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Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches, GCC, OL (July 19, 1885 – April 3, 1954; ) was a Portuguese consul. As Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux, France, he defied the orders of Portugal's Salazar dictatorship, issuing visas in 1940 to thousands of refugees fleeing from invading German military forces in the early period of World War II. He was punished by his government for his actions but was eventually vindicated after his death. He was honored posthumously by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, the first diplomat to be so honored. Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer characterized Sousa Mendes' deed as "perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust." Portuguese President Mario Soares declared Sousa Mendes to be "Portugal's greatest hero of the twentieth century."

Early life
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was born in Cabanas de Viriato, in Carregal do Sal, in the district of Viseu, Centro Region of Portugal, on July 19, 1885, shortly after midnight. His twin brother, born a few minutes earlier, had a July 18 birthday. Their ancestry included a notable aristocratic line: their mother, Maria Angelina Ribeiro de Abranches de Abreu Castelo-Branco, was a maternal illegitimate granddaughter of the 2nd Viscount of Midões, a lower rural aristocracy title. Their father, José de Sousa Mendes, was a judge on the Coimbra Court of Appeals. César was Foreign Minister in 1932, in the early days of António de Oliveira Salazar's regime. Their younger brother, Jose Paulo, became a naval officer. Sousa Mendes and his twin studied law at the University of Coimbra, and each obtained his degree in 1908. In that same year, Sousa Mendes married his childhood sweetheart, Maria Angelina Coelho de Sousa (born August 20, 1888). They eventually had fourteen children, born in the various countries in which he served. Shortly after his marriage, Sousa Mendes began the diplomatic career that would take him and his family around the world. Early in his career, he served in Zanzibar, Brazil, Spain, the United States, and Belgium. After almost ten years in Belgium, where he was Dean of the Consular Corps, Sousa Mendes was assigned in 1938 to be Consul-General of Bordeaux, France, with jurisdiction over all of southwest France.

World War II and Circular 14
Beginning in 1932, Portugal was under the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. In 1933 Salazar created his secret police, the Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado ("State Defense and Surveillance Police") or PVDE. According to historian Avraham Milgram, by 1938 Salazar "knew the Nazis' approach to the 'Jewish question'.... In keeping with his fear of aliens, who, according to his worldview, might undermine his regime, he severely limited their entry.  Toward this end, he expanded the apparatus of the PVDE [whose] International Department, in particular, was given greater control over matters relating to border patrol and entry of aliens.  Presumably, most aliens wishing to enter Portugal at that time were Jews."

On November 9, 1938, the Nazi government of Germany began open war against its Jewish citizens in the pogrom known as Kristallnacht, when 1000 synagogues were burned, 30,000 Jews were arrested, and at least 91 Jews were murdered. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, home at that time of the largest Jewish community in the world, and World War II began.

On November 11, 1939, the Portuguese government issued Circular 14 that spelled out the types of war refugees whom the PVDE considered to be "inconvenient or dangerous." The document placed severe restrictions on the issuing of Portuguese transit visas, particularly in the cases of "foreigners of undefined, contested or disputed nationality, stateless persons, bearers of Nansen passports and Russians"; and "those bearing in their passport a declaration or sign that they may not freely return to the country from which they came"; and "Jews expelled from the countries of their nationality or from which they came"; and "those alleging that they will be embarking from a Portuguese port but have no consular visa in their passports for their country of destination, or air or sea tickets, or an embarkation guarantee from the respective companies." With Europe at war, this meant that refugees from Nazism would have a difficult time escaping Europe through neutral Portugal, and this was precisely the regulation's intent.

Sousa Mendes' disobedience of the orders of the Salazar dictatorship
According to Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, past Director of the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, "In Portugal of those days, it was unthinkable for a diplomatic official, especially in a sensitive post, to disobey clear-cut instructions and get away with it." Nevertheless, Sousa Mendes began disobeying Circular 14 almost immediately, on the grounds that it was an inhumane and racist directive.

The process that ended with Sousa Mendes’ discharge from his consular career began with two visas: the first issued on November 28, 1939 to Professor Arnold Wiznitzer, an Austrian historian who had been stripped of his nationality by the Nuremberg Laws, and the second on March 1, 1940 to the Spanish Republican Eduardo Neira Laporte, an anti-Franco activist living in France. Sousa Mendes was reprimanded and warned in writing that "any new transgression or violation on this issue will be considered disobedience and will entail a disciplinary procedure where it will not be possible to overlook that you have repeatedly committed acts which have entailed warnings and reprimands."

When Sousa Mendes issued these visas and thousands of others, it was a deliberate act of disobedience to the decree of an authoritarian dictatorship. "Here was a unique act by a man who believed his religion imposed certain obligations," said Paldiel. "He said, 'I'm saving innocent lives,' as simply as he might have said, 'Come, walk with me in my garden.'"

On May 10, 1940, Germany launched the blitzkrieg offensive against France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and millions of refugees took to the roads. On May 15, Sousa Mendes issued transit visas to Maria Tavares, a Luxembourg citizen of Portuguese origin, and to her husband Paul Miny, also a Luxembourger. Two weeks later, the couple returned to the Bordeaux Consulate asking Sousa Mendes to issue them false papers. Sousa Mendes agreed to their request, and on May 30, 1940, he issued a Portuguese passport listing Paul Miny as Maria's brother, therefore as having Portuguese citizenship. Sousa Mendes later provided the following explanation: “This couple asked me for a Portuguese passport, where they would figure as brother and sister, for fear that the husband, who was still of military age, would be detained on passing the French border, and incorporated in the Luxembourg army then being organized in France." Under the terms imposed by the German occupation of Luxembourg in World War II, that army was under Nazi control.

There were other cases from May 1940 where Sousa Mendes disobeyed Circular 14 issued by the Salazar dictatorship. Examples include issuing visas to the Ertag, Flaksbaum and Landesman families, all granted on May 29, 1940 despite having been rejected in a telegram from the Portuguese dictator Salazar to Sousa Mendes. Another example is the writer Gisèle Quittner, rejected by Salazar, but rescued by Sousa Mendes, to whom she expressed her gratitude: "You are Portugal's best propaganda and an honor to your country.  All those who know you praise your courage...."

Encounter with Rabbi Chaim Kruger


As the German army approached Paris, the largest single movement of refugees in Europe since the Dark Ages began. An estimated six to ten million people took to the roads and railways to escape the German invasion. Bordeaux and other southern French cities were overrun by desperate refugees.

One of these was a Chassidic Rabbi, Chaim Kruger, originally from Poland but more recently from Brussels, escaping with his wife and five children. Kruger and Sousa Mendes met by chance in Bordeaux, and quickly became friends. Sousa Mendes offered a visa to the Kruger family in defiance of Circular 14. In response, Kruger took a moral stand and refused to accept the visa unless all of his "brothers and sisters" (the mass of Jewish refugees stranded on the streets of Bordeaux) received visas too. Kruger's response plunged Sousa Mendes into "a moral crisis of incalculable proportions." He secluded himself and prayed, pondering whether or not he should issue visas to everyone he could, saving their lives at the expense of his own career. "Here the situation is horrible and I am in bed because of a strong nervous breakdown," he wrote to his son-in-law on June 13, 1940.

Act of conscience
Soon Sousa Mendes emerged from his seclusion, impelled by "a divine power," and with his decision made. According to his son Pedro Nuno:
 * My father got up, apparently recovering his serenity. He was full of punch.  He washed, shaved and got dressed.  Then 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."  Then our father told us that he had heard a voice, that of his conscience or of God, which dictated to him what course of action he should take, and that everything was clear in his mind.

His daughter Isabel and her husband Jules strongly opposed his decision, and tried to dissuade him from what they considered to be a major mistake. But Sousa Mendes did not listen to them and instead began to work intensively to grant the visas. "I would rather stand with God and against man than with man and against God," he reportedly explained. He set up an assembly line process, aided by his wife, sons Pedro Nuno and José Antonio, his secretary José Seabra, Rabbi Kruger and a few other refugees.

Bordeaux was bombed by the Wehrmacht on the night of June 19-20, 1940. In the morning, the demand for Portuguese visas intensified, not only in Bordeaux but also in nearby Bayonne, near the Spanish border. Sousa Mendes rushed to the Portuguese consulate in Bayonne, which was under his jurisdiction, to relieve the Vice-Consul Faria Machado, who was refusing to grant visas to the crush of refugees.

In issuing visas to the thousands at the Bayonne consulate, Sousa Mendes was aided by the Bayonne consular secretary, Manuel de Vieira Braga. Faria Machado, a Salazar loyalist in charge of the Bayonne consulate, reported this behavior to Portugal's ambassador to Spain, Pedro Teotónio Pereira, who promptly set out for the French/Spanish border to put a stop to this activity. After observing Sousa Mendes' action, Teotónio Pereira sent a telegram to the Lisbon authorities in which he described Sousa Mendes as "giving shelter to the scum of the democratic regimes and defeated elements fleeing before the German victory." Acting on Salazar's authority, he declared Sousa Mendes to be mentally incompetent and invalidated all further visas. Sousa Mendes continued on to Hendaye to assist there, thus narrowly missing two cablegrams from Lisbon sent on June 22 to Bordeaux ordering him to stop even as France's armistice with Germany became official. Furthermore, Sousa Mendes ordered the honorary Portuguese vice-consul in Toulouse, Emile Gissot, to issue transit visas to all who applied.

Meanwhile, Teotónio Pereira ordered the French/Spanish border sealed. The New York Times reported that some 10,000 persons attempting to cross over into Spain were excluded because authorities no longer granted recognition to their visas: "Portugal announced that Portuguese visas granted at Bordeaux were invalid, and Spain was permitting bearers of these documents to enter only in exceptional cases."

On June 24, Salazar recalled Sousa Mendes to Portugal, an order he received upon returning to Bordeaux on June 26 but complied with slowly, arriving in Portugal on July 8. Along the way, he continued issuing Portuguese visas to refugees now trapped in occupied France, and even led a large group to a remote border post that had not received Lisbon's order. His son John-Paul Abranches told the story:


 * "As his diplomatic car reached the French border town of Hendaye, my father encountered a large group of stranded refugees for whom he had previously issued visas. Those people had been turned away because the Portuguese government had phoned the guards, commanding 'Do not honor Mendes's signature on visas.' ... Ordering his driver to slow down, Father waved the group to follow him to a border checkpoint that had no telephones. In the official black limousine with its diplomatic license tags, Father led those refugees across the border toward freedom."

Trial and punishment
Upon returning to Portugal in early July 1940, Sousa Mendes was subjected to a disciplinary proceeding that has been described as "a severe crackdown" and "a merciless disciplinary process." The charges against him included: "the violation of Circular 14; the order to the consul in Bayonne to issue visas to all those who asked for them 'with the claim that it was necessary to save all these people'; the order given to the consul in Bayonne to distribute visas free of charge; the permission given by telephone to the consul in Toulouse that he could issue visas; acting in a way that was dishonorable for Portugal vis-à-vis the Spanish and German authorities."

Sousa Mendes submitted his response to the charges on August 12, 1940, in which he clarified his motivation:


 * "It was indeed my aim to save all those people whose suffering was indescribable: some had lost their spouses, others had no news of missing children, others had seen their loved ones succumb to the German bombings which occurred every day and did not spare the terrified refugees....  There was another aspect that should not be overlooked:  the fate of many people if they fell into the hands of the enemy.... eminent people of many countries with whom we have always been on excellent terms: statesmen, ambassadors and ministers, generals and other high officers, professors, men of letters, ... officers from armies of countries that had been occupied, Austrians, Czechs and Poles, who would be shot as rebels; there were also many Belgians, Dutch, French, Luxembourgers and even English...  Many were Jews who were already persecuted and sought to escape the horror of further persecution. Finally an endless number of women attempting to avoid being at the mercy of Teutonic sensuality.  I could not differentiate between nationalities as I was obeying the dictates of humanity that distinguish between neither race nor nationality; as for the charge of dishonorable conduct, when I left Bayonne I was applauded by hundreds of people, and through me it was Portugal that was being honored...."

On October 19, 1940, the verdict was handed down: "disobeying higher orders during service." The disciplinary board recommended a demotion. On October 30, 1940, Salazar rejected this recommendation and imposed his own sentence: "I sentence Consul First Class, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, to a penalty of one year of inactivity with the right to one half of his rank's pay, being obliged subsequently to be retired." He further ordered that all files in the case be sealed.

There was also an unofficial punishment: the blacklisting and social banishment of Aristides de Sousa Mendes and his family. "My grandfather ... knew there would be some retribution, but to lose everything and have the family disgraced, he never thought it would go that far," said the hero's grandson, also named Aristides. The family took meals at the soup kitchen of the Jewish community of Lisbon. When told that the soup kitchen was intended for refugees, Sousa Mendes replied, "But we too are refugees."

