In our recent video on Portugal's contributions to the Second World War as a neutral nation,
we mentioned a Portuguese hero by the name of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, known to many as
the "Portuguese Schindler." While the exact number may never be known, this man saved hundreds if not
thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees during World War II by granting them the documents,
such as passports and visas, which allowed them to escape German-occupied Europe.
For this, Aristides was punished, and his family name was stained. Though his story doesn't end
there. Against the behest of a dictator, his children fought to clear his and their own name,
and the universe -- or someone else, Aristides would've believed -- heard their toil. This is the
story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese hero whose saint-like sacrifice we cannot forget.
So who was the man, and how did he have the power to save so many lives?
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was born on the 19th of July 1895 in the town of Cabanas de Viriato
in the Centro Region of Portugal, one day after his twin brother, César. With noble aristocratic
blood on his veins, and with a judge for a father, it was clear from the get-go that
the brothers would somehow be involved with law or politics, and this was precisely the case.
Aristides and César studied law at the University of Coimbra in Portugal,
and while his brother went on to become a foreign minister, Aristides married a Portuguese woman
by the name of Maria Angelina Coelho de Sousa and soon after pursued a career as a consular.
Aristides and Maria travelled the world for Aristides' work, making babies all the while.
Even then, however, it wasn't all paradise, and Aristides' rebellious streak started to show,
even if some of his actions were indeed a little questionable. After some trouble in Brazil,
Aristides had a run-in with the US Department of State while serving as a consular in America.
On returning to Portugal, Aristides was employed as the Consul in Vigo, Spain,
and he was then sent to Antwerp, Belgium. Some five years later, two of poor Aristides' children
lost their lives, and four years after that misery, Aristides became the Consul-General
of Bordeaux, France, a position in which he had jurisdiction over all of southwest France.
The year was 1938, and Aristides could only imagine what horrors would soon befall the world.
Even before World War II broke out in September 1939, Jews and other minorities in Germany were
subjected to the first flames of what would evolve into the conflagration of the Holocaust.
Since 1932, Portugal lived in the shadow of the dictator known as Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, and
fearing that Portugal could not bear the financial weight of millions of refugees
or that his dictatorial regime could not bear the idealogical influx of said millions,
he tightened the borders, knuckling down on Portugal's immigration policies.
But this only encouraged these Nazi-fleeing refugees to forge their way into Portugal,
by means of fake passports and such, and between September and December 1939 alone,
some 9,000 refugees entered the country, many with falsified documents. From there,
Salazar only made his borders more impassable, and that was when Aristides came along.
But before we go there, it must be said that some argue Salazar did not shut the door on
refugees for their ethnicity alone, rather on those who he thought lacked the means
to one day leave Portugal or those who, as we said, threatened his dictatorial rule.
In fact, Salazar even telegrammed the Nazi Party via the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin
in September 1939 and made it clear to them that Portuguese law made no racial
discriminations and would not, specifically, discriminate against Jewish Portuguese citizens.
Now, back to Aristides.
Recall, Aristides was at this point a general-consul in southwest France, and the
world was feeling the heat of that conflagration. Aristides was closer to the fire than he would've
been in Portugal, and most of those poor souls fleeing Hitler's wrath in hopes of finding refuge
in Portugal would first have had to physically pass through Aristides' consular jurisdiction.
It started when Aristides granted visas to an Austrian historian who lost his nationality
as a result of the Nuremberg Laws and an anti-Franco activist. Both of these people
wouldn't have been granted refuge under the rules of Salazar's second border-tightening,
which deemed Circular 14, and for this, Aristides was given a slap on the wrist -- warned that any
further violations would result in much more than a wrist-slapping. While it may have had
little to do with Aristides' heroism, it's worth noting that the man was unfaithful to his wife
while in France, seducing and impregnating a French musician by the name of Andrée Cibial,
who later unveiled Aristides' adultery to the public during a cathedral mass.
During and after the Fall of France, Aristides helped a number of other refugees attain the
documents they required, though this was still only the start, and it took
the moral fortitude of a Rabbi for Aristides to understand just why he was put on this Earth.
