The exhibit is being presented at Arch Street Meeting House. (Courtesy of Mid-Atlantic — Eurasia Business Council)
The Swiss were famously neutral in World War II, but Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz was not.
Lutz served as Swiss vice-consul in Budapest from 1942 to 1945, and helped save over 60,000 people from the Nazis in part by establishing safe houses throughout Budapest. Lutz is largely responsible for saving half of Budapest’s Jews from being killed in the Holocaust.
He wasn’t the only diplomat who aided this effort, and at the Arch Street Meeting House at Independence Mall, there is now an exhibit memorializing the work of those important figures.
A collaboration between the Mid-Atlantic — Eurasia Business Council and the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia called “Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats” opened last month and runs through the end of March, with the possibility of it being brought to another location and extended into the summer, too. It is not just a uniquely Jewish exhibit, but a uniquely Philadelphian one, too. Lutz served at the Swiss consulate in the City of Brotherly Love in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Val Kogan is the president of the Mid-Atlantic — Eurasia Business Council, and he said that the exhibit holds a story that is incredibly important for the Jewish community to learn.
“This exhibition holds profound significance for the Jewish community as it preserves and honors the memory of those who risked everything to save Jewish lives during humanity’s darkest chapter. For Jews, the ‘Visas for Life’ exhibition serves as both commemoration and inspiration,” he said.
The exhibit was created by Eric Saul, founder and executive director of Visas for Life and the Institute for the Study of Rescue and Altruism in the Holocaust. It celebrates the courage of more than 300 diplomats from 40 countries who contributed to protecting various people — Jewish and not — from the Nazis.
It includes a variety of items and media that detail the work of Lutz and his contemporaries, who used their status and pull to protect people across Europe. Lutz is credited with negotiating with Nazi and Hungarian officials to allow Jewish refugees to move to Palestine, providing documents for some Jews to travel through parts of Europe with safe passage and setting up safe houses that acted as extensions of Swiss diplomatic territory and therefore off-limits to Nazis.
“The exhibition also addresses a particular form of forgetting — the erasure of non-Jewish and Jewish rescuers from Holocaust memory. While Jewish suffering remains central to Holocaust education, the stories of those who risked everything to help illuminate crucial truths about human nature, moral choice and the possibility of resistance,” Kogan said. “These diplomat-heroes prove that “ordinary” people embedded in systems can choose conscience over complicity.”
Kogan plans to help create a memorial for Lutz and other diplomats in Philadelphia, with the goal of opening it on Lutz’s birthday of March 30, which is also the day that he arrived in Philadelphia in 1926. The event will include an appearance by Lutz’s stepdaughter Agnes Hirschi, who will discuss her stepfather’s character and legacy. The directors of the documentary “Dangerous Diplomacy,” which details Lutz’s work, will also be there.
“Dangerous Diplomacy” was shown at the exhibit’s Dec. 17 opening, with a bevy of Philadelphia figures in attendance to watch and learn from the exhibit. The list of speakers included Michael Newmuis, 2026 director in the Philadelphia mayor’s office; Zabeth Teelucksingh, president of Global Philadelphia Association; Jeffrey Lasday, senior chief of external affairs at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia; and Sean Connolly, executive director of Arch Street Meeting House.
The event was a reminder of the greater themes discussed in the exhibit: bravery in the face of tyranny, and how the actions of one person or a small group can have a large effect on many more people.
The 80th anniversary of Lutz’s heroism comes at a time when being Jewish in America is difficult. In 2024, the ADL reported the most antisemitic incidents it has ever tracked since it began doing so in the 1970s. More than 9,300 incidents represented a 344% increase over the past five years and a 893% increase over the past 10 years.
Lutz’s bravery and this exhibit are a reminder of the importance of solidarity between people right now, and forever.
Kogan said that this exhibit is as important today as it ever has been.
“We’re living through what historians may someday call a crisis of democratic values worldwide. Authoritarianism is resurgent, human rights are under attack and refugee populations face unprecedented hostility. The lessons embodied by these diplomat-rescuers — about bureaucratic courage, about prioritizing human dignity over nationalist ideology, about creative resistance to unjust laws — have direct application to contemporary political challenges,” he said.
For more information on the exhibit, contact Kogan at 484-467-7444 or [email protected].