Under the communist People’s Republic of Poland, generations of Poles had no awareness of the wartime and post-war activities of the Polish Government in Exile. Meanwhile, the scope of the work of the government, its ministries and agencies was very extensive, especially in the case of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its consular and diplomatic missions. The latter was commemorated in the history of the Polish state, rescuing Polish citizens of Jewish nationality during the Second World War. Particularly meritorious was the Polish mission in Switzerland, which became a rescue centre for Jews in occupied Europe.

The aid activities were possible thanks to the head of the Bern post – Aleksander Ładoś. However, he was not the only one to get involved in the rescue operation. Apart from him, Konstanty Rokicki and Stefan Ryniewicz worked on the Polish side.  The former in his capacity as head of the consular section, the latter as counsellor and a deputy head of the Embassy. It is worth mentioning that Rokicki was at one time an officer of Polish intelligence in the Soviet Union.

On the Jewish side, the operation was coordinated by Chaim Eiss, an activist of the Orthodox Agudah Israel, and Abraham Silberschein, a Zionist activist and pre-war member of the Polish Sejm. The function of liaison between the two communities was performed by Julius Kuhl, who coordinated the aid work. Being Jewish, he worked as an attaché. There were, of course, many more people in the Embassy involved in the aid efforts. Their awareness of aid can be described as varied – from the most secretive activities to public aid in the form of cash collections.

The phenomenon of assistance at the Bern Embassy included, on the one hand, attempts to organise the departure of Jews from the occupied territories with so-called Latin American passports, and, on the other hand, information activities concerning the scale of the Holocaust of Jews in occupied Poland. According to research, approximately 10,000 passports were issued to Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti. Of this number, only 3262 Jews who received a passport are recognized, so research is still ongoing. As historians have pointed out, passports were personally filled out by Rokicki between 1941 and 1943, but his handwriting, so far, has been found on only about a thousand passport documents.

When the Polish government in May 1943 became aware of the forgery of documents and came into possession of knowledge of smuggling them into occupied Poland, it fully supported these life-saving activities.