After the war, with the victory of the Allied forces over the Axis led by Nazi Germany, Salazar took credit for Portugal having received the refugees, and the Portuguese history books were written accordingly. Manuela Franco, Director of the Portuguese Foreign Ministry archives, stated in 2000 that "the image of 'Portugal, a safe haven' was born then in Bordeaux, and it lasts to this day."

Last years
Throughout the war years and beyond, Sousa Mendes was optimistic that his punishment would be reversed and his deed would be recognized. In a 1945 letter to the Portuguese Parliament, he explained that he had disobeyed orders because he had considered them to be unconstitutional as the Portuguese Constitution forbade discrimination on the basis of religion. In 1946, a Portuguese journalist tried to raise awareness for Sousa Mendes outside of Portugal by publishing the facts under a pseudonym in a US newspaper. Sousa Mendes' wife Angelina died in 1948. The following year he married his former mistress Andrée Cibial, with whom he had a daughter, Marie-Rose.

In his final years, Sousa Mendes was abandoned by most of his colleagues and friends and at times was blamed by some of his close relatives. His children moved to other countries in search of opportunities they were now denied in Portugal, although by all accounts they never blamed their father or regretted his decision. He asked his children to help clear the family name and make the story known. In 1951, one of his sons, Sebastião, published a novella about the Bordeaux events, Flight Through Hell.  César de Sousa Mendes, twin brother of Aristides, did everything he could to try to get Salazar to reverse his punishment, but to no avail. Sousa Mendes never regretted his action. "I could not have acted otherwise, and I therefore accept all that has befallen me with love," he reportedly said. To his lawyer he wrote:


 * In truth, I disobeyed, but my disobedience does not dishonor me. I did not respect orders that to me represented the persecution of true castaways who sought with all their strength to be saved from Hitler's wrath.  Above the order, for me, there was God's law, and that's the one I have always sought to adhere to without hesitation.  The true value of the Christian religion is to love one's neighbor.

Sousa Mendes died in poverty on April 3, 1954, owing money to his lenders and still in disgrace with his government.

Number of visa recipients
It is impossible to determine the precise number of refugees who were granted visas by Sousa Mendes, although all sources agree that the number was in the thousands, and most say that it was in the tens of thousands. One generally accepted figure is that he issued visas to approximately 30,000 people, of whom around 10,000 were Jews. This figure includes not only those refugees who successfully transited through Portugal, but also those trapped by the Portuguese government's order to seal the French/Spanish border on June 24, 1940.

Posthumous rehabilitation and recognition
From 1954 on, Sousa Mendes' children worked tirelessly to clear his name and make the truth known. Finally, in 1966, thanks in large part to the efforts of daughter Joana, the Israeli Holocaust authority Yad Vashem designated Aristides de Sousa Mendes as Righteous Among the Nations. But with Salazar still in power, "the diplomat and his efforts remained unknown even in his own country for years."

Following the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal when the Estado Novo dictatorship was overthrown and democracy was established, Dr. Nuno A. A. de Bessa Lopes, a Portuguese government official, took the initiative of reopening the Sousa Mendes case and making recommendations. His conclusion, based on his viewing of previously sealed government files, was that the Salazar government had knowingly sacrificed Sousa Mendes for its own political purposes, and that the verdict and punishment were illegal and should be overturned. "Aristides de Sousa Mendes was condemned for having refused to be an accomplice to Nazi war crimes," the report stated. The report was suppressed by the Portuguese government for over a decade. "The failure to act on the Lopes report reflects the fact that there was never a serious purge of Fascist supporters from government ministries," explained journalist Reese Erlich.

In 1986, inspired by the election of Mário Soares, a civilian president in Portugal, Sousa Mendes' youngest son John Paul began to circulate a petition to the Portuguese president within his adopted country, the United States. "I want people in Portugal to know who he was, what he did, and why he did it," explained John Paul. He and his wife Joan worked with Robert Jacobvitz, an executive at the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay in Oakland, California, and lawyer Anne Treseder to create the "International Committee to Commemorate Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes." They were able to gain the support of two members of the California delegation of the United States House of Representatives, Tony Coelho and Henry Waxman, who introduced a resolution in Congress to recognize his humanitarian actions. That same year, Sousa Mendes was honored at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where John Paul and his brother Sebastião gave impassioned speeches and Waxman spoke as well.

