Aristides de Sousa Mendes

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Aristides de Sousa Mendes

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (born July 19, 1885 in Cabanas de Viriato near Viseu , † April 3, 1954 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese diplomat . As Consul General in Bordeaux , he saved the lives of thousands of people of various nationalities, including many Jews , during World War II . Some estimates assume up to 30,000 refugees, including 10,000 Jews, but there is no historical evidence of this amount.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes is honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations and is sometimes referred to as the "Portuguese Schindler " or the "Portuguese Wallenberg ".

Life

General

Aristides de Sousa Mendes and his twin brother Cesar were born on July 19, 1885. The de Sousa Mendes family belonged to the rural, Catholic aristocracy in northern Portugal. His father was a judge at the Court of Appeal in Coimbra . Aristides grew up in Aveiro and went to school in Mangualde . He completed his law studies at the University of Coimbra in 1907 with a master's degree. In 1908 he married Maria Angelina Coelho de Sousa (born August 20, 1888), with whom he had twelve children. In 1910 he entered the diplomatic service, became second class consul in British Guiana and a year later first class consul in Zanzibar .
Because of his alleged anti-Republican attitude, Aristides de Sousa Mendes was put into temporary retirement in 1919, rehabilitated a year later and sent to San Francisco . He returned to Portugal via Brazil (1924) in 1926. During the military coup shortly afterwards, he was in Spain . In 1929 he became consul general in Antwerp . Maurice Maeterlinck and the former Spanish King Alfonso XIII. were among the friends of the family at the time. In 1938 the Salazar government , which had been in office since 1932, appointed him consul general in Bordeaux .

Consul in Bordeaux

After most of Central Europe was occupied by the German Reich in 1940 , a huge wave of refugees swept into the as yet unoccupied areas of France. Portugal was considered one of the last countries with a chance of refuge. However, in order to be able to leave France for the transit through Spain , which was ruled by the dictator Franco , a Portuguese visa was required . Therefore, thousands of refugees rushed to the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux to apply for a visa.

As early as November 13, 1939, the Portuguese dictator Salazar had banned all Portuguese diplomats in the circular “Circular 14” from issuing visas for “foreigners whose nationality is unknown, rejected or disputed; Stateless persons; Jews who were expelled from their country of origin or where they were accommodated ”. After the Wehrmacht had taken Paris on June 14, 1940 , Salazar tightened the entry regulations by adding that only those who had a visa for a non-European country were allowed to enter.

Sousa Mendes ignored these circulars for the first time on June 17, 1940 and had Rabbi Jacob Kruger , himself a refugee from Antwerp, inform all Jews and other needy people that he would grant a visa to everyone in need without exception, “regardless of nationality, race or religion ”. It enabled the refugees to travel on to Portugal via the only border crossing authorized by Spain at Hendaye (France) and Irun (Spain). This gave them access to the Portuguese ports and was able to flee overseas. Even Otto von Habsburg received a visa from Sousa Mendes and could thus over Portugal United States reach.

Sousa Mendes had also directed the Portuguese Honorary Consul in Toulouse to issue visas to anyone who needed them. He personally traveled to a branch of the Portuguese consulate in Bayonne , where he ordered an official to also issue visas to every refugee. In the documents still available, with the seal of the Consulate General of the Portuguese Republic, it says: “The Portuguese government asks the Spanish authorities to allow the bearer of this document to travel freely through Spain. The person concerned is a refugee from the European conflict and is on his way to Portugal. "

With regard to the number of visas issued, there are quite different information. A detailed study by the historian Avraham Milgram of the “Shoa Resource Center” at the Yad Vashem memorial comes to the conclusion that this number identifies the total number of refugees who emigrated via Portugal. The number of visas that Sousa Mendes issued in 1940, contrary to the express prohibition of the Portuguese government in the short period from June 17, 1940 to June 23, 1940, is likely to be considerably lower. The author expressly emphasizes that this in no way diminishes Sousa Mendes' earnings.

Dishonorable discharge

On June 20, 1940, the Portuguese government learned of Sousa Mendes' activities and asked him to leave Bordeaux immediately. In his place, Teotónio Pereira , Portuguese ambassador in Madrid, was sent to Bordeaux.

On the way home, Sousa Mendes continued to distribute visas on the road and personally intervened with the Portuguese authorities at the French border station near Hendaye . He brought Jewish refugees across the Spanish-French border in his own car. These were his last official acts as consul before Salazar removed him from office on June 23.

On June 24, Salazar announced that all visas issued by Sousa Mendes had been canceled. He also instructed the embassies in France to only issue visas to “gente limpa” (literally “pure people”, meaning “non-Jewish” people).

Upon arrival in Portugal, Sousa Mendes was found guilty of disciplinary proceedings . The verdict meant not only the suspension from the diplomatic office, the cancellation of the pension and the revocation of the lawyer license , but also the social ostracism of his family.

The family's financial situation deteriorated dramatically. Little by little, everything was sold from the family's richly furnished mansion in Cabanas de Viriato ( Viseu ). The family was later supported by the Jewish community in Lisbon, which enabled some of his children to study in the United States. Two of his sons participated in Operation Overlord .

After the war, Salazar claimed the merit of having saved the lives of thousands of refugees through the uncomplicated issuing of visas. Several requests from Aristides' twin brother Cesar, who was also in the diplomatic service to rehabilitate Aristides, went unanswered by Salazar. Sousa Mendes was physically impaired by a stroke . He lived withdrawn and isolated in his house. His wife died in 1948 and a year later he married Andrée Cibila, with whom he had a child during the Lisbon era.

Death and rehabilitation

Street in Vienna

In 1952, Sousa Mendes suffered another stroke and had to undergo an operation. From then on he was paralyzed on one side. On April 3, 1954, Sousa Mendes died of complications from another stroke and pneumonia in the hospital of the " Ordem Terceira " in Lisbon. Even if the inscription on his tombstone acknowledges his merits with the words “He who saves a life, saves the world”, his death did not lead to any information or comment in the press and was ignored by the fascist dictatorship of the time.

It was his children who were the first to campaign for their father's rehabilitation. At her instigation, a first appraisal appeared in a French provincial newspaper in 1954. As a result, articles about the life of the consul were read in various international journals such as Jewish Life , Reader's Digest and others. The Yad Vashem memorial had a commemorative medal minted in 1966. In the Negev desert, a forest with 10,000 trees was named after him. In 1986 a petition about his rehabilitation was published in the New York Times and sent to the Portuguese authorities. In the same year, an American trade delegation, while visiting Lisbon, insisted that Sousa Mendes be honored in Portugal. On May 24, 1987, Mário Soares , the then President of Portugal, posthumously awarded Aristides de Sousa Mendes the Order of Freedom. On March 13, 1988, Sousa Mendes was officially rehabilitated by the Portuguese Parliament. The application for reintegration into the diplomatic corps was unanimously approved by all parliamentary groups.

reception

In Portugal, the Fundação Aristides de Sousa Mendes is dedicated to the memory of the honorable Consul General.

In Vienna, the Aristides-de-Sousa-Mendes-Promenade was named after him in 2000.

In Joshua Sobol's play Alma , Aristides de Sousa Mendes appears as an interlocutor with Alma Mahler-Werfel . The piece was also performed in Lisbon in 2003.

In 2008, the non-profit association “ViVer - Vision and Responsibility eV” designed an exhibition in Germany that shows the life and work of Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

The film Aristides de Sousa Mendes, O Cônsul de Bordéus premiered in Israel on September 12, 2011 and was released in Portuguese cinemas on November 8, 2011. The work with Vítor Norte in the lead role was then also released on DVD. In 2009 the material was filmed in a French television film with Bernard Le Coq as Consul Mendes.

The dilapidated property of Aristides de Sousa Mendes was renovated in the 21st century and turned into a museum.

The magazine Der Spiegel reported in early 2020 about a trip by descendants of the rescued.

In June 2020, the Portuguese government decided to have a cenotaph built in his honor in the national pantheon ( Igreja de Santa Engrácia ).

See also

literature

Non-fiction

Fiction treatment:

  • Júlia Nery: The Consul . Translated from the Portuguese by Verena Grubenmann Schmid. Ed. Epoca, Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-905513-07-2 .

Movie

Web links

Commons : Aristides de Sousa Mendes  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Avraham Milgram: Portugal, the Consuls, and the Jewish Refugees, 1938–1941. (PDF; 195 KB) In: yadvashem.org. Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies, accessed January 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c José-Alain Fralon, The Righteous One of Bordeaux. How Aristides de Sousa Mendes saved 30,000 people from the Holocaust . Urachhaus Verlag, Stuttgart, 2011, updated and revised new edition; ISBN 978-3-8251-7768-3
  3. ↑ Michael Berger: The Schindler of Portugal. How the diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes saved the lives of 30,000 people in World War II. in the Jüdischen Allgemeine from April 24, 2008.
  4. ^ Vienna History Wiki
  5. ↑ Exhibition on Aristides de Sousa Mendes “He who saves a life saves the whole world”. In: uni-giessen.de. Retrieved June 25, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Casa do Passal. In: sousamendesfoundation.org. Archived from the original on March 20, 2019 ; accessed on April 27, 2019 (English, original page sometimes unavailable due to a bandwidth limit).
  7. ↑ Alexander Smoltczyk: The Consul's List . In: Der Spiegel No. 2 (January 4, 2020), pp. 44–48; the same: the consul's list , paid audio story.
  8. ^ Raphael Minder: Portugal Honors a Diplomat Who Saved Jews From the Nazis. In: nytimes.com . June 18, 2020, accessed June 19, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Sousa Mendes, Aristides de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese Consul General in Bordeaux and rescuer (of 30,000 people) in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Cabanas de Viriato near Viseu
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1954
Place of death Lisbon