The Forgers
The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
**A Telegraph Best History Book 2023 and Spectator Book of the Year**
The inspirational story of the ordinary people who forged the documents that saved thousands of Jewish lives in World War Two.
'Powerful ... gripping ... inspiring' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY
Between 1940 and 1943, a small group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable - and until now, almost completely unknown - humanitarian operation. Under the leadership of the Polish Ambassador, Aleksander Lados, they undertook a systematic programme of forging 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.
The Lados operation was one of the largest rescue missions of the entire war, and The Forgers tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the desperate bids of Jews to obtain these life-saving documents, and their painful uncertainty over whether they will be granted protection from the Nazis' murderous fury. And we witness the quiet heroism of those who decided to act in an attempt to save thousands of lives.
'Fascinating' THE TIMES
'Remarkable' SUNDAY TIMES
'As gripping as it is moving' JULIA BOYD, author of Travellers in the Third Reich
'An astonishing book' KATJA HOYER, author of Beyond the Wall
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Moorhouse (Poland 1939) recounts in this immersive chronicle the story of Polish diplomat Aleksander Lados and his colleagues in Bern, Switzerland, who provided fake travel documents to more than eight thousand Jewish people attempting to escape Nazi-occupied Europe during WWII. By 1941, a black market in forged travel documents had emerged in Europe, and Rudolf Hugli, a notary and honorary consul for Paraguay in Switzerland, began issuing and selling fake Paraguayan passports. Working with Hugli, Lados and his staff, who represented Poland's government in exile, became the center of a network of Polish and Jewish activists distributing the documents. The scheme lasted until 1943, when international diplomatic pressure put an end to the operation. (American diplomats were one of the leading voices urging Swiss authorities to shut down the passport pipeline, citing wartime espionage risks.) Lados and his band died in postwar obscurity; the story only became publicly known in 2017, when a Jewish guest of the Polish ambassador in Switzerland described the site as a "holy place," prompting an inquiry into the forgotten history. Moorhouse expertly places the exploits of the Lados Group in the context of both the horrific Nazi violence against Jewish people and foreign governments' callous indifference. The result is a captivating narrative of heroism and an illuminating account of the international diplomatic response to the Holocaust.
