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Aristides de Sousa Mendes, and a telegram from the Portuguese Dictator Salazar

Eighty years ago, a middle-aged, mid-ranking diplomat sank into a deep depression and watched his gray hairs in the days when he saw The Streets of Bordeaux , filling with Jewish Refugees from The Nazis .

As the Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux , Aristides de Sousa Mendes in front of a moral dilemma. Should he obey the orders of the government or to listen to his own conscience, and to supply Jews with the visa that would allow them to escape from advancing German troops?

Sousa Mendes' notice mean values of response, he is remembered as a hero by survivors and descendants of the thousands he has helped to escape.

But his initiative also spelt The End of a diplomatic career under the Portuguese Dictator António de Oliveira Salazar , and the rest of his life spent scarcity.

Portugal, finally, the official recognition of his disobedient diplomat granted on 9. June and decided in the Parliament, a monument in the National Pantheon , should bear his name.

Why Bordeaux ?

It was mid-June 1940, and Hitler's armed forces day of final victory over France. Paris fell on 14. June and a truce was signed just over a week later.

Portugal's diplomatic corps was under strict instructions from the right of the