This Rabbi was Cham Tzvi Kruger, whom Aristides met either by chance or divine will. To the Rabbi
and his family, Aristides offered his service, though the Rabbi refused,
willing to accept a visa, which would've granted him and his family passage into Portugal,
only if Aristides offered his "brothers and sisters" the same.
Only, by "brothers and sisters" the Rabbi meant all the Jewish refugees in Bordeaux.
Aristides began by issuing 40 visas, though when France buckled under the weight of the Germans,
calling for an armistice, Aristides' purpose was clearer than ever.
One of Aristides' sons recalls the exact moment when his father knew exactly what he had to do:
"My father got up [...] 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.'"
When one of his daughters tried to dissuade him, Aristides responded,
"I would rather stand with God and against man than with man and against God."
On that same day, he issued 247 visas; on the next, 216; and over the next three days after
that, 350. Soon after Bordeaux was bombed in the 19th of June 1940, Aristides went to
the city of Bayonne, where he issued more visas, though he was soon ratted out, and
all subsequent visas with his signature on them were invalidated. Aristides then went to Hendaye,
another settlement in southwest France, and issued visas there a while, in which time he also ordered
the Portuguese vice-consul in the French city of Toulouse to accept all transit visa applications.
With Salazar on his tail, and the Spanish people in unrest -- fearful of having thousands of
refugees pass through Spain to get to Portugal -- all visas issued by Aristides were soon declared
null and void. Salazar called Aristides back to Portugal on the 24th of June 1940, though the man
didn't get there until the 8th of July, during which time he issued even more visas and even
physically led a group of refugees over the border -- his rebellious streak in full effect. Many of
the refugees to which Aristides issued visas were later allowed into Portugal, thanks to the work
of two Portuguese men by the names of Augusto Isaac de Esaguy and Moisés Bensabat Amzalak.
That was Aristides' final hoorah. He now had to pay an unjust price.
For granting thousands of visas in direct violation of his instructions,
Aristides was, officially, punished by working one year at half salary, and while he got off
rather easy in this regard, it was nothing compared to the man's unofficial punishment.
Aristides and his family were cast aside by society -- blacklisted, disgraced. The
family were forced to survive out of Jewish soup kitchens during the war, and after it,
Portugal's dictator, Salazar, got all the glory for saving thousands of refugees.
Aristides fought to wipe the black dot from his family name, though in 1945,
he suffered a stroke which rendered him paralyzed and unable to work. From here, his financial
situation got significantly worse, and his sons and daughters, of which fifteen were still alive,
struggled to find meaningful employment in Portugal and were forced to leave.
Crippled, and abandoned by his colleagues, friends, and even some of his relatives,
Aristides was already enduring more than most could, only then for his wife to perish,
after which, he married his French mistress, whose spending habits brought him to poverty's doorstep.
Aristides' twin brother, César, did all within his power to help, and one of Aristides' many sons,
Sebastião, published a story about the injustice endured by his father, but it did little to help.
On the 3rd of April 1954, Aristides himself perished, with only one of his nieces at his side.
Though even in death there was some light.
In response to his charges, Aristides denied nothing, stating, "It was indeed my aim to save
all those people whose suffering was indescribable [...] When I left Bayonne I was applauded by
hundreds of people, and through me it was Portugal that was being honored."
Though Aristides had been dead for about seven years at this point, his sacrifice was applauded
once again in 1961, when David Ben-Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel, had twenty trees planted
by the Jewish National Fund in Aristides' name. After that, Israel's official Holocaust memorial
Yad Vashem recognised Aristides, though Salazar was still in power at this point,
and the true story of Portugal's Schindler had yet to told there. It wasn't until democracy was once
again established in Portugal that Aristides' case was reopened and he was recognised as,
in quotation marks, "having refused to be an accomplice to Nazi war crimes,"
though this sat with the government for over a decade. It wasn't until 1987 that the Portuguese
Republic took wind of Aristides' children's efforts to clear their father's name, after which
they awarded the dead man an Order of Liberty medal, one of the greatest honours of Portugal.
The year after, all charges against Aristides were officially dismissed,
and since then, there have been various efforts to rehabilitate Aristides' name
and share with the world the story of his sacrifice. This video is very much one of them.
But what do you think? Did you know about Aristides de Sousa Mendes before this?
Do you think he's truly deserving of the nickname "the Portuguese Schindler"?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.