Swedish Protection Sign. Printed on card in Hungarian and Russian with manuscript additions. With colors of the Swedish flag and Red Cross at center. Ink stamp below of Swedish Red Cross in Hungarian and Swedish.

The protection provided by the Swedish Embassy in Budapest to the Forgo family safeguarded their home (a designated “yellow-star house”) located on Dohany Street, just a few buildings down from Budapest’s Great Synagogue, the largest such house of worship in Europe. This protection order was issued and signed by Valdemar Langlet, the head of the Swedish Red Cross in Hungary 1944-45, who was the first to establish “Protected Houses” safe-houses dedicated for Jews. Langlet (along with his wife Nina Borovko-Langlet) is credited in having saved some 20,000 Hungarian Jewish lives in the months shortly before liberation. By this stage of the war (December, 1944), Jews who were protected against the Hungarian Fascist Arrow Cross by way of Swedish designated safe-houses also had reason to be concerned about Soviet forces who occupied the eastern (Pest) side of the city and seeking to drive the Germans out of the western (Buda) side of the city. Hence the use of Russian on this Order. <<Exceptionally scarce.>>