Aleksander Ładoś was Poland’s envoy to Switzerland in 1940–1945. He led a group of six Polish diplomats and Jewish activists who organised an operation to save Polish and European Jews from the Holocaust between 1940 and 1944. Apart from the head of mission himself, the Ładoś Group included Polish diplomats, namely Juliusz Kühl, Konstanty Rokicki and Stefan Ryniewicz, and Jewish activists Abraham Silberschein and Chaim Eiss.

“As evidenced by the activity of the Ładoś Group, Polish diplomats faced the hardships of the Second World War with courage and concern for the lot of the persecuted Jewish population,” stressed Deputy Minister Szynkowski vel Sęk. The Group issued a few thousand falsified documents of South American countries, making it possible for their Jewish holders to leave German-occupied territories.

According to the research to date, the Ładoś Group helped provide South American visas for anything between eight and ten thousand Jews, some three thousand of which have been identified so far, while a thousand of those survived the horror of the Second World War.

“Jews saved by the Ładoś Group were citizens of not only Poland but also the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, their contemporary Czechoslovakia, as well as the German Reich and Austria,” highlighted the Deputy Minister.

In his view, the exhibition prepared by the Pilecki Institute offers a perfect introduction into the Group members’ modus operandi. During the Second World War, the Polish diplomatic mission in Bern, headed by Aleksander Ładoś, not only issued falsified documents for Jews, but also enabled the use of Polish diplomatic ciphers by Jewish circles to alert the world to the Holocaust being perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The Group members’ activity stemmed from their patriotic and humanitarian concerns. None of them were given credit for it in their lifetime, and it was not until several decades after the Second World War that their deeds were discovered and documented.

During the event, Deputy Minister Szynkowski vel Sęk also presented the winning publications on the history of Polish diplomacy and Poland recognised in the Foreign Minister’s History Competition (the prizes and honourable mentions were granted on 14 December 2021 but the award ceremony will be held once the epidemic situation becomes stable).

MFA Press Office