Of Lutz and Castellanos - letter to the editor

I read with interest the article in your paper’s June 25 edition about Colonel José Arturo Castellanos (El Salvadoran saviour revealed) , a diplomat from El Salvador, and the film made about his story entitled The Glass House. Let me add some details to the article.
The role of Castellano and Mantello in the 1944 events is outstanding because the El Salvadorian passports certifying fictitious citizenship provided a firmer ground for their owners to escape deportations than the Swiss papers which did not provide Swiss citizenship.
El Salvadorian documents were issued by Carl Lutz’s office as well.
It is thanks to the activities of Mantello – and probably of his friend, Castellanos – that a large-scale press campaign made it known for the western public what was going on in Auschwitz.
Lutz’s office sent to Mantello the detailed descriptions of two young Slovaks who escaped from the death camp by Florian Manoliu, a Romanian diplomat. As a result, the world began to realize the horrifying reality of Nazism.
One of the most successful life-saving activities in Nazi Europe is related to the Glass House building.
In the summer of 1944, the building was indeed out of use. As a result of the anti-Jewish laws passed by the Hungarian governments appointed by Regent Miklós Horthy, Head of State, all Jewish shops had to be closed down.
Following the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Germans, under the “professional” leadership of Eichmann and with the cooperation of Hungarian authorities, deported 437,000 Hungarian Jews, most of them to Auschwitz. By July, only the Jews of Budapest remained.
Under the pressure of foreign allied forces, and as a result of allied military offensives during the summer, Horthy halted further deportations.
The Swiss legation representing British interests in Hungary requested from the government that those Jews who were in possession of entry permits to Palestine be allowed to emigrate.
Hitler allowed the emigration of 7,000 Jews on condition that all the rest would be deported. Emigration was organized by the Swiss vice-consul Carl Lutz, who headed the Department of Foreign Interests in the Hungarian capital.
The Swiss legation office of the emigration to Palestine was set up in the Glass House, where a Zionist organization prepared the collective passports for the emigrants.
Those who received a certificate which proved that his/her name was included in the list were exempt from certain anti-Jewish laws.
As a building of the Swiss legation, the Glass House enjoyed extraterritorial status.
On Oct 15, the Nazis put aside Horthy, and gave way to open terror. However, the extraterritorial status of the Glass House remained because the Germans hoped that neutral Switzerland would acknowledge the Arrow-Cross government of Szálasi.
Although that never happened, the diplomatic status of the house made it possible for 2,500-3,000 Jews to find shelter in the rather small building, and survive the siege of Budapest.
A wholesale warehouse of the Weiss family’s glass dealership, the Glass House was one of the jewels of the Hungarian capital in the 1930s.
Designed by one of the most famous architects of the Bauhaus, Lajos Kozma, the facade and inner spaces of the building served as sample collections, as all types of glasses sold in the dealership were built in to the house.
A few years ago, the Carl Lutz Foundation established a Memorial Room in the Glass House, where a permanent exhibition remembers and honors the past.
A traveling exhibit had been on display in several Northern American locations, including the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Museum of the Holocaust in Los Angeles, the Kossuth House in Washington, DC, and in the city of Augusta (Georgia) in May.
The exhibition will be opened on Sep 7 in New Brunswick, hosted by the American Hungarian Foundation.
After that, it will be exhibited in the city of Toronto in Nov 2008.