Recha Sternbuch

Who is Recha Sternbuch?

Recha Sternbuch, a Swiss woman of Polish heritage, an important Holocaust era Jewish rescuer.

Recha Sternbuch was the wife of Yitzchak Sternbuch, a businessman in Montreux, Switzerland. Although she was an Orthodox woman, had children and was pregnant she spent nights in the forest by the Austrian border to smuggle refugees while trying to evade Swiss border guards who had orders to turn back anyone over sixteen and under sixty. She worked with a Swiss police captain, Paul Grüninger, who in 1938 helped her smuggle over 800 refugees into Switzerland. Someone informed on them. Recha Sternbuch was arrested and jailed and lost her child. Mr. Gruninger lost his job and pension for his help to Jews and was later helped by the Sternbuchs.

After her release from prison Recha Sternbuch continued her activism largely alone and arranged rescue of over 2,000 Jews. At great risk she smuggled forged Swiss visas to many Jews across the German and Austrian borders. Later she obtained Chinese entry visas which enabled their holders to traverse Switzerland and Italy to ports from where they could be smuggled into Palestine.

She had access to the Polish diplomatic pouch and was able to send coded cables to her contacts in Va’ad Hatzalah in the USA and Turkey. One important use of this channel was the Sternbuchs alerting the New York Va’ad Hatzalah on September 2, 1942 to the horrors of the Holocaust. This cable was the first to alert American Jewry to the reality of the Holocaust and led to a meeting of 34 Jewish organizations. The Polish diplomatic pouch was also used to send secret messages, money to Jews in Nazi occupied Europe and as bribes for rescue. Recha Sternbuch also developed good connections with the Papal Nuncio to Switzerland, Monsignor Phillippe Bernadini, dean of the Swiss diplomatic community. He gave her access to Vatican couriers for sending money and messages to Jewish and resistance organizations in Nazi occupied Europe. Recha Sternbuch was among the first to obtain South American identity papers and distribute them to Jews whose life was endangered by the Nazis.