Aleksander Ładoś, a Polish diplomat operating in Bern, Switzerland was famous for his idea to issue fake Latin American passports to Jews in Europe to save them from the Holocaust. The Polish National Remembrance Institute (IPN) works on the so-called “Ładoś List”, which contains the names of those who survived thanks to Ładoś. As the study shows Polish diplomats were able to save up to 10,000 Jews.
Aleksander Ładoś was born in Lviv in 1897. He studied history at Lviv University and was an active member of the Polish People’s Party.
Ładoś served as a Polish Ambassador in Latvia (1923-1926), and later as consul-general of Poland in Munich (1927-1931). He also worked as a political journalist. He served as a minister without portfolio in Władysław Sikorski’s government-in-exile in 1939.
From 1940 to 1945, Ładoś served as Polish representative in Switzerland with the chargé d’affaires ad interim rank. He was protecting Polish war refugees and took care of the interned soldiers. Ładoś was the leader of a group that issued illegal passports of Latin American countries to Polish and European Jews. He also provided diplomatic protection for the group. He also intervened in the foreign ministry after the passport scheme was discovered by the Swiss in 1943, so the Group could continue its operations.
The so-called “Ładoś Group” was mostly involved in creating illegal passports of Latin American countries. Initially, the action concerned Jews in the ghettos of occupied Poland, but over time passports began to be sent to other European countries.
Jews who received the documents had a much higher chance to survive the Nazi German antisemitic terror. The holders of foreign passports were sent to internment camps rather than death camps. It is estimated that the group issued passports for up to 10,000 people.
After the war, he remained in exile in Switzerland, moving to France in 1946. He returned to Poland in 1960 and died in Warsaw in 1963.
The process of identification of the fake document recipients is coordinated with the Pilecki Institute and the Polish Embassy in Bern in cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. To this day it is possible to identify 3262 people. Among those were 2306 citizens of Poland, 381 – from Germany, 377 – from the Netherlands, 34 citizens of Czechoslovakia, 30 – from Austria, 29 – from Belgium, 18 – from France, and also individuals from Italy, Hungary or Switzerland.
Unfortunately, Aleksander Ładoś never received the title of Righteous Among Nations due to the lack of direct testimony from the survivors, who could not know who helped them obtain the documents. The secrecy of the action deemed Ładoś and his group for years of silence.
The story of Aleksander Ładoś was told by Roger Moorhouse in his book called “The Forgers”. The author explains the scheme and circumstances of the Group’s work as well as its importance in the history and remembrance of the Holocaust.
Tomasz Modrzejewski
