Eduard Benedek Brunschweiler

Benedikt Brunschweiler. Between October 1944 and April 1945, sheltered and protected 3,000 refugees and Jewish children in Pannonhalma abbey, which was placed under the protection of the ICRC.

The distinction of "Righteous Among the Nations" was posthumously granted by the memorial Yad Vashem to Benedikt Brunschweiler, ICRC delegate in Hungary between 1944 and 1945.

The awarding ceremony took place on the 31st of March 2009 in Pannonhalma abbey, in the presence of the Israeli ambassador in Hungary, who gave the distinction to the abbot Asztrik Vàrszegi. Members of the Jewish community and people who have been protected by Benedikt Brunschweiler when they were children also attended the ceremony.

---------------------------------------------------------

Eduard Benedek Brunschweiler (1910–1987) was a Swiss national who was appointed by the International Committee of the Red Cross to manage the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma on their behalf, during the final months of the German occupation, towards the end of the Second World War. Brunschweiler managed to convince the German Reich plenipotentiary for Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer, to use the abbey as a shelter of children refugees. Towards the liberation of the area by the Red Army, the refugee population grew to about 3000 people.