Giorgio Perlasca

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Giorgio Perlasca bust in Budapest

Giorgio Perlasca (born January 31, 1910 in Como , Italy , † August 15, 1992 in Padua , Italy) was an Italian businessman who, although originally a fascist , saved thousands of Jews in Budapest from deportation in 1944/45 .

Quote

Did you happen to come from a Jewish family, Mr. Perlasca? "No. I come from a Catholic family, from Como, as the second of five siblings. My father was a lawyer, a royal civil servant in various parishes in the Padua area. My grandfather was a military judge . The upbringing in my family taught me that people are all equal. ”He is taken aback. "More or less the same, because to be honest, I don't see what connects me with a rapist or pimp."

Fascist youth

As a student, Perlasca turned to the early fascism of Gabriele D'Annunzio . He was therefore banned from all schools in Italy for a year. In 1935 he volunteered for the illegal Abyssinian campaign and went to Spain in 1936 to support the uprising under Franco against the Spanish Republic , where he worked as an artilleryman until 1939 (the Spanish Civil War was supported by the Nazi regime and Mussolini and ended in April 1939 with the victory of Franco, who then developed into a dictator (" Caudillo ").

alienation

Perlasca became increasingly alienated from the fascism of Mussolini . He did not agree with the Italian racial laws promulgated in 1939 . He also found it incomprehensible that Italy had entered into an alliance - the " Berlin-Rome Axis " - with National Socialist Germany , although Italy had fought Germany and Austria-Hungary as enemies in bloody battles during the First World War .

In Budapest

At the beginning of the Second World War , Giorgio Perlasca was commissioned to import cattle from the Balkans as an employee of a Trieste canning factory. Initially he worked in Yugoslavia and from the end of 1942 in Hungary . Perlasca spent a very enjoyable time in cosmopolitan Budapest and made many friends.

After the announcement of the armistice between Italy and the Allied forces on September 8, 1943, Perlasca sided with Badoglio and the Italian king, while the official Italian ambassador joined Mussolini's " Republic of Salò ".

In the state of the Arrow Cross

With the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, to which Admiral Horthy , the Hungarian head of state, had to consent at Hitler's personal pressure , Perlasca's situation had also become precarious. In order to avoid the threat of arrest, he turned to the Spanish embassy. In recognition of his services in the Spanish Civil War, he had received a certificate: “Dear comrade, in whichever part of the world you may be, turn to Spain”. The Spanish ambassador Ángel Sanz Briz therefore granted him accommodation in a villa rented by Spain with extraterritorial status. However, when he saw no way to get to southern Italy - the area already recaptured by the Allied forces - Perlasca surrendered to the Hungarian authorities and was interned with diplomatic status. He has fond memories of the time he spent in the Kékes internment camp . Because he feared that the Italian nationals interned by the Germans in Italy would be treated and deported to Germany, he went to Budapest on October 13, 1944 with the approval of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior and went into hiding there.

Hungary had passed anti-Semitic laws as early as 1938, but these were by no means comparable to the disenfranchisement under German laws. Even later, in the public and parliament quite controversial deterioration of the legal situation of the Jewish population, whereby the term Jew was understood racially, not religiously, could not prevent Budapest from becoming the last capital of Europe under the influence of the Germans until the German invasion in March 1944 German Empire, in which the synagogues could still be visited unhindered.

In March 1944, the Eichmann Special Task Force marched into Budapest in a column one mile long. This was a public signal of the fate that should await the Jews. Adolf Eichmann divided the country into districts and had around 450,000 Jews murdered by gassing within two months , mainly in Auschwitz . On July 7, 1944, the Hungarian head of state, Admiral Horthy, ordered the extermination to be stopped, under pressure from abroad, but also because the Russian army was already at the Hungarian borders. Until then, only the Budapest Jews had been spared.

Jorge Perlasca

Perlasca had already seen the deportation of the Jews there while he was working in Belgrade . Their certain murder in the extermination camps was well known. After the abdication of Admiral Horthy, forced by the Germans on October 16, 1944, and the installation of the fascist regime of the Arrow Cross under the “People's Leader” and Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi , Eichmann's subordinates began their work of extermination in Budapest. Perlasca was overjoyed when he was entrusted with the care of the houses protected by Spain by the Spanish ambassador, who also handed him a Spanish passport. Giorgio Perlasca, who had learned perfect Spanish in Spain in 1936, was now called Jorge Perlasca.

The Spanish embassy, ​​like embassies from other neutral countries, in particular Sweden, but also Switzerland, Portugal and the Vatican, issued so-called protection passports to a small number of Jews on the grounds that they were descendants of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 , and, because there was no other way to protect them from Eichmann's commandos and the Arrow Cross, they were housed in rented houses. The number of protégés grew steadily.

Perlasca was increasingly active on her own, personally intervening with members of the Hungarian government against illegal attacks, regularly visiting the freight station, from which Jews were transported daily in cattle wagons for gassing, and in individual cases was able to save Jews while they were being transported. His main task, however, was to visit the houses in which the “Spanish Jews” were housed and, through his presence as the embassy official's envoy, attacks by the SS commandos and the Hungarian authorities, as well as the Arrow Cross members who dealt with the approach of the Red Army increasingly radicalized, to prevent.

The ambassador

At the end of November 1944, the Spanish ambassador Ángel Sanz Briz was of the opinion that the game with the Hungarian authorities, in return for the vaguely promised recognition of the regime to tolerate the rescue of many Jews, could no longer continue. He was not entitled to such diplomatic recognition. He offered Perlasca to follow him to Switzerland.

Perlasca decided to stay in Budapest, probably for private reasons. The next day he inspected the houses under Spanish sovereignty as usual . However, the Hungarian government had learned of the departure of the Spanish ambassador and understood this as a break in diplomatic relations. She had therefore decided to vacate the houses in which thousands of “Spanish” Jews were housed in crowded confines. Perlasca prevented this by falsely claiming that Ángel Sanz Briz had appointed him Deputy Ambassador for the time of his absence. This lie was believed by the Hungarian authorities, who accredited him as ambassador .

The Hungarian government believed that it could enter into negotiations with the western allies via Perlasca and find support from them against the Russians who were about to reach Budapest. In addition, the relevant persons acting on the Hungarian side had the hope of being able to find refuge in the like-minded fascist Spain in the event of an impending collapse.

This enabled him, like the other embassies of the neutral countries, a hectic, always endangered activity for the benefit of the Jews placed under their protection. From December 1, 1944 to January 16, 1945, when the Red Army also marched into the district of Budapest in which the Spanish embassy was located, Perlasca succeeded as acting ambassador to several thousand Jews with frequent dedication of his life and courageous interventions to snatch safe murder. In total, around 25,000 Jews survived in the embassies of the neutral countries and their branches.

After the war

After his return from Hungary, Perlasca reported on his experiences. He also sent a comprehensive report to the Spanish government, which, without mentioning Perlasasca's merits, used it for its own rehabilitation as a protector of the Jews. Neither the Christian Democratic politician Alcide De Gasperi nor the president of the Liberal Party Pella Forti paid any attention to Perlasca's reports. The regional newspaper was not interested in this either. Perlasca's economic living conditions were precarious in the post-war period. His deeds only found their way into the public in 1987 on the initiative of rescued Jews. After that he received countless honors. In 1989 he was allowed to plant a tree in Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations .

Motifs

When asked what prompted him to do what he did, Perlasca said that he could not bear to watch children being killed. Although he was no longer a fascist, he was neither then nor later an anti-fascist.

literature

  • Nina Gladitz / Perez Lorenzo: The Giorgio Perlasca case. In: Dachauer Hefte No. 7 (1991) pp. 129-143 ISSN  0257-9472 ( ZDF documentary Perlasca from 1992)
  • Enrico Deaglio: The banality of the good. The story of the impostor Giorgio Perlasca who saved the lives of 5,200 Jews ; 1993, ISBN 3-8218-1150-1 (author was involved in the script for Perlasca, un eroe italiano , a television film by RAI )
General note:
The (short) biographies of Gladitz-Perez Lorenzo and Deaglio differ in some details. Only the same thing was adopted.
  • Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Survival in the Third Reich. Jews in the underground and their helpers. ISBN 3-406-51029-9

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: Enrico Deaglio: The banality of the good. Eichborn, page 12.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Perlasca, Giorgio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian fascist and savior of thousands of Jews in Budapest
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Como , Italy
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1992
Place of death Padua , Italy