Estate of Louis Haefliger

Collection

Holding institution:: Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

Holding institution (official language):: Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich

Scope and content:: The collection contains mainly official documents, correspondence about the liberation of Mauthausen and photographs.

Archival history:: A part of Haefliger’s estate is at the National Archives of Austria in Vienna. Further documents were handed over by the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung to the Archives of Contemporary History (AfZ).

Administrative/biographical history:: Louis Haefliger, a bank clerk and employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was born in Zurich on 30 January 1904 and died in Podbrezova (Slovakia) on 15 February 1993. Between 1919 and 1922, he completed his commercial apprenticeship. From 1924 to 1926, he lived in Paris and after that was employed at Bank Leu in Zurich. In April 1945, he acted as a voluntary ICRC delegate for a food transport to Mauthausen. From an SS officer he learned that the concentration camp with 60,000 prisoners was to be blown up and called in approaching American troops to rescue the concentration camp inmates. The camp was liberated on 6 May 1945. His unauthorised actions were condemned by the ICRC and he lost his employment at Bank Leu. In 1946, he emigrated to Vienna where he received public assistance. In 1955, Haefliger was granted Austrian citizenship. Subsequently, he was awarded numerous honours in Israel and Austria as the "Saviour of Mauthausen" and was proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 and 1988. In 1990, Haefliger was rehabilitated by the President of the ICRC, Cornelio Sommaruga.

Author of the description:: Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2019