Aristides de Sousa Mendes

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885 – 1954) was a Portuguese diplomat whose act of civil disobedience was described by historian Yehuda Bauer as 'perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust'. Serving as Consul-General in Bordeaux during the catastrophic fall of France in June 1940, he witnessed tens of thousands of terrified refugees trapped against the Spanish border.

Portugal's dictator Salazar had issued 'Circular 14', explicitly forbidding visas to Jews and refugees. Experiencing a moral crisis, Sousa Mendes announced: 'I would rather stand with God against man than with man against God'. Over nine frenzied days in June 1940, aided by Rabbi Chaim Kruger and his family, he personally signed an estimated 30,000 transit visas, setting up assembly lines and escorting refugees across the border post at Hendaye. Stripped of his diplomatic rank and pension by Salazar, he died in poverty in Lisbon in 1954.