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From: <janmallen@att.net>
To: IAJGS Leadership Forum <leadership@iajgs.org>
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Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 23:45:51 -0700
Subject: [IAJGS Leadership] (Portugal) Portugal Recognizes Consul who Saved thousands From Holocaust
In mid-June 1940 Hitler’s forces were days from completing victory over France. Paris fell on June 14 and a week later an armistice was signed. Portugal's diplomatic corps was under strict instruction from the right-wing Salazar dictatorship that visas should be issued to refugee Jews and stateless people only with express permission from Lisbon. For those thronging Bordeaux's streets hoping to cross into Spain and escape Nazi persecution there was no time to wait.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885-1954) was Portugal’s consul in Bordeaux during World War ll. He supplied Jews with visas that permitted them to escape from advancing German forces. His decision to save the Jewish lives cost him his diplomatic career under Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar. The foreign ministry in Lisbon began sending cablegrams to Bordeaux, ordering him to desist, amid reports from colleagues that he had "lost his senses".
Spanish authorities declared his visas invalid, but thousands had already made it across the Bidasoa river into Spain's Basque region.
Among those who escaped occupied France due to Salazar’s visas include surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker King Vidor, members of the Rothschild banking family and the majority of Belgium's future government-in-exile.
The rest of his life was spent in penury.
The Consul had a friendship with Rabbi Chaim Kruger who fled the Nazis from his home in Belgium. Consul Sousa Mendes offered the rabbi and his immediate family safe passage across the Spanish border. Kruger refused the offer, as he could not abandon the thousands of other Jewish refugees in Bordeaux. After days of contemplation, according to Menes’ son. “he strode out of his bedroom, flung open the door to the chancellery, and announced in a loud voice: 'From now on I'm giving everyone visas. There will be no more nationalities, races or religions'."
Estimates of the number of transit visas allowing refugees to pass from France into Spain and travel on to Portugal range between 10,000-30,000. On June 9 Parliament’s parliament decided for a monument with his name in the National Pantheon.
In 1966 Yad Vashem recognized him as Righteous Among the Nations.
In 1988 Portuguese parliament posthumously withdraws disciplinary charges against him
Now Portugal has recognized him.
To read more see: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53006790
Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee
