There are so many stories that have either never been told, or have just never been told well. The story of protective papers is one of these. We’ve been over it–the idea that you could get nationality papers from an Allied country that would theoretically provide you with treatment under the Geneva convention rather than “unassimilated” prisoners who were not entitled to any rights or privileges.
Really, the only type of papers you could still get in 1944 were Palestine certificates (which you got from a rep of the Jewish Agency under the White Paper quota), Swedish/Swiss papers (issued by reps in Budapest), and El Salvador papers. The Salvadoran papers were mainly created and handed out by George Mandel-Mantello, an Eastern European Jewish man who befriended the Salvadoran consul general and was named First Secretary to the legation.
Roswell McClelland is dubious of the Mantello certificates, to say the least. Muller is one of Mantello’s collaborators.
