Illuminated Manuscript, written in English, on vellum, presented to Mrs. Lorna Gascoigne from the Hungarian Colony in Tangier.

(HOLOCAUST).

July

Tangier

1945

“We Hungarians in Tangier, who are separated from our families, have since the German occupation of our country been in complete ignorance of their suffering and fate. After so many months of anxiety, we have thanks to your generous intervention at last obtained firsthand news. For this noble act we humbly want to express Madam, our profound gratitude and respect. The Hungarian Colony in Tangier.”

Testimonial of gratitude and respects to Lorna Gascoigne for her intervention in obtaining news of separated family members left behind in former Nazi-occupied Hungary. Lady Lorna Gascoigne was the wife of the British diplomat, Sir Alvary Douglas Frederick Trench-Gascoigne (1893–1970). In August 1939, he was named Consul-General for the Tangier and Spanish Zones in the Protectorate of Morocco and resident at Tangier. In later years he served in Tokyo and in Moscow. A small group of Hungarian Jews settled in the neutral city of Tangier in order to escape Nazi Europe. A number of these refugees were able to build profitable businesses there. The most celebrated of whom were the Grussgott, and especially the Reichman family, who used their wherewithal (business profits, charm, diplomacy and bribery) to do whatever they could to aid victims of the Holocaust. Under the aegis of the Spanish Red Cross, family matriarch Renée Reichman sent tens of thousands of food parcels from Tangier to the prisoners of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. See A. Bianco, The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York (1997).