Protective Pass issued to a Jew, Robert Milch, by the Swedish Red Cross in Budapest, with autograph signature of <<Valdemar Georg Langlet.>>

This rare 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,” that is, safe-houses dedicated for the refuge of Jews. Langlet (along with his wife Nina Borovko-Langlet) is credited in having saved some 20,000 Hungarian Jewish lives in the months leading up to liberation. By this stage of the war (December, 1944), Jews who were protected from attack by 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, as they sought to drive the Germans out of the western (Buda) side of the city.