REVIEW: The Forgers by Roger Moorhouse
The secret history of one of the largest—and least-known—rescue operations of World War II
Between 1940 and 1943, a group of Polish diplomats in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable—and until now, completely unknown—humanitarian operation. In concert with Jewish activists, they masterminded a systematic program of forging passports and identity documents for Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust.
With the international community failing to act, the operation was one of the largest actions to aid Jews of the entire war. The Forgers tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the desperate bids of Jews to obtain these lifesaving documents as the Nazi death machine draws ever closer. And we witness the quiet heroism of a group of ordinary men who decided to do something rather than nothing and saved thousands of lives.
CW/TW – a large part of the book is spent describing the horrific treatment of Jews, as well as Poles, by the Nazis and Russians during World War II – specifically in occupied Eastern Europe. This includes the occupied countries, ghettos, and internment/concentration/detention camps. This is not sensationalized but is nonetheless graphic in nature.
Review
First let me quibble a bit about the blurb. The actions of those involved in the forged passports is first described as one of the “least known” rescue operations before then being described as “completely unknown.” I’d go with “least known” as over the course of the book, it’s shown that a lot of people, across the globe, *including the Germans* knew what was going on. And while the forgery operation was the basis of the story, the majority of the book is spent delving into the context (which is covered in the CW/TW above) of what drove the Polish legation staff in Bern to do what they did. Word reached the officials in Bern about what was going on and they humanly acted to try and save as many Jews as possible.
This is not an easy book to read and I think that is because what is told is not sensationalized. The matter of fact style makes it all the more horrific and chilling. A lot of time is devoted to how Poland was partitioned and how the people stuck in the various sections were treated by both the Germans and the Russians. Take your pick but neither was easy to survive as the invaders subjected the Polish people to massive indignities, repression, humiliations, loss of property, loss of their culture, and death. When one Pole – using an early escape route finagled by a Japanese diplomat who issued people visas through Japan – reached the Polish Embassy in Japan, he was initially so emotionally overcome by hearing Polish and seeing Polish emblems again that he couldn’t speak.
The documents that were made and smuggled back to the people desperate for a lifeline that might save them from Treblinka and Auschwitz – among others – were not used as I had imagined – as actual travel documents. Rather they were a means to elevate the status of those Jews to one that the Germans would acknowledge and, potentially, exploit. Under the Nuremberg Laws and later when Poland was partitioned, Jews lost their citizenship. But with a (mostly Latin American) foreign passport or a Honduran promesa, these people could claim a country again. The means by which German exploitation could help them lay in the fact that Germany was willing to exchange these “foreign” citizens for their own German citizens who had been trapped in other countries when the war started. Later in the war, Germany was (mostly) willing to hold (most of) these people apart from ones who were sent to the death camps, depending on their country of origin.
Did everyone jump at the chance to get a foreign passport? Actually, no. Plenty of people were suspicious for various reasons of the worth of documents and the process of obtaining them. Were they any good? Would stepping forward and showing them to the Germans be a means to salvation or just get these people on the next transport? One leader of a ghetto decided that he wanted to be the one in charge of deciding who got one and threatened to rat to the Germans about it if anyone tried to bypass his authority. Plus by the time the Germans began acting on separating those holding these papers, Jews had heard about what was going on at the death camps and were hesitant to get on any trains out of the ghettos. As they had learned, letting the Germans put them on a train to somewhere rarely resulted in going anywhere better.
As the war continued and appeals were made worldwide to anyone who might assist the operation, sand got dumped in the vaseline. Some of the countries whose (Swiss) honorary consuls in Bern (it wasn’t just the Poles doing this) were issuing passports or (easier to manage quickly) promesas initially balked at recognizing these irregularly issued documents – many in fear of being inundated by Jewish immigrants. Some diplomats and foreign service officers nitpicked at the legality of them and pressure was brought to bear to both support or disavow the documents’ legitimacy. Some countries eventually agreed to recognize the documents, some waffled and others flatly refused.
In the aftermath of the war, the Polish diplomats involved neither sought nor received recognition for what they had done. The whole exercise was consigned to obscurity. It’s also difficult to know how many lives were actually saved. An estimated (roughly) 8,000-11,000 documents were issued but often for more than one person. However an estimated 2-3,000 persons might have survived because of the documents which often were a means of evading a transport for a few more months or being put in a more favored section of Bergen-Belsen. In addition to the documents, a great deal of luck determined who lived. There was actually (finally) an exchange towards the end of the war in which roughly 300 document holders were sent via train to Switzerland – though tragically many died of health conditions on the way.
I’ll end with an excerpt from the book – Heinz Lichtenstern, whose story opened this book, never knew where his Paraguayan passport had come from, and he always considered it to be a last resort, a final throw of the dice. Yet it would undoubtedly save not only his life but also those of his wife and children. In the more than four decades that remained to him, he would continue his career as a metals trader and become a grandfather and a great-grandfather. He was but one of the many the ?ado? Group helped to save. Others would go on to be academics, rabbis, engineers, politicians, mathematicians, historians, and journalists—and in their time mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers—every one of them living proof of the Talmud saying that “he who saves one life, saves the world entire.” B
~Jayne
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