Friedrich Born

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Friedrich Born (1903 - 1963) was a Swiss delegate of the International Red Cross Committee (IRCC) in Budapest between May 1944 and January 1945, when he had to leave Hungary following orders of the occupying Red Army.

He already lived in the Hungarian Capital city before his appointment by the IRCC, working as a trader, and orignally came to Budapest as a member of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreing Trade. He quickly beacame aware of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, which began after the German Putsch in spring 1944. Following the strategy of Carl Lutz (the Swiss vice-consul), he recruited up to 3.000 Jews as workers for his offices, granting them protection, and designated several buildings as protected by the IRCC. He also managed to distribute about 15.000 "Schutzbriefe", protection documents issued by the IRCC that prevented the deportation and death of many Hungarian Jews.

After the war, as most of the saviours of Budapest, such as Carl Lutz and Giorgio Perlasca, he returned to his normal life, and kept the rememberings of his actions for himself. Twenty-four years after his death, in 1987, he was designated as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

External Links:

A short biography (in German) http://www.raoul-wallenberg.de/Retter/F._Born__IKRK_/f._born__ikrk_.html