Chaim Yisroel Eiss

Chaim Yisroel Eiss (1876–1943, Hebrew: חיים ישראל אייז) was an Agudath Israel activist and writer.

[1][2] During the First World War, Rebbe Eiss set up an aid system that located refugees, found out what they most needed and raised the required funds.

He operated mainly behind the scenes and every proposal that was brought to the presidium for ratification was first presented to him [citation needed].

Eiss was entrusted by the leading Rabbis of the time with the directorship of all Switzerland-based Agudath Israel funds.

He received hundreds of letters from Nazi-occupied countries and was one of the first to obtain a clear picture of the atrocities that were being carried out there [citation needed].

Interrogated by the Swiss police in May 1943, Eiss admitted to having worked together with Polish diplomats to illegally obtain a fake passport from a corrupted honorary consul of Paraguay Rudolf Hugli.

Eiss would then obtain the copies of the passports, presumably through the Polish-Jewish diplomat Juliusz Kühl, right-hand of the envoy of Poland Aleksander Ładoś and have them smuggled into the German occupation zone.

The letters contained certificates showing that the person concerned had been granted Paraguayan citizenship.

The unofficial postal service was conducted by non-Jewish residents of the occupied countries, people he referred to in his letters as pure Aryans [citation needed], and the phraseology that was used was designed to pass muster with the censors while being understood by the intended recipients.

An example of this can be seen in a letter that he wrote to Agudath Israel’s American branch at an early stage, before people were yet aware of the Nazis’ extermination efforts.

According to Eiss, the only reason that Mizrachi affiliated itself to the Zionists was in order to receive monetary gain [citation needed].