Monday 19 November 2012
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux, France, during World War II. He saved an estimated 30,000 lives, the majority of them Jews, when Paris fell to the advancing Nazi army in June of 1940. Helped by his wife and children, Sousa Mendes issued visas to as many refugees as he could, without regard to nationality or religion.
The operation has been described by the Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer as “perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.”
He issued the visas against the Portuguese government orders for which he was recalled and subjected to disciplinary action. A lawyer by training, after being dismissed from is diplomatic post, he was disbarred by Dictator Salazar and not allowed to practice law. A father of 14 children, he died destitute and in obscurity in 1954.
I'm looking forward to watching this film as this man was a rebel who saved thousands of lives.
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