Between 1940 and 1943, a group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable - and until now, almost completely unknown - humanitarian operation. Under the leadership of the Polish Ambassador, Aleksander Lados, they undertook a systematic programme of forging passports and identity documents for Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust. For all their murderous fury, the Nazis retained a strange legalism that tended to respect the rights of those Jews that were citizens of neutral countries.
At first, these Jews were interned, in relative comfort, to be exchanged for German citizens held abroad. Yet when the Latin American states declared themselves unwilling to recognise those with illegally issued documents, some of those 'Exchange Jews' began to lose the protection that had saved them from the death camps. With the international community generally failing to act to assist the Jews, the Lados operation was one of the largest rescue missions of the entire war.
The Forgers tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the desperate bids of Jews to obtain these life-saving documents; and their painful uncertainty over whether they will be granted the desired protection from the murderous machinery of the Holocaust. And we witness the quiet heroism of a small group of men who decided to act in an attempt to save thousands of lives.
