Abdol-Hossein Sardari

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Abdol-Hossein Sardari (* 1895 in Tehran , † 1981 in Nottingham ; Persian عبدالحسین سرداری) was an Iranian diplomat who saved the lives of many Jews during the Holocaust ; he is often referred to as the " Schindler of Iran". Sardari was the uncle of Fereydoun Hoveyda .

Life

Abdol-Hossein Sardari studied law in Switzerland and began a career in the diplomatic service of Iran. His most important station was to be the Iranian embassy in Paris .

Sardari headed the consular service of the Iranian embassy in Paris. When the German army occupied France in 1940, the Iranian embassy was relocated to Vichy to the new seat of the French government. Sardari stayed in Paris and headed the newly established French consulate. There was a relatively large community of Iranian Jews in Paris. According to the National Socialist view that Germans as well as Iranians were Aryans , the Third Reich had agreed with Iran to protect all Iranian citizens from German acts of aggression. Because of this, Sardari was able to protect the Iranian Jews. He argued against the Germans that the Jews were already living in 538 BC. Were freed from Babylonian captivity by Cyrus II and left Iran a long time ago. Today's Iranian Jews are Iranians who professed the Mosaic doctrine, but are basically Aryans. Sardari coined the term “Djuguten” for this group as opposed to the “Jahuden”. For the German occupation administration, all Iranian Jews were Iranian citizens and thus safe from deportation. First, Adolf Eichmann intervened and described the "Djuguten" as an invention of Sardari. Sardari turned to Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg , whom he knew from his time as envoy in Tehran . Von Schulenburg confirmed that the Djuguts are an Islamic sect with Mosaic traditions. He recommended not pursuing the matter further in order to avoid diplomatic problems with Iran.

After the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in August 1941, the Iranian government was forced to close its embassies in Axis countries and in occupied France. Sardari received instructions to return to Iran. Sardari submitted an application to leave Iran to the German military administration, but it was rejected. Although Sardari had lost his diplomatic status, he decided to continue his consular work under the protection of the Swiss embassy, ​​which from now on represented the diplomatic interests of Iran. Sardari continued to issue the passports that remained in the vault of the former Iranian embassy. No religious affiliation had to be entered in these passports, so that the passport holders were considered Iranians and thus Aryans. Since a passport could also be issued for entire families, it is now assumed that Sardari saved the lives of 2,000 to 3,000 Jews with it.

After the end of World War II , Sardari became chargé d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Belgium. In 1952, when Mohammad Mossadegh had meanwhile become Prime Minister, Sardari was recalled to Iran by Foreign Minister Fatemi, arrested and brought to justice because he had illegally issued Iranian passports during the German occupation in France. After the fall of Mossadegh , Sardari was released from prison, fully rehabilitated and returned to the diplomatic service. His last assignment abroad took him to Baghdad, to the Iranian embassy in Iraq. When the monarchy in Iraq was overthrown on July 14, 1958, Sardari left Baghdad and turned his back on the diplomatic service. Abdullah Entezam-Saltaneh , a friend of Sardari's Parisian days, had become a director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIO). He brought Sardari into the NIOC. Sardari was sent to London in late 1958 as a NIOC representative . He stayed there until his retirement.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Sardari was threatened with arrest, as was the case with Prime Minister Mossadegh. The new Iranian rulers had confiscated all his property in Tehran and canceled his pension. For a while he lived impoverished in a room in Croydon, London . He later probably moved to Nottingham, where he allegedly died in 1981. Fariborz Mokhtari describes Sardari as the typical Iranian who makes no distinction between a person's religious affiliation: Here you have a Muslim Iranian who goes out of his way, risks his life, certainly risks his career and property and everything else, to save fellow Iranians. ... There is no distinction 'I am Muslim, he is Jew' or whatever.

Sardari's humanitarian commitment was first honored in 2004 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

literature

  • Fariborz Mokhtari: In the Lion's Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and His Homeland in the Second World War. History Publishing Group 2011, ISBN 978-0752463704
  • Ahmad Mahrad: The Fate of Jewish Iranians in the European Territories Conquered by the National Socialist German Reich Unpublished research work at the Technical University of Hanover, 1975/76, in the holdings of the Tübingen University Library.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The Muslim Oskar Schindler gets belated recognition
  2. ^ The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis
personal data
SURNAME Sardari, Abdol-Hossein
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iranian diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Tehran
DATE OF DEATH 1981
Place of death Nottingham