Author(s): Roger Moorhouse

WWI & WWII

This is the untold story of The Lados Group, a group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists based in Switzerland during the Second World War who conceived an extraordinary operation to produce false identity documents and passports, often to Latin American countries. These were smuggled into occupied Europe and would end up saving the lives of an estimated eight to ten thousand Jews - more, as he points out, than the famous efforts of Oskar Schindler. The Holocaust was made possible by the creation of lawless spaces and stateless individuals, so a passport to a non-European country was for many the difference between being sent to the camps and retained as a potential bargaining counter.