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Home > Virtual Museum > CHGS Exhibitions > Fragments : Schutz-Pass

Schutz-Pass

"We lived there in safety."

Schutz-Pass issued to Irene Hirsch Vilscek (whose photo is missing from the document) and her daughter, Erika Vilscek (photo).  Signed by Ivan Danielsson,Swedish Ambassador in Budapest, under the direction of Raoul Wallenberg, August 24, 1944.

Erica, Eva and mother Irene Vilscek, 1942.

Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish Special Envoy to Hungary, 1944-1945.

Story of the Artifact

"I am not sure how my mother actually received the Schultz-Pass, as I was only seven at the time.  My sister and both grandmothers also had passes.  We all moved into an apartment together, in one of Raoul Wallenberg's safe houses.  We lived there in safety until five days before the Russians arrived.

At that point, the Nazis forced everyone out of our safe house and made us line up to be marched into the ghetto.  I stood in line between both my grandmothers, holding their hands, when my older sister, Eva, ran out of our building.  She grabbed my hand, tore me away from my grandmothers and pulled me back into the building. A non-Jewish caretaker hid my mother, Eva and I under a huge eiderdown coverlet until the Nazis finished seraching the apartment.  Luckily it was so near to the end of the war, that there was no time to liquidate the ghetto and my grandmothers also survived."

Erika Vilscek Fleischer, child survivor from Huingary

Background

Schutz-Pässe were protective documents issued to Jews in Hungary that placed them under the protection of Sweden.  Raoul Wallenberg was the Swedish Special Envoy to Hungary, 1944-45.  With his staff of Jewish volunteers, Wallenberg issued Swedish diplomatic papers to more than 30,000 Hungarian Jews, preventing their deportation and murder.  He also established dozens of safe houses throughout Budapest.  In the last days of the war, the Schutz- Pässe were ignored by the Nazis and the Hungarian fascists.  In January 1945, Wallenberg was arrested by the Russians and disappeared.  What happened to him is still unknown.