El Salvador's Holocaust Hero
By John Lamperti
Germany invaded its wavering ally Hungary on March 19, 1944, when eleven German
divisions marched into Budapest.
There was no resistance, and a compliant puppet government was installed
in a few days. The “final
solution” for Hungarian Jews then began with shocking speed. In a few weeks yellow stars and ghettos
were imposed everywhere that Jews lived outside the capital. Deportations to Auschwitz began in mid
May, and in less than a fortnight from 12,000 to 14,000 Jews per day were being sent away on special trains,
packed horribly into freight and cattle cars. In less than two months, 445,000 people had been shipped to
their deaths.[1]
Suddenly the transports stopped. Hungary’s strong man Miclós Horthy, who had raised few previous objections to Hitler’s plans, ordered a halt to the deportations while more than 200,000 Jews in Budapest remained largely unmolested. To many that halt seemed no less than a miracle. But what made Horthy act?
The
answer, surprisingly, has much to do with the small, far-off nation of El
Salvador. It also has a great deal
to do with a man named George Mantello.
Most Salvadorans have never heard of him, although he was a fellow
citizen and an official of their government. Mantello was an unusual Salvadoran who spoke no Spanish and
never set his foot on its soil. He
fought for his adopted country and for humanity against one of the worst evils
this world has known, and his weapons were not guns or bombs but dedication and
truth. The victory he helped to
win was saving tens of thousands of human beings from death in the Holocaust.
How
could El Salvador play any role with the Holocaust? Both geography and politics appear to contradict the very idea.
It is a small country with no direct access to the Atlantic, and it had little
to do with Europe except for selling there some of its exports, especially
coffee. El Salvador remained neutral during World War I, although it's Central
American neighbors nominally joined the Allied side. In addition to its remoteness, from 1932 to 1944 the nation
was ruled by a military president/ dictator, General Maximiliano
Hernández Martínez, with clear Fascist sympathies. Historian
Patricia Parkman, who described in detail the last years of the Martínez
regime, wrote:
…Martínez,
probably motivated both by a nationalist desire to escape North American
domination and by his own authoritarian political philosophy, for some years
maintained cordial relations with the Axis powers. El Salvador recognized the Japanese puppet state of Manchuko
and was among the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with the
Franco regime in Spain. During the
1930s Martínez turned to Germany and Italy for arms and sent Salvadoran
officers to those countries for training.
El Salvador's purchases from Germany increased between 1931 and 1939 to
about one-third of its total imports…[2]
Despite all that, Martínez could read handwriting on the wall and he saw that the influence of the nearby United States could not be denied -- with war under way in Europe his country's trade there was all but ended and its coffee would have to be sold in North America. El Salvador declared war on the Axis in December 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor. It took no part in actual fighting, and President Martínez resisted the U.S. desire to station 3000 troops there to guard the coast. Even so, as an ally El Salvador received some lend-lease arms. These played no role against the Germans or Japanese but were later used in internal conflicts, and some eventually served in a foreign war when El Salvador briefly fought neighboring Honduras in 1969.
The
nation's magnificent role in the European holocaust was not the result of an
initiative by the government in San Salvador, which was concerned with problems
closer to home. El Salvador's efforts and success were largely due to one
man. George Mantello should be
remembered. The story of his
struggle and triumph has been told in detail by American historian David
Kranzler in a book with the dramatic title The Man Who Stopped the Trains to
Auschwitz.[3] Incredible as it seems, that title is literally
correct.
George
Mantello was born in 1901 in Transylvania, a land far removed from El Salvador
by distance, language and culture.
His parents were Orthodox Jews, although not strongly religious, and his
surname at birth was not Mantello but Mandl or Mandel. Already in his twenties George Mandl
proved himself to be a brilliant businessman and banker; he was also an active
Zionist. In 1928 he married
Iréne Berger, and their only child, a son, was born in 1930.[4]
Mandl/Mantello
was an unlikely choice for a Salvadoran hero. As noted he did not speak
Spanish, and never, before or after the war, did he visit the small, distant
country of which he became a citizen and to which he brought great honor.[5] His connection with El Salvador came
about through friendship with that country's consul general in Geneva, Col.
