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Witness History: The Fake IDs That Saved Jewish Lives

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The Fake IDs That Saved Jewish Lives

25/10/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, The Fake IDs That Saved Jewish Lives

How tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews escaped the Nazis by using false papers.

During the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944, tens of thousands of Jews managed to escape deportation to the death camps by using false identification papers.

Soon after Hitler ordered the invasion of Hungary in March 1944, the Nazis began rounding up hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Most were immediately sent to their deaths in the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. David Gur was a member of the Jewish Hungarian underground, who helped produce tens of thousands of forged identification documents. These allowed Jews to hide their true identities and escape deportation to the death camps. Now 91 years old, David has been telling Mike Lanchin about his part in one of the largest rescue operations organised by Jews during the Holocaust.

Photo: False Hungarian ID document (BBC)

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