Book released in Poland on 27th March 2024 by Znak Horyzont publishing house.

Roger Moorhouse’s new book – a translation of The Forgers. The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation (translated by Grzegorz Siwek) has just been released in Poland under the title Paszporty życia. It covers the story of Polish Diplomats during WW2 who issued fake documents to Jewish people to help them escape Nazi oppression and save them from the inescapable death – thus the Polish name of the book literally translates into ‘Passports of Life’.

A story of fake documents & real heroes during one of the greatest (and least known) rescue operations of Jews during the Second World War.

The book sheds light on the extraordinary and daring rescue mission conducted by Poles who chose to act when the world looked away.

Between 1940 and 1943, Polish diplomats in Switzerland, in cooperation with Jewish counterparts, developed a system for forging documents from Latin American countries. Issued under Jewish names, these documents were then smuggled into German-occupied territories. Possessing them inspired fear, but also provided hope of avoiding transportation to death camps. Aleksander Ładoś, Stefan Ryniewicz, Konstanty Rokicki, Abraham Silberschein, Chaim Eiss, and Juliusz Kühl – also known as the Ładoś Group – saved the lives of thousands of Jews from across Europe.

Roger Moorhouse is a historian and author, specialising in Nazi Germany, Central Europe and World War Two in Europe.  A fluent German speaker, he graduated from The School of Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL) in 1995. Since 2016, he has been a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Natolin and he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2019 he won the Polish Foreign Ministry History Prize for his book First to Fight and in 2020 he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for ‘bringing closer the fate of Poland during World War II to English-speaking readers’ and for ‘spreading knowledge about Poland abroad’.

Moorhouse’s other books include: First to Fight: The Polish War, 1939 (Bodley Head, 2019), Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City (co-written with Norman Davies; Cape, 2002), The Devils’ Alliance. Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939 – 1941 (Bodley Head, 2014) and Killing Hitler. The Third Reich and the Plots Against the Fuhrer (Cape, 2006).

You can get your copy of the Polish version (Paszporty Życia) book in the UK on Amazon UK or this Polish Bookstore and you can find the English version HERE.