Alexander Grossman

Alexander Grossman (born Grossmann, Sándor 3 March 1909 – 29 October 2003) was a Zionist activist and, during the German occupation, a Hungarian resistance hero. After emigrating/immigrating in 1949 he spent a period as a member of the Kibbutz Ma'abarot. In the early 1950s he emigrated/immigrated again, and became a Swiss journalist and author.

Life Provenance and early years Sándor Grossmann was born in Pusztaszomolló on the edge of the rapidly expanding industrial city of Miskolc in north-east Hungary. Leopold and Serena Schlesinger, his parents, were members of the city's German speaking community, and deeply religious adherents of the Orthodox faith. He quickly emerged in a leading role, joining the "Palestine Committee" first as a delegate and then, in October 1944, becoming its chairman.

Swiss writer Grossmann became editorial director of the Hungarian language Zionist magazine "Múlt és Jövo". He also served between 1951 and 1962 as editorial director of "Die Zukunft". Grossmann wrote several books, the most important of which was a resolute endorsement of his former mentor and now firm friend, Carl Lutz. The industrial-scale life-saving achievements of Carl Lutz were not immediately acknowledged by the Swiss authorities who in 1945, fearful of endangering the nation's much prized neutrality, merely reprimanded him for having exceeded his authority during his posting to Budapest. Carl Lutz would never achieve the widespread credit accorded to his Swedish colleague in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg (possibly because, unlike Wallenburg, he did not "disappear"), but by the 1980s the scale of Lutz's wartime achievement, already recognised and celebrated in Israel, was beginning to become more widely known both in Switzerland and further afield. Much of the credit for that must go to Alexander Grossmann and his book "Nur das Gewissen. Carl Lutz und seine Budapester Aktion", published in Switzerland in 1986 (in German), and translated into Hungarian in 2003.