Rescuers: Mystery of Goodness is an international 10-part series featuring righteous diplomats. These few non-Jewish diplomats risked their lives, careers, and families to save countless Jewish people during the Holocaust. Often going against their government policies, many of the World War II diplomats, who were not Jewish, willingly sacrificed their careers, families, and livelihoods, working desperately to save people they didn’t know. Their actions raise the question of the mystery of goodness. What leads one person and not another to do the right thing regardless of the consequences they may face? What causes one human being to bypass praise or reward for his action and just do something good and right because his instinct, soul, and spirit knew he had to, at all costs and by any means necessary?

Based on EMMY AWARD-WINNING Producer and Director Michael King’s film THE RESCUERS. This project will tell the stories of 10 daring diplomats who went above and beyond the call of duty to do what was right, even when their governments told them, “No.” The series will feature survivor interviews, news from those saved, their families, expert historians, and even the diplomats’ families discussing the events and their impact on the respective parties. The production has been filmed in the United States, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Sweden, Ecuador, Brazil, Greece, Rhodes, and Canada.  The series is currently in post-production and is expected to be completed in June 2026.

Rescuers: Mystery of Goodness is being developed, researched, and produced by Michael W. King Productions, in association with the USC Shoah Foundation and the Andrew J. and Joyce D. Mandell Family Foundation. Irena Steinfeldt, former Director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department from 2007 to 2018, is the project’s Historical Advisor and Narrator.

This project will contribute to the Andrew J. and Joyce D. Mandell Rescuers Collection at the USC Shoah Foundation, supporting Holocaust education, media arts, and cultural history, as well as other museums and television networks worldwide.

The production features the following diplomats:

1. Dr. Manuel Antonio Muñoz Borrero, Consul at the Ecuadorian Consulate in Stockholm, Sweden
2. Hiram Bingham, IV, Vice Consul in the visa section at the American Consulate in Marseilles
3. Aracy de Carvalho-Guimaraes Rosa, Chief of the Passport Office of the Brazilian Consulate in Hamburg, Germany
4. Georg Duckwitz, Maritime Attaché at the German Embassy in Copenhagen
5. Varian Fry, representative of the American Emergency Rescue Committee
6. Carl and Gertrud Lutz, Vice-Consul and Chief of Foreign Interests at the Swiss Legation in Budapest
7. Her Serene Highness Princess Alice of Battenberg
8. Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Consul-General at the Portuguese Consulate in Bordeaux
9. Chiune Sugihara, Consul at the Japanese Consulate in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania
10. Selahattin Ülkümen, Consul-General at Turkish Consulate in Rhodes (Italy)
11. Raoul Wallenberg, Special Attaché at the Swedish Legation in Budapest
12. Jan Zwartendijk, Acting Consul at the Dutch Consulate in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania