ROMA – The characters are “Right” – we read in an article published by “Jewish pages” – and they are more or less famous: from Oskar Schindler to Irena Sendler, from Nicholas Winton to Aristides de Sousa Mendes himself, to which are added another fifty faces and stories. They appear on a deck of cards whose texts were written by the Shoah scholar, Mordecai Paldiel, and are part of the campaign of fundraising from the Sousa Mendes Foundation. Named after Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches (1885-1954), the Portuguese diplomat who paid a high price for his decision to save the Jews persecuted during the Shoah, the campaign aims to honor his memory and make the world aware of his history, with a dual mission: to raise funds for the Sousa Mendes Museum in Portugal and to sponsor projects that perpetuate his legacy in the United States.
It was the largest rescue action during the Shoah. Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese consul stationed in Bordeaux, France, and between May and June 1940, he issued at his own risk thousands of visas to Jews trying to escape persecution by Nazism and Vichy France. Yehuda Bauer, the recently deceased historian, said that Sousa Mendes’ action was “perhaps the greatest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.” He operated in defiance of his government’s orders, acting – he explained on more than one occasion – in accordance with his Catholic faith.
He was stripped of his diplomatic position and could no longer work. The consequences of his actions were very harsh, with repercussions on both him and his family: Sousa Mendes was deprived of his diplomatic position and was prevented from earning a living in any way, while his twelve children were blacklisted, which prevented them from studying at university or finding a job.
The rehabilitation of his 12 children. Also at his explicit request, upon his death his children began to work to rehabilitate his figure, restoring the family’s honor, obtaining that Sousa Mendes was nominated “Righteous Among the Nations” from Yad Vashem. And not only that: an honor from the US Congress and – perhaps more importantly – an apology from the Portuguese government followed along with a posthumous promotion to the rank of ambassador. The deck of cards that the Foundation named after him now sells is called “Heroes of the Holocaust Rescuer” (Heroes of the Holocaust Rescuers) and supports the museum inaugurated on 19 July 2024 in what had been his family home in the province of Beira Alta, in north-eastern Portugal.
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