Bereczky Albert

Bereczky, Albert Albert Bereczky was the minister of a Calvinist church on Pozsonyi Street in Budapest. After the German invasion and the increased persecution of Jews in Hungary, Bereczky urged the leaders of the Protestant Church to intervene publicly against the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. He personally delivered a copy of the Auschwitz Report – the first report of the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz, smuggled into Slovakia by two inmates who had escaped the camp – to the head of the Protestant Church in Hungary. In the spring and summer of 1944, Bereczky was in contact with the head of the Zionist movement, the engineer Ottó Komoly, as well as with other Zionist underground activists. His church served as a hiding place for Jews, as well as for members of the anti-Nazi underground. Bereczky distributed certificates of baptism and other documents to Jewish fugitives, hoping to save them from the deportations. Among the baptism certificates distributed by Bereczky were those given to a young Jewish woman by the name of Mrs. Lichtman, who had escaped from the Vác ghetto to Budapest, together with her baby daughter and her mother. Bereczky gave Mrs. Lichtman documents stating that all three of them were Christian, and thanks to this, they survived the war. During the rule of the Arrow Cross party, Bereczky gave hundreds of empty baptism certificates to György Berend, an activist in the Zionist underground and the International Red Cross, in order to save as many Jews as possible. After the war Bereczky served for a short time as Secretary of State for the Hungarian Ministry of Religion and Culture. Later, he became a bishop. On January 23, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Albert Bereczky as Righteous Among the Nations.