Juliusz Kühl

Juliusz Kühl was born shortly before the World War I in Sanok, southern Poland, which at that time was a part of Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, into an orthodox Jewish family.

[3] Polish scholar Agnieszka Haska quotes Kühl's unpublished autobiographical note and claims he entered the University of Zurich to study economics, the subject he obtained a PhD in 1939.

After the German and Soviet invasion of Poland and their subsequent occupation, the Legation remained loyal to the Polish government-in-exile headed by general Władysław Sikorski which pledged to continue the struggle against the Axis powers.

Kühl was tasked with working with Polish refugees coming in massive numbers from occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands, vast majority of whom were Jews and Poles of Jewish descent escaping from Nazi persecution.

Starting in 1941 Kühl and his superiors Stefan Ryniewicz and Konstanty Rokicki supervised the illegal market of Latin American passports bought by Jewish organizations for Jews in occupied Poland.

A particular case was the honorary consul of Paraguay, the Bernese notary Rudolf Hügli, who did not produce passports himself, but rather sold blank passes to the Legation of Poland.

Consul Konstanty Rokicki would enter by hand the names and personal details of their beneficiaries – Polish and Dutch Jews who could thus claim they were citizens of neutral countries and were largely considered exempt from deportations to German Nazi-concentration camps.

[3] Funds to acquire the documents were raised mostly by World Jewish Congress represented by Abraham Silberschein and Agudath Yisrael and the leader of its Swiss branch Chaim Eiss.

A report signed by Federal Councillor Edmund von Steiger on 21 July 1943 stated the following: According to the records available, Messrs Konstanty Rokicki, a vice-consul at the Polish Diplomatic Mission in Berne, and Dr. Julius Kühl, employed at the same Diplomatic Mission at the time, were also instrumental in arranging a significant number of inaccurate citizenship certificates for Polish Jews in the Germany-occupied territory.

The question, how we could obtain foreign passports for Polish citizens arose for the first time after Poland had come under German and Russian occupation, in late 1939 and early 1940.

[7] After the passport operation ended, the Polish government in exile granted Kühl in January 1944 full diplomatic status and the minor rank of attaché.

According to Michal Potocki and Zbigniew Parafianowicz, the whole Polish Legation including Kühl contributed to issuing 4000 passports and saved the lives of 400 people.

At the end of the 1940s, Kühl migrated first to New York City and after a short period moved to Canada where he lived for decades in Toronto, where running a successful construction company.