Carl Lutz Memorial: The Angel and the Fallen
Why is it significant?
On Dob utca, find the sculpture: high on the wall a golden angel leans down, letting a long ribbon of cloth fall towards a figure lying on the ground below. The figure is bronze and dark. The angel is gilded and bright. It is a memorial to a Swiss diplomat called Carl Lutz.
Key Facts
| Place | Carl Lutz Memorial: The Angel and the Fallen |
|---|---|
| Address | Dob utca 12, 1072 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49750, 19.06030 |
| Part of Walk | Three Synagogues and a Tree of Life: Budapest's Jewish Quarter from Gozsdu to Dohány Street |
| Generated | Generated |
On Dob utca, find the sculpture: high on the wall a golden angel leans down, letting a long ribbon of cloth fall towards a figure lying on the ground below. The figure is bronze and dark. The angel is gilded and bright. It is a memorial to a Swiss diplomat called Carl Lutz.
Lutz arrived in Budapest in 1942 as Swiss vice-consul. Switzerland was neutral, so his office looked after the interests of countries at war with Hungary, including Britain and the United States. He had already helped Jewish children leave for Palestine, and after the German occupation in March 1944 he negotiated permission to issue several thousand protective letters to Jews with emigration papers.
Then he did something bold. He treated the permission as covering whole families rather than individuals, and kept reusing the same numbers, so that the paper protected far more people than the Germans had agreed to. He declared dozens of apartment buildings in Pest to be annexes of the Swiss legation and filled them with people under protection. The best known, the Glass House on Vadász utca, sheltered thousands. Estimates of how many Lutz saved run into the tens of thousands.
There are accounts of Lutz and his wife going to the riverbank and to the brickworks where deportees were gathered, pulling people out of the columns because they held, or claimed to hold, Swiss papers. He worked alongside others: the Swede Raoul Wallenberg, the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, papal and Red Cross representatives, Hungarian helpers whose names are mostly forgotten.
At home, his superiors in Bern criticised him for exceeding his authority. Recognition came slowly: in 1964 Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations. Stand under the angel for a moment and look at the gap between her hand and the fallen man. Then walk on along Dob utca, turn right and head one block south to Wesselényi utca, to the garden behind the great synagogue where this walk ends.