On 27th of January at 5 p.m, we would like to invite you to an online screening of a documentary “Passports to Paraguay” on our Facebook and Youtube channels. 

Watch and discover the extraordinary story of Polish diplomats in Switzerland – a team known as the Bernese Group – who saved hundreds of European Jews from the #Holocaust during #WWII.

The film in VOstENG will be available until 31st of January at midnight. 

Link to the film: https://youtu.be/rxmgcd14BPs

Synopsis:

The film “Passports to Paraguay” [Paszporty Paragwaju] directed by Robert Kaczmarek presents events concerning the participation of Polish diplomacy in rescuing Jews during World War II and Polish-Jewish cooperation against Nazi Germany. In 1942—1943, an informal group of Polish diplomats and activists of Jewish organizations worked together to obtain passports of South American countries for Jewish people imprisoned in ghettos by the Nazi German occupants.

Thanks to these documents, many Jews avoided deportation to Nazi German death camps. The holders of such passports were sent to internment camps in Germany (Tittmoning, Liebenau, Bölsenberg) and to occupied France (Vittel) instead. Unfortunately, not many of the people saved thanks to the Polish diplomats survived the war and it is often the case that families of the survivors only now find out to whom their relatives owed their lives.

The secret group working at the Polish Legation in Bern (today Polish Embassy in Bern) included: Aleksander Ładoś, Konstanty Rokicki, Stefan Jan Ryniewicz, Juliusz Kühl and on the part of Jewish organizations — Adolf H. Silberschein and Chaim Eiss.

This documentary has been produced by the Institute of National Remembrance.

On the 27th of January 2021, we commemorate the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.