For decades, the family connection was apparently unknown even to the descendants of one of New Glarus’ best-known Swiss entrepreneurs. Arnold Wieser, founder of the Upright Swiss Miss Embroidery Factory and Swiss Miss Textile Mart, was a first cousin of Carl Lutz, the Swiss diplomat credited with helping save tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

The family connection was uncovered during genealogical research, aided by Switzerland’s exceptionally detailed historical records. Both men came from Walzenhausen, a village in northeastern Switzerland, and were born just a year apart — Lutz in 1895 and Wieser in 1896. Wieser eventually established his business in New Glarus, traveling throughout the Midwest selling Swiss lace and embroidery. His cousin took a very different path, one that would eventually place him at the center of an extraordinary effort to save thousands of Jews from Nazi persecution.

Lutz is less familiar to American audiences than Oskar Schindler, whose efforts to save Jewish workers became the subject of the film Schindler’s List. But while Schindler used an industrial enterprise to shelter people from the Nazis, Lutz used consular papers, protected buildings and the authority of a neutral country. The Carl Lutz Society estimates that the rescue operation he helped lead saved about 62,000 people.

Whether the cousins ever met again after leaving Switzerland is unknown. No correspondence or record of a visit between them has been identified in the family account. It is possible Wieser never learned the full extent of Lutz’s wartime actions. Even Lutz’s own country took decades to acknowledge them fully.