One day back in the 1950s, Irving Spierer, the sole Holocaust survivor of his Hungarian family, was walking down a street in Brooklyn, New York, when a complete stranger—let’s call him Saul Rabinowitz (not his real name), another Hungarian Jew—came up to him and announced, “I was you.” Rabinowitz explained that although he had never previously met Spierer, he had used false El Salvador citizenship papers originally created for Spierer, but which had not reached Spierer before his deportation to Auschwitz. The documents had fallen into Rabinowitz’s hands and permitted him to avoid deportation to Auschwitz and to survive.

This is a true and remarkable story, but why consider it now, almost 60 years later? To answer this question one must explain both what happened then and what has happened now.

José Arturo Castellanos

Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, a Salvadoran diplomat on a purchasing mission in Europe prior to World War II, briefly met a Hungarian Jewish businessman, Gyorgy Mandl. Years later, Castellanos was appointed Salvadoran Consul in London, and then, in 1938, in Hamburg, where he reportedly issued Salvadoran citizenship certificates to a number of German Jews. When his relations with German officials deteriorated, Castellanos requested a transfer; in late 1941 he became Salvadoran Consul General in Geneva, Switzerland. At that point, Castellanos renewed his contact with Mandl. Castellanos issued a certificate of citizenship to Gyorgy Mandl under the more Spanish-sounding name of George Mantello. Mandl/Mantello traveled from Hungary to Geneva, later followed by his son. At that point, Castellanos appointed Mandl/Mantello as First Secretary in the Salvadoran Consulate General in Geneva.

Concerned with the plight of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, and in response to a flood of requests, Mandl/Mantello, with no real status from the government of El Salvador, was allowed by Castellanos (but without informing officials in the capital of San Salvador), to issue certificates of citizenship to Jews in France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and elsewhere at no charge. No one knows how many certificates were issued, perhaps three to five thousand, although some estimates are much higher, each with several family members on a single certificate. Copies of the papers were sent in various ways to the “applicants,” sometimes through a diplomatic pouch, by open mail, or with the assistance of the Swiss Red Cross. In 1944, Mandl/Mantello even sent blank notarized forms to Budapest with names to be added there.

George Mandl/Mantello

How many documents actually reached the intended recipients and/or whether the German authorities honored the certificates is impossible to know. Some documents were mailed to Auschwitz, at a time when they had no idea of the nature of that camp. Others, such as those sent to Lithuania, probably arrived too late to be of any use. The Red Cross International Tracing Service records, however, reveal that German officials honored a significant percentage of the certificates and often, while continuing to hold these Jews in camps such as Bergen Belsen, did not send their holders to death camps. Mandl/Mantello’s actions have been known for many years and were even the subject of a 2007 movie, “Glass House,” which never received wide circulation.

Now a new dimension has been added to this remarkable saga. When Mandl/ Mantello died in 1992, his lawyer’s widow found an old suitcase containing the originals of many of the certificates that he had created. Last year, George’s son, Enrico, donated these 1,100 certificates, with 2,161 names on them, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This list of names is now available on the museum’s website <ushmm.org> with the Spierer document attached. Copies of individual documents are provided to family members in response to requests. The museum is working to determine how many of the recipients of these documents survived. Readers with information on the fate of any of these individuals are asked to contact Judith Cohen at <jcohen@ushmm.org>.

Peter Landé is a retired U.S. foreign service officer who has contributed greatly as a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2001, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies for his work in identifying sources of information on Holocaust victims and survivors.