He founded Freiplatzaktion,[1] an organization providing assistance to refugees and migrants, and was instrumental in first releasing news about the Holocaust to the public, including in the United States, during World War II.
In 1936, Vogt left Walzenhausen for a pastorate in Zürich-Seebach, and was appointed leader of the Swiss Protestant Relief Organization for the Confessional Church in Germany (SEHBKD).
[4] News about "deportations to the East" as part of the Final Solution had reached Switzerland by 1942, and the government had chosen to respond by tightening border controls and ramping up censorship.
Gerhard Riegner, the secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, and Recha and Yitzchak Sternbuch, of the Va'ad Hatzalah (Orthodox Rescue Committee) in Switzerland, sent in August and September 1942 telegrams to United States Jewish leadership warning of firm Nazi plans to annihilate European Jewry, and some reports about deportations and murders in the camps had begun to appear in the local media.
Since harsh censorship of the Swiss press by the government did not extend to the Church, Vogt took up the task of publicising Nazi atrocities through sermons, his magazine, and the reproduction of smuggled photographs, which he viewed as his duty as the "voice of the silent and the emissary of the hunted".
Manilou stopped off in Budapest, against strict Nazi orders, on the way back from Romania and obtained the reports from Moshe Krausz who received them from Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, co-leader of the Bratislava Working Group.
... Where are the homeless Jewish children today?The sermons and the Auschwitz reports were collected into a book, called 'Am I My Brother's Keeper" (Soll ich meines Bruders Hütter sein?
Responding to a letter of thanks from Mantello, Vogt wrote: "We would like to apply all our strength to fight these dreadful things, in order to awaken the [world's] conscience to save those who are still under threat.
The intense Press Campaign, street protests, Sunday sermons led to great pressure on the Hungarian government by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and others.
[9] From 1947 Vogt was pastor in Grabs; in 1951 he was appointed dean of the parish chapter Rheintal-Werdenberg-Sargans, and between 1952 and 1957 was president of the Protestant educational institution Schiers-Samedan.