, which broadened the impact.
By the end of the war close to 124,000 Hungarian Jews survived. Tens of thousands of these owed their life to the courageous actions of Carl Lutz, his colleagues and the other neutral diplomats in Budapest. Carl Lutz has been honored by Yad Vashem and the State of Israel. In 1963 a street was named after him in Haifa, Israel, later by his home village Walzenhausen, Switzerland and by the Swiss government. Since 1991 a memorial at the entrance to the old Budapest ghetto remembers Carl Lutz's work in Budapest. In 2006 the American Embassy honored Carl Lutz with a memorial in the park of the American Embassy.
Of central importance in the collective efforts to protect from persecutions and deportation was the Glass House, an old industrial building at Vadász utca 29. Over 3,000 Jews found refuge and protection from their prosecutors at the Glass House during World War II. The Glasshouse is now open for visitors as a museum, that is documenting the history of Carl Lutz, his partners and their activities. A more general documentation on the Hungarian Jews and the Holocaust is available at the Holocaust Memorial Center, for further information please use the link below.
In the last years there were numerous occasions to celebrate the memory of Carl Lutz and of the other actors of the protection operation in Hungary and all around the world. In Budapest there is the Memorial Room in the Glass House, the Monument in front of the US Embassy and also the Carl Lutz Quay (XIII. district) where in April 2013 more than 20 000 people took part in the March of the Living honoring the deeds of Carl Lutz.
The Embassy of Switzerland in Budapest actively promotes the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and the memory of the humanitarian action of Carl Lutz and other neutral diplomats in Budapest during WW2. In April 2022, on the occasion of the Andrássy University Budapest’s 20th anniversary celebrations, the AUB hosted a lecture series on "The Art of Diplomacy." Swiss Ambassador Jean-François Paroz was the first orator. In his conference on "The humanitarian diplomacy of Carl Lutz and the other neutral diplomats in Budapest in the summer of 1944", he pointed out that the protection operation in the Hungarian capital was part of a complex joint diplomatic and humanitarian action of international dimension. The text of the conference is available below under Documents in German and French. In 2024, the Embassy also co-organized a symposium at the ELTE University on the topic “Persecution and Protection of the Hungarian Jews 1941-1945”, with the participation of Hungarian and foreign historians and researchers with various backgrounds.