In 1987, the Portuguese Republic began to rehabilitate Sousa Mendes' memory and granted him a posthumous Order of Liberty medal, one of that country's highest honors, although the consul's diplomatic honors still were not restored. On March 18, 1988 the Portuguese parliament officially dismissed all charges, restoring him to the diplomatic corps by unanimous vote and honoring him with a standing ovation. In 1988 Sousa Mendes was posthumously reinstated in the diplomatic corps, and he was promoted to the rank of Ministro Plenipotenciário de 2ª classe. He also was issued the Cross of Merit for his actions in Bordeaux. In December of that year, the U.S. Ambassador to Portugal, Edward Rowell, presented copies of the congressional resolution from the previous year to Pedro Nuno de Sousa Mendes, one of the sons who had helped his father in the assembly line at Bordeaux, and to Portuguese President Mário Soares at the Palácio de Belém. In 1994 former President Mario Soares dedicated a bust of Sousa Mendes in Bordeaux, along with a commemorative plaque at 14 quai Louis‑XVIII, the address at which the consulate at Bordeaux had been housed. In 1995, Portugal held a week-long National Homage to Sousa Mendes, culminating with an event in a 2000-seat Lisbon theater that was filled to capacity. On that occasion, a commemorative stamp was issued in Portugal.

Casa do Passal, the mansion that Sousa Mendes had to abandon and sell in his final years, was left for decades to decay into a "ghost of a building," and at one time was to be razed and replaced by a hotel. However, with reparations funds given by the Portuguese government to Sousa Mendes' heirs in 2000, the family decided to create the Fundação Aristides de Sousa Mendes. With assistance from government officials, the foundation purchased the family home in order to develop a museum in his honor.

In April 2004, to mark the 50th anniversary of Sousa Mendes' death, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee organized more than 80 commemorations around the world. Religious, cultural and educational activities took place in 30 countries on five continents, spearheaded by João Crisóstomo.

On May 11, 2005, a commemoration in memory of Aristides de Sousa Mendes was held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

On January 14, 2007, Sousa Mendes was voted into the top ten of the poll show Os Grandes Portugueses (the greatest Portuguese). On March 25, 2007, when the final rankings were announced, it was revealed that Sousa Mendes came in third place overall, behind communist leader Álvaro Cunhal (runner-up) and the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (winner).

In February 2008, Portuguese parliamentary speaker Jaime Gama led a session which launched a virtual museum, on the Internet; it offers access to photographs and other documents chronicling Sousa Mendes' life.

On September 24, 2010, the Sousa Mendes Foundation was formed in the United States with the purpose of raising money for the conversion of the Sousa Mendes home into a museum and site of conscience, and in order to spread his story throughout North America.

On March 3, 2011, the Casa do Passal was designated a National Monument of Portugal.

In January 2013, the United Nations headquarters in New York honored Sousa Mendes and featured Sousa Mendes visa recipient Leon Moed as a keynote speaker during its International Days of Commemoration of Victims and Martyrs of the Holocaust.

On June 20, 2013, a big rally was held in front of the Sousa Mendes home, Casa do Passal, to make a plea for its restoration. An American architect, Eric Moed, spearheaded the event, attended by visa recipient families from all over the world. At this event, a representative of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture announced that they were allocating $400,000 in European Union funds for the restoration effort.

On October 20, 2013, a playground in Toronto, Canada was renamed in honor of Sousa Mendes. That same month, the Portuguese airline Windavia named an airplane after him. In December 2013, a letter that Sousa Mendes had penned to Pope Pius XII in 1946 begging for help from the Catholic Church was delivered to Pope Francis.

Notable people issued visas by Sousa Mendes
Some of the notable recipients include:
 * Otto von Habsburg, nemesis of Hitler and heir to the Austrian throne
 * Maurice de Rothschild, art collector, vintner, financier, Senator of France
 * Julian Tuwim, Polish poet
 * Antoni Słonimski, Polish poet
 * Robert Montgomery
 * King Vidor, film director
 * Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
 * Leading members of the Belgian cabinet
 * Sylvain Bromberger, professor emeritus of philosophy, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT
 * Salvador Dalí, whose Russian wife Gala was directly threatened by Circular 14
 * Paul Rosenberg, art dealer
 * H. A. Rey and Margret Rey, authors of Curious George
 * Dr. Lissy Feingold Jarvik, professor emeritus of psychiatry, UCLA Medical School