Paul Fisch collection

The documents within the Paul Fisch collection were created by a Hungarian student group in Zurich, Switzerland. The report includes a summary of The Auschwitz Protocol, also known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report, which contains eyewitness accounts of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Also included is a report of the state of Hungarian Jews in 1944, and a document that describes the process for growing mushrooms in a basement, a process which Paul Fisch hoped would help feed the people held in the Budapest ghettos. The cover letter of the report includes the names of Protestant theologians Karl Barth (1886-1968), Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889-1966), and Willem Adolph Visser ‘t Hooft, 1900-1985. Paul Fisch, a Hungarian Jew, was born in Budapest, Hungry in 1919 to Zoltan Fisch (1891- ) and Irene Fisch (née Manheim, 1893- ). Prior to the war, the Fisch family were merchants. In order to avoid Nazi persecution, he moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1937 and attended the E. T. H. Zurich, an engineering university. The Fisch family ultimately lost their business and were forced to live in a ghetto. During the war, Fisch was an active member of the Hungarian Student Organization and worked closely with other Swiss and Jewish organizations in resistance activities. He tried to assist family members by arranging for travel visas through Swiss and Jewish organizations. Fisch’s father, Zoltan Fisch was a victim of the Holocaust and died on a death march from exhaustion and hunger near the town of Hidegseg, Hungry. His mother, Irene Fisch was hidden by the family of a former employee and survived the war. Paul’s brother, Robert Fisch was sent to a forced labor camp and was imprisoned at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria where he was liberated by Allied forces in May 1945. In 1949 Fisch relocated to Tel-Aviv, Israel with his mother. In 1953, he immigrated to New York where his mother and brother joined him. On December 14 1963, Paul Fisch married Margaret Allan in New York.