WARSAW: Poland's president and descendants of Holocaust survivors have held a graveside ceremony to honor a Polish diplomat in
Switzerland who helped Jews escape Poland during
World War II by issuing phony Latin American passports.
The ceremony held Tuesday took place at the
cemetery in
Lucerne, Switzerland where
Konstanty Rokicki was buried in 1958 after dying in poverty.
Rokicki was vice-consul at Poland's consulate in Bern when diplomats and Jewish activists worked to get Jews out of Nazi-occupied Poland.
During 1942-43, he obtained blank passports, mainly from Paraguay, and filled them in with names of Polish Jews. The forged documents were smuggled to them, and it's estimated that several hundred Jews survived World War II because of his actions.
The ceremony was part of President
Andrzej Duda's state visit to Switzerland.