Friedrich Muller was a 52-year-old furniture dealer and Freemason from Freiburg, a German city on the Swiss border. When the Nazi regime began rounding up Jewish citizens in 1938, Muller did something that no other person in Freiburg ever attempted: he loaded Jewish families into his furniture trucks, concealed them behind false walls, and drove them across the border into Switzerland.
Over the next seven years, Muller made 47 trips across the border, hiding between four and eight Jewish families in each truck. He used his knowledge of the border crossings, the patrol schedules, and the terrain to find routes that the Gestapo did not monitor. He paid border guards with furniture and bribes, and he always traveled at night.
The Jewish families who were smuggled into Switzerland were then given shelter by the Swiss Masonic lodge at Basel, which operated a relief fund for refugees. The Basel lodge, which had been monitoring the situation in Germany, had anticipated that refugees would need assistance and had stockpiled food, clothing, and temporary housing.
Muller was never caught. He made his final trip in March 1945, two months before the end of the war, smuggling three Jewish families across the border to safety. After the war, he returned to Freiburg, rebuilt his furniture business, and never spoke of what he had done.
In 1961, a Swiss historian discovered the Basel lodge refugee registry, which contained the names of 200 refugees who had been smuggled into Switzerland by a German furniture dealer. The registry listed each family, the date they were rescued, and the name of the driver. The driver was identified only as Bruder Friedrich, Brother Friedrich.
Muller died in 1974. His name appears in the registry of the Basel lodge as an honorary member, the only German ever to receive that distinction.