José Arturo Castellanos, whom Mandl had helped with some business
problems. In 1939 Castellanos
appointed him El Salvador's honorary consul for Hungary,
Romania and Czechoslovakia. The position provided a Salvadoran diplomatic
passport, a valuable asset in those pre-war years. Around this time
George Mandl changed his name, presumably considering Mantello more suitable
for a Latin American official.
In
1941 he decided to liquidate his business holdings in Eastern Europe and
relocate in Switzerland. In
December the declaration of war against the Axis by El Salvador and most other
Latin American countries found Mantello still in Romania and now the
representative of an enemy power. As a diplomat he should have been able to
return directly “home” to Switzerland, El Salvador’s
diplomatic headquarters for Europe, but due apparently to an identity mix-up he
was detained illegally in Zagreb where he spent months under “hotel
arrest.” Finally he escaped
back to Bucharest disguised as the co-pilot of a small military aircraft. From there he traveled by train to
Switzerland, using the false identity of a Romanian officer and in constant
fear of being discovered. Safe at
last, in August Mandl/Mantello was appointed by Castellanos to serve as first
secretary for the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva. He would hold that position throughout the war years and
from there his extraordinary rescue efforts were launched.
Mantello
had been in Vienna in 1938 when the Germans took over Austria, and in 1939 he
observed the Nazi occupation of Prague.
He was a man of foresight as his successful business ventures testified,
and now he saw that a historical catastrophe was approaching for the Jewish
people of Europe. Facing a disaster of such magnitude, it might have been easy
to give way to despair and apathy, to simply live out the war in the
comfortable sanctuary of Switzerland. After all, what could one person do? Fortunately, George Mantello did not
despair, and it turned out that one person could do a great deal. By the war's end, Mantello had been
instrumental in saving over 100,000 lives. Of course he did not do that alone--but it would not have
happened without him.
Switzerland,
and especially Geneva, was a central location for information and action
regarding Europe's Jews, and a multitude of government agencies of many nations
as well as NGOs operated there.
Unfortunately, doctrinal differences and personal antagonisms sometimes
kept them from cooperating to carry out their mandates to help. One of George
Mantello's early efforts fell victim to such infighting. He conceived a plan
for a trust company that would allow Jews in Nazi-occupied countries to save
their financial assets for themselves or their heirs after the war. The project could have saved lives as
well as money, but it came to nothing when the heads of the two most important
Jewish organizations refused to sit down at the same table to discuss it. Unfortunately this was not the only
instance of such incredible selfishness.
The
Swiss government, too, was hostile to rescue projects. For a complex of reasons
it offered little aid to Hitler's victims and sometimes actively persecuted
those, including Mantello, who engaged in rescue efforts it deemed
“illegal.”
Particularly ugly was the policy of “refoulement” under
which thousands of Jews reaching the Swiss border in search of sanctuary were
turned away to await their fates at German hands.
Since
collective work was frustrated, Mantello found another avenue. For some time,
Latin American passports and citizenship papers had been avidly sought by Jews
in Poland and elsewhere. They were
available in Switzerland from several consulates--at stiff prices. Mantello proposed to his diplomatic
superior, Consul Castellanos, that Salvadoran citizenship papers could be given to endangered people in large
numbers. Castellanos told Mantello
to seek the approval of El Salvador's leading jurist; this was former (and
future) World Court president Dr. Gustavo Guerrero, then residing in
Switzerland. Guerrero supported the effort, and it was also eventually approved
by the Salvadoran government which in 1943 was still very much in the hands of
General Martínez. Thus the first Salvadoran rescue project was
launched.
The
operation began in a small way, but expanded rapidly as word spread. In 1943
Mantello opened at his own expense a special office dedicated to this job, and
it produced “several thousand” sets of Salvadoran citizenship
papers which were smuggled to their destinations in a multitude of ways. It seems surprising that German
authorities honored these papers, which created Salvadoran citizens out of
European Jews who (like Mantello) had never seen “their”
country. But in general they were
honored; the papers were literally lifesavers. The likely explanation is that
numerous German citizens were living in Latin America, and the German
government was thinking of future exchanges. Since few genuine Latin Americans were available in occupied
Europe for exchanging, the newly minted “Latins” would have to
serve--provided their respective governments recognized their documents. The picture was complicated, and the
protection afforded by such Salvadoran citizenship varied by country and over
time. There were tragedies as well
as triumphs, when the protective papers were not respected by some German or
satellite officer or arrived too late; the latter, sadly, was the case with
George Mantello's own parents who were deported from their home in Transylvania
and murdered in 1944. Still,
thousands of Jews and other threatened people survived the Nazi nightmare
thanks to these Salvadoran documents, which Mantello and his collaborators
distributed as widely as they could.
But the worst, and the best, were yet to come.
Before
the war, some 450,000 Jews lived in Hungary. By 1940 that number had increased to about 735,000, since
Germany forcibly returned to Hungary territories in Czechoslovakia, Romania and
Yugoslavia that had been taken from it after the First World War. In addition there were thousands of
ex-Jews who had converted to Christianity. The total was around 800,000, and about one fourth of them
lived in Budapest. Until March
1944 this entire Jewish population survived in relative peace. Their situation was far from normal,
and racist laws had been enacted in Hungary as early as 1938. Unlike life in democratic Denmark where
Jews remained citizens with full rights even under German occupation until
September 1943, in Hungary they were persecuted and degraded. But the Hungarian Jews had not
experienced ghettos and the yellow star, nor had there been mass deportations
and murder. Although many of them
knew about the horrors suffered by Jews in other parts of occupied Europe, they
still believed “It can't happen here.” That illusion was to change abruptly.
Admiral
Miklós (Nicholas) Horthy had dominated Hungary's right-wing governments
since 1919, and he was a strong ally of Nazi Germany. However, disastrous failures of Hungarian troops against the
Soviet army led his government to explore peace negotiations with the Allies. This, and traces of nationalist
resistance to some of Hitler's demands, brought on the German invasion of March
19. Horthy formally maintained his position as Regent, but the Germans and the
SS were in charge. Organizing the
mass murder of Hungarian Jews began immediately.
The
German murder team was led by Adolf Eichmann, and his SS gang found many
Hungarians more than willing to cooperate. The Jewish population was unprepared and many wanted badly
to accept the reassurances passed on by the new “Jewish Council”
established under German orders. Nevertheless ghettos were established with
amazing speed in the Hungarian provinces, and the mass deportations began on
May 15. In only two months all of
Hungary except for the capital area had been stripped of its Jewish population,
over 400,000 people.
So
far, the Jews of Budapest had been largely spared, but Eichmann fully intended
to kill them all. To his surprise
and disgust, his plans were interrupted by none other than Admiral Horthy, who
reasserted control of the Hungarian government, called loyal troops to the
capital to defend against a coup from the right (!), and then ordered the
deportations to stop. The order
became public on July 7. Although Eichmann tried several times to defy this
order both directly and by stealth, Horthy was able to defeat most of his
efforts. Toward the end of August
Himmler suspended deportations to Auschwitz until further notice, and Eichmann
was forced to leave the country.
Some 250,000 surviving Jews in Budapest had received a reprieve, at
least, from certain death.
A
miracle! To many, it seemed
nothing less. What had happened?
Why did Horthy act? A
survivor’s account written many years later underscores the
victims’ bewilderment:
“On the 6th of July 1944 Miklós Horthy ended the
deportation of the Jews to Auschwitz for reasons still unknown today. There are many theories regarding this
decision ... Without Hungarian
support Eichmann was not able to continue shipping “raw material”
to the death factory of Auschwitz, and this decision that Horthy made angered
Eichmann greatly.”[6] However, to a great extent the reasons
for Horthy’s turnaround are known.
Late
in June 1944 an unprecedented wave of denunciations, outrage, anger, and
threats of postwar retaliation broke out in the West. It began in Switzerland, where leading Protestant clerics
denounced the Nazi mass murder in the country's major churches, the press broke
through long-established censorship of anything anti-German to publish dramatic
and angry articles about Auschwitz and the atrocities in Hungary, and huge
popular demonstrations were held in major cities. In all over 180 Swiss
newspapers spanning the political spectrum published articles about the
Hungarian persecution. The stories were reported in the foreign press as well,
including the United States and Britain.
Pope Pius XII sent an open letter to Horthy urging him to act against
the deportations. Religious
leaders including the archbishops of Canterbury and New York joined the
campaign. On June 26 President
Roosevelt sent Horthy the first of two strong messages including threats of
military action, and a heavy American air raid on Budapest on July 2 seemed to
reinforce that warning. King
Gustav of Sweden appealed to Horthy, and authorized Raul Wallenburg's famous
mission to Budapest that activated formerly passive Swedish diplomats
there. Even the Hungarian Catholic
Church took belated action in the form of a mild pastoral letter criticizing
the deportations. This campaign
had a remarkable effect. Horthy
took control of the Hungarian government, dismissed several of the most
pro-Nazi officials, and ordered the death trains stopped.
The
campaign of denunciations and Horthy's decision to halt the deportations have
of course been recorded by most historians of the Holocaust in Hungary. In many of those accounts, however,
George Mantello is mentioned barely or not at all. The index to Raul Hilberg's monumental trilogy The
Destruction of the European Jews
does not include Mantello's name.[7] In another major study, Leni Yahil
wrote that
In the meantime reports on these
developments in Hungary were being published in the press throughout the free
world, leaving the Sztójay government embarrassed. … for the
first time in the history of the Holocaust, an international effort was made to
halt the extermination operation. President Roosevelt, Pope Pius XII,
King Gustav of Sweden, and the president of the Red Cross all appealed to
Horthy to stop the deportations and to save, at least, the Jews of
Budapest…[8]
(Emphasis added.)
It
is surprising that Yahil (and others) do not investigate why, after years of silence, that outstanding
international effort was made “for the first time” in June 1944.
In
fact the Swiss campaign did not just happen. At the core of this remarkable outpouring of concern and outrage
was the work of George Mantello.
Carl Lutz, the Swiss consul in Budapest who himself played an admirable
and heroic role, wrote Mantello on July 20:
As
I have learned recently, you stand out as the “spiritus rectus”
behind the press campaign in Switzerland, which has brought to the public at
large information concerning … [the] distress of the Jewish population of
Budapest… The immediate effect has been the suspension of the
deportations… It can be said that thanks to your campaign, the imminent catastrophe
was greatly reduced.[9]
Post-war
Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal makes the same point in his foreword to an
admiring biography of Lutz:
But
Consul Lutz and the other neutral diplomats in Budapest were largely powerless
against the deportation of 350,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz between May 15
and July 8, 1944. This was stopped
under international pressure when Horthy, Hungary's regent, suspended the
deportations temporarily. His
order was largely the result of an unprecedented press campaign in neutral and
western countries, which -- with the indirect help of Consul Lutz -- George
Mandel-Mantello, a Hungarian Jewish refugee in Switzerland, had
unleashed…[10]
The
success of Mantello's activism depended, first of all, on having full and
reliable information. A Swiss
committee for the Hungarian Jews (SHC), which he had helped organize the day
after the German invasion, quickly met with major Jewish and other concerned
organizations in Switzerland to seek better cooperation among them. Mantello explained the ongoing work
with Salvadoran identity papers, and pleaded for rapid sharing of information
about the situation in Hungary.
Unfortunately the response was minimal. Among others, the International
Red Cross (IRC) had access to considerable news of the disaster there, but it
did, and said, nothing.
The
information blockade was broken only after two young Jews on April 7 made a
remarkable escape from Auschwitz itself.
The two, known as Rudolf Vrba and Josef Lanik (his original name was
Alfred Wetzler), had worked in the death camp for nearly two years as clerks,
and their skills not only kept them alive but also gave them the chance to know
the operation of the murder factory in detail. By late April they had prepared a 26-page report, which came
to be know as the “Auschwitz Protocols.” Now the end result of the
ghettos and deportations was absolutely clear: it was mass murder, nothing
less. Copies and summaries of this
horrifying--and reliable--document were sent to many people and agencies, Jewish
and not, in the “free world.” At least five organizations in
Switzerland were notified. Appeals
went to Allied governments to do something, but nothing happened. None of the recipients shared the information with Mantello,
despite his efforts and pleas for cooperation, nor did the reports have any
public impact. Another
breakthrough had to occur first.
Dr.
Florian Manoliu was a commercial attaché of Romania and a former
business partner of Mantello's brother Josef Mandl. He agreed to undertake a rescue and reporting mission, and
left Switzerland for Bucharest on May 22.
The trip was difficult and dangerous but Manoliu managed it at great
personal risk. Ignoring the
restrictions on his travel documents, he visited Bistrice, the home of the
Mandl parents and extended family--and found the town had become
“Judenrein.” The
protective Salvadoran documents he had planned to give them were a few days too
late; all had been deported.
Traveling to Budapest he discovered the desperate situation and fear that
gripped Hungary's remaining Jewish population of some 250,000. From Swiss
Consul Carl Lutz and Miklósz Krausz of the Palestine immigration
organization he received documentary proof of the continuing atrocity,
including a summary of the Auschwitz Protocols. Ignoring his own danger,
Manoliu then returned directly to Switzerland. At 2:00 AM on June 21 he delivered the tragic personal news,
and the reports, to Mantello and Josef.
That
very night the grief-stricken brothers set to work on a campaign to force the
world to listen. An emergency
meeting of the SHC was convened the next morning. In the meantime, a team of Hungarian university students
prepared translations and multiple copies of the reports. Urgent contacts were
sought with foreign organizations, including the (U.S.) War Refugee Board. This organization should have been at
the forefront of rescue efforts, but skepticism and delay were the specialties
of its head Roswell McClelland, and the WRB's activity was little and
late. The International Red Cross
also saw no need for any urgent response.
Fortunately others acted better.
Freddy West of British Intelligence and the director Walter Garrett of
the news agency British Exchange Telegraph responded to Mantello's urgent
requests by sending long cables summarizing the crisis to their own superiors
and to a list of world leaders including President Roosevelt, Prime Minister
Churchill and the Pope. Copies
also went immediately to the offices of major Swiss and foreign
newspapers. Religious leaders,
especially well-known Protestant pastors such as Paul Vogt (already active in
aiding refugees) and theologian Carl Barth, gladly joined in enlisting their
colleagues and raising a voice of outraged Christianity. Within a very few days
the truth about the murder of Hungarian Jewry was made known to government
agencies and NGOs throughout the West in ways that could not be ignored. Powerful sermons were preached in the
principal churches of Switzerland.
Messages to Horthy arrived from F.D.R., Swedish King Gustav, and the
Pope. Pastor Vogt had thousands of
copies of the Auschwitz report printed, and almost as quickly he published them
again in a book that included his own sermons denouncing the Nazi murder campaign. By late June the Swiss press had begun
defying years of censorship to report and editorialize about the fate of the
Jews. Once the dam was broken
hundreds of articles followed rapidly.
Mass demonstrations and memorial services were held in major Swiss
cities. Local government bodies,
but not the national government, joined the campaign. The wave of protest swelled in July and continued throughout
the summer. There was no question
that the conscience of the Swiss people was deeply stirred, and many of them
acted in the best ways available to them.
And
then what? The campaign had
enormous effects! It was discussed
in Budapest, in Switzerland, in Stockholm, in communications between Hitler and
his subordinates, in the Vatican, in Britain and in the United States. It moved Horthy to reassert control and
order the deportations stopped. For the first time the atrocity against the
Jews of occupied Europe was front-page news in the West; for the first time the
name “Auschwitz” became a synonym for evil. The campaign created
activists out of bystanders.
“There is no doubt,” Kranzler writes, “that the change
in the stance and activities of the neutrals and the Allies was a direct result
of this incredible Swiss press and church campaign.”[11]
There
were major repercussions for the Swiss government as well. The policy of “refoulement”
was partially rescinded on July 12, and rescue instead of neutrality became the
top official goal. The
International Red Cross, essentially an agency of the Swiss government, was
forced at last to intercede for Jewish prisoners and for the threatened Jews of
Budapest. An aide to Pastor Vogt
summed it up in a letter to Mantello:
As
far as the atrocities in Hungary were concerned, one simply had to do
everything possible to publicize the [two] reports and thereby produce a
groundswell of protest by the people, which first led to the intervention of
the IRC…. Thank God our efforts were not futile.[12]
The Swiss campaign could hardly have received much active support from El Salvador during its first months, for General Martínez was in deep trouble trying to hold on to power. Early in 1944 his dictatorial governing style and quasi-legal maneuvers to gain another presidential term ran into increasing resistance, and in April a military revolt broke out. Martínez succeeded in putting down this rebellion, but it was quickly followed by a non-violent general strike involving nearly all sectors of society. The strike proved effective. Martínez resigned on May 9 and left the country for good two days later. He was replaced by General Andrés I. Menéndez, serving for the second time in his life as an interim acting president.[13] With Menéndez came a new cabinet including as foreign minister the writer Julio Enrique Avila. Democracy returned to El Salvador (for the moment), but the situation was chaotic.
At just this critical time, diplomatic activity was required! Some 10,000 Salvadoran citizenship papers were in the hands of threatened Hungarian Jews—but just how valid were they? Swiss government recognition of Mantello’s irregular documents was essential in order for the Swiss officials in Budapest to protect their holders. Encouraged by U.S. President Roosevelt, the new foreign minister Julio Avila in San Salvador and Consul Castellanos in Geneva did what they could to back Mantello’s campaign. In Switzerland, however, highly-placed reactionaries and anti-Semites worked hard to obstruct the rescue efforts including the Salvadoran citizenship papers, while at the same time the press and church campaign exerted great pressure on the Swiss government to act humanely. Finally the documents were recognized, so that Swiss protection was afforded to Budapest’s "Salvadoran citizens." In the end, the Salvadoran certificates proved to be the most effective of all the protective papers held by Budapest Jews.
Unfortunately
the ordeal of the surviving Hungarian Jews was far from over. The uneasy calm that began with the
halt to deportations ended on October 15, when a coup organized by German and
Hungarian fascists deposed the “unreliable” Horthy and installed
pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic Ferenc Szalasi as premier. Eichmann returned to Budapest on October 17. With the enthusiastic help of the vicious
“Arrow Cross” party, he set out to complete the murder of the Jews
in the last months remaining before the arrival of the Red Army. During this critical period many of the
neutral diplomats in Budapest, led by Swiss Consul Carl Lutz and Swedish
emissary Raul Wallenburg, performed tireless and heroic service. They succeeded
in saving tens of thousands of lives, and the Salvadoran citizenship papers,
supplied as rapidly as possible by Mantello and his team and now backed by the
Swiss government, were an essential tool in their work, together with documents
from other nations such as Sweden.
Lutz wrote Mantello a long letter on October 28, saying that
Naturally, under the present chaotic conditions attacks do occur, but it must be said that the San [sic] Salvador certificates have already saved thousands of lives....
... you can take satisfaction in the fact that ... it was your management of the San [sic] Salvadoran interests which has enabled us to create a humanitarian work that will bring you the thanks of thousands of rescued people. It must be clearly established that San [sic] Salvador is the only state to overcome any hesitancy and to undertake an active rescue operation.[14]
Despite
incredible scenes of murder and horrendous death marches, when liberation came
to Budapest at last in January and February 1945, some 140,000 Jews were alive
to welcome it. They were a tragic
remnant--and yet their survival represented a triumph for the side of
life. Without Horthy's
“conversion” and the halt to mass deportations by rail in July
1944, the Final Solution would surely have finished its work and eliminated the
entire Jewish population of Hungary.
“The
fact remains,” says David Kranzler, “that only the Swiss people
made a major difference in the fate of Hungarian Jewry. Galvanized by Mantello and inspired by
outstanding church leaders, they sought to use the press and church to effect
changes in the events in Hungary, and they succeeded beyond anyone's
expectation.”[15]
* * * * * *
After
the war, George Mantello should have been honored in Switzerland as a
hero. Instead, he faced a government
investigation for alleged bureaucratic “crimes” during his efforts
to save lives. Heinrich Rothmund,
the head of the Swiss Alien Police and a fanatical anti-Semite, was apparently
behind this attack; indeed, Rothmund had tried at every opportunity to sabotage
the earlier rescue efforts.
Fortunately the proceedings brought forth many testimonials to the value
and selflessness of Mantello's work and he was fully cleared of all charges. Mantello chose not to remain in
Switzerland, and lived in Rome for the rest of his life, making frequent visits
to the new state of Israel. He
died in 1992.
Kranzler's
book ends with this summary and tribute. “At a time when he [Mantello]
was needed, he did not hesitate to do everything in his power to assure the survival
of the Jews of Budapest. He was
the driving force behind the incredible transformation of the Swiss people, who
carried on their newly found tolerance for refugees long into the postwar era;
he was the catalyst behind the protective papers operation that saved countless
lives.” Kranzler concludes
that while the Nazi atrocities showed the worst of which humanity is capable,
“[Mantello], his colleagues, the Swiss people and Salvadoran officials
were proof of the lofty heights to which it could rise… For a short,
blazing moment, Mantello lit up the darkness of the Holocaust, reaching the
apex of rescue--and then fading into the recesses of history.”[16]
