Check for web archive captures
Honoring a Protector of Refugees, Aristides de Sousa
Mendes
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2017-03-20 20:49:43
La
As the new administration issues a second Executive Order to restrict refugee
resettlement in the United States, it's important to remember those heroes of the past who risked much to find homes for
people persecuted or caught in the middle of wars. One of the greats who we remember today was the Portuguese consul in
Bordeaux, France during the 1940 Nazi invasion and occupation, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who over a period of a
week signed more that 30,000 visas allowing Jews and others to escape through the Iberian Peninsula to safety throughout
the world. As refugees streamed into the consulate that June, having heard that one brave diplomat offered them a route to
escape the terror, Sousa Mendes signed without pausing to eat or sleep. His boss, the fascist dictator Antonio de Oliveira
Salazar sympathized with the Nazis (although Portugal remained officially neutral during the war), prohibited Jewish
refugees from staying more than 10 days in Portugal, and forced those who used the country as a way station to pay dearly
for the privilege. Salazar issued the infamous Circular 14 that ordered Sousa Mendes and other Portuguese diplomats not to
sign the visas for Jews, Russian refugees in France (many of whom had fled Stalin's Communist regime), other stateless
persons, and leftists. Sousa Mendes knew he had limited time to do so before he’d be fired and recalled to Lisbon to face the
consequences of his disobedience, and even after his recall, he signed visas to fleeing refugees all the way to France’s border
with Spain. In responding to Salazar’s orders, Sousa Mendes said, “I would rather stand with God against Man, than with
| DISOBEDIENCE
€.
Asi ___ LE RH
Man against God.” “ess The scion of a wealthy, conservative family and a devout Catholic who
had initially supported Salazar’s rise to power, Sousa Mendes had served in a variety of consular posts before his time in
Bordeaux. One of those posts was in San Francisco, where he helped to found a Portuguese Studies program at the
University of California, Berkeley, but he also reportedly got into trouble with U.S. authorities over a Portuguese-American
charity. Because of his conservative views, few expected him to defy Salazar — until he did. One of the Salazar’s tools for
maintaining absolute power was to punish entire families for the opposition of a single member. Sousa Mendes had a wife
and fourteen children, and another child with a mistress, and after his recall to Portugal and his firing, none of them was able
to find a steady job. The children were prohibited from attending university, and nearly all of them emigrated. Unable to
work, Sousa Mendes lost to repossession the home and lands that had been in his family for generations. He died in 1954 at
the age of 68. From their far-flung new homes, his children and grandchildren tried to clear his name.
nai i'cith international, the Henry Jones Lodge aed APIS Productions
betta you 2 2 rpecial crrecnisg of
THE CONSUL OF BORDEAUX
March 1 at} pum. at
= In 1966, Yad Vashem honored Sousa Mendes as one of the Righteous Among the
Nations for his rescue of more than 10,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied France. Historian Yehuda Bauer called his
work, “the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.” After the 1974 Carnation Revolution in
Portugal, President Mario Soares formally apologized to Sousa Mendes’s family and posthumously promoted him to the
rank of Ambassador. When I first lived in Portugal in 2012, two films about his life and work in Bordeaux were released —
the French-made biopic Disobedience, and the Portuguese-made biopic The Consul of Bordeaux. The following year, one of
the largest Metro stations in Lisbon featured children’s drawings and essays about human rights, with Sousa Mendes’s work
as one of the prime examples. As the countries of Europe and North America debate to admit or restrict refugees from Syria
and other conflict zones, the work and words of Aristides de Sousa Mendes have become more relevant than ever. How
many of us would put our careers and even our lives on the line for people in need? Sousa Mendes believed that God and
history would judge our actions, and while he did not lead a perfectly virtuous life, when it truly mattered, he chose the side
of good.
