![\"glass-house2-880x543\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/03\/glass-house2-880x543.jpg?w=620\")
<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nNIR GALIM, Israel (JTA) \u2013 On a recent afternoon in a museum in this moshav community near the port city of Ashdod, Hodaya Gadba held up a black-and-white photograph of a three-story building and pronounced, \u201cThis was the site of a thrilling episode of the rescue of Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gadba then led visitors on a tour of an exhibition dealing with the subject of the picture: the Glass House, a Budapest factory that housed a remarkable operation credited with saving more than 40,000 of the city\u2019s Jews in 1944 and 1945.<\/p>\n
The plan was conceived by Miklos \u201cMoshe\u201d Krausz, who had run the Jewish Agency\u2019s Budapest office to facilitate the immigration of Hungarian Jews to pre-state Israel, and soon after Germany\u2019s invasion of the country on March 19, 1944, shifted to rescue mode.<\/p>\n
His partner in the effort was Carl Lutz, Switzerland\u2019s vice consul. Lutz secured 76 buildings as Swiss extraterritorial holdings that functioned as safe houses, and with Krausz produced and issued a Swiss letter of protection known as the \u201cschutzpass.\u201d Those possessing a schutzpass stayed in the safe houses without fear of capture.<\/p>\n
By then, more than 440,000 Jews from Hungary\u2019s towns and provinces had been deported to their deaths in Auschwitz from May to July in 1944. But Budapest remained one of the last bastions of normal Jewish life in a German-occupied country.<\/p>\n
Regarding the Glass House operation, \u201cIt\u2019s unknown precisely how many with a schutzpass got to the safe houses. There was also much counterfeiting of the schutzpass,\u201d explained Ayala Nedivi, author of the 2014 book \u201cBetween Krausz and Kasztner: The Struggle for the Rescue of the Hungarian Jews.\u201d \u201cThe range is 40,000 to 100,000. It could be 50,000 to 80,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Moshe-Krausz2-e1458713260141-305x172\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/03\/moshe-krausz2-e1458713260141-305x172.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Even many of those saved through their schutzpass didn\u2019t know the document materialized due to the Krausz-Lutz effort, said Galia Levinovich, marketing director for Beit Ha\u2019edut, the museum hosting the Glass House exhibit. Nor does a comprehensive list exist of those who received a schutzpass, she said. Two notebooks containing names of some of those saved \u2013 one housed in the Swiss capital of Bern, the other at Israel\u2019s national Holocaust commemoration museum, Yad Vashem \u2013 are known to exist, Nedivi explained.<\/p>\n
To fill in the blanks, Levinovich hopes to hear from those saved in the operation and from their descendants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Glass House\u2019s role is something that\u2019s getting lost,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want the families to know that we\u2019re documenting the story. We also want survivors to add to our knowledge [of the episode]. Lastly, Moshe Krausz\u2019s actions were pushed under the rug, and he was forgotten because he was a political rival of Kasztner. We want to correct this because he was the initiator of this [rescue]. People will get to learn about him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The heroism of Raoul Wallenberg in rescuing thousands of Budapest Jews became legendary in Holocaust annals, while Krausz\u2019s courage is far less known. But Wallenberg\u2019s effort \u2013 representing Sweden, he issued schutzpass documents and established Swedish \u201csafe houses\u201d in the city \u2013 was based directly on Krausz\u2019s plan, the exhibition states.<\/p>\n
A film screened in the museum\u2019s theater presents viewers with a dilemma: whether they\u2019d favor issuing an unlimited number of schutzpass or respect the 7,800 figure that Hungary\u2019s ruler, Miklos Horthy, and Lutz had arranged. Exceeding 7,800 may have aroused the suspicion of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross, which succeeded the deposed Horthy, and thereby endangered the rescue.<\/p>\n
Krausz and Lutz kept producing the documents. Lutz rescued Jews even during the Nazis\u2019 death marches near war\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
As it was, the pair manipulated the 7,800 figure to apply to households and not individuals.<\/p>\n
Among those saved was Ralph Klein, a Berlin native living with his parents in Budapest, who went on to become a legendary coach for the Israeli basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv. Another was Moshe Shkedi, whose son Eliezer became the Israeli Air Force\u2019s chief of staff.<\/p>\n
Arthur Weiss, the glass factory\u2019s owner, was sheltered in the building, as were thousands of others. He later was killed by the Arrow Cross; his wife and son survived and immigrated to the United States.<\/p>\n
Kasztner would settle in Israel and work for the Ministry of Trade and Industry. He was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1957, a few years after a celebrated trial that determined his actions in Hungary amounted to collaboration with the Nazis.<\/p>\n
Krausz made his home in Tel Aviv and later Jerusalem, working for a children\u2019s village and then the Ministry of Welfare. He had met his wife, Gusta, a native of Poland, in the Glass House. Last summer, a street in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev was named for Krausz, who died in 1986. Another street in the capital is named for Lutz, who with his wife, Gertrud, was honored as Yad Vashem\u2019s Righteous Among the Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud that my uncle devised such a daring, original plan,\u201d said Shosh Rot, a Kfar Saba resident and Krausz\u2019s niece. \u201cHe was modest, good and connected to the Jewish people. He did what he did not for honor or money, but to save Hungary\u2019s Jews. To be his relative makes me happy in my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n