A Little History - A Messy Affair, A Friendly Divorce, and an Unexpected New Career

Her husband would later be hailed as a great hero and called ‘the Swiss Schindler’, a diplomat who had taken extraordinary risks during the Holocaust to save many thousands of people at risk of deportation to the death camps.  She was at his side throughout those difficult years, but would remain in his shadow until a shock discovery and a final parting launched her own career.  

St. Louis, Missouri was an unlikely meeting place for two young Swiss far from their homeland. At the time Switzerland had a consulate in St. Louis.  Karl was a junior diplomat posted at the consulate. 

Gertrude was a recent Swiss emigrée who found part-time clerical work at the consulate.   

Gertrude was young and anxious for adventure - the daughter of a cheese maker from a village near Fribourg. After studying commerce in Fribourg and then in Bern, she decided in 1930 at age 18 to immigrate on her own to the US. 

Karl and Gertrude met.  An office romance followed and in 1935 they married.   

Soon after their marriage, Karl and Gertrude were transferred to Jaffa in British controlled Palestine. There Karl became charged with managing the various 'foreign interests' sections Switzerland handled on behalf of countries not represented in Palestine.  

Among these countries was Germany.  This posed a special challenge for the Swiss. There were thousands of German Jews living in Palestine at the time.  After the so-called 'Nuremberg laws of 1935, they became stateless in the view of the German authorities, while in the eyes of the British, they remained Germans.  When World War II broke out in 1939 the British moved many of them into camps for 'enemy aliens'.  Gertrude became known in these years for her role in organizing aid for the stateless and for those in the camps. 

With the war now fully underway, 1940 Karl was transferred back to Europe and posted briefly in Berlin where he again found himself running a foreign interest section, this time representing Yugoslavia.   Meanwhile, Gertrude stayed on and continued her aid work the growing numbers of refugees in Palestine. In 1942  she and Karl were reunited in Budapest where he was once again  running a foreign interests section, but now on behalf of an enormous number of countries which were at war.  He was now the sole diplomat representing the interests of 14 countries, including the US and UK. 

He worked now out of the empty shell of the former US embassy and lived in the former British Embassy, while his boss, the Ambassador, worked out of the much more modest Swiss embassy.

In early 1944 it became clear that Germany was about to invade Hungary. Karl used his position as consul to issue over 5,000 visas to Jews wanting to escape. Even after Germany took control in March 1944 Karl kept issuing letters of protection and designating some 76 houses as ‘under Swiss diplomatic protection. Gertrude continued her aid work in Budapest, even as some 30,000 Jews were taken away to the death camps.  During the Soviet blockade of Budapest at the end of 1944, Karl and Gertrude hid over 50 people in the embassy basement. By the end of the war Karl and Gertrude had managed to help over 10,000 Jews to escape Hungary. 

At the time, the Swiss government viewed as Karl’s actions as a misuse of his diplomatic status. He was recalled and given an official reprimand - a fact which later became a serious embarrassment for the government.  Attitudes changed quickly after the war, and the Swiss soon promoted Karl as a hero.  Little was mentioned about the role Gertrude had played throughout those years.  

That fact likely did not bother Gertrude, but something else did.  One of the exit visas Karl had arranged in mid 1944 was for Magdalena Grausz. Karl and she had carried on an affair. In 1945 Gertrude and Karl separated and then in 1946 agreed on what they called a ‘friendly divorce’

Magdalena Grausz

Up to this point Karl’s life had been Gertrude’s life. Now suddenly she was on her own. She had enormous experience of work with refugees and the organization of aid efforts, but she had no formal qualifications or employment history. So in January 1946 she went to work doing what she knew best - relief work. She joined the post war Swiss charity ‘Don Suisse’ and was sent to Sarajevo to set up relief efforts in Bosnia and later in Finland and Poland.

* Gertrude in Finland

At some point while she was working in Poland Gertrude met the former Chief Counsel of UNRRA, Albert Davidson.  Davidson had played an important role in the creation of UNICEF in ensuring that the unspent funds of UNRRA went to UNICEF, rather than back to their countries.  He was a close acquaintance of Ludwik Rajchman.  In 1947 Al Davidson become the head of UNICEF’s office in Paris. After seeing Gertrude's work in Poland, Davidson recruited her to head the UNICEF office in Poland.

Gertrude Lutz-Frankhauser thus became the first woman to serve as a UNICEF Representative - or as it was called then ‘chief of mission’. She headed UNICEF Poland from 1947 until the office closed at the end of 1950.  They were not easy years for UNICEF or other foreign aid agencies in Poland.  Yet she became known both in Poland and in UNICEF for running an excellent programme and keeping warm relations when other agencies could not.  

Next week - Gertrude's UNICEF career moves on to Brazil, Turkey and Biafra.

* the baby was not Gertrude's but a Finnish baby in a project aided by Don Suisse. The photo appeared as a cover for a Swiss magazine highlighting the work of the Swiss charity in post war Europe.

Read other stories in our UNICEF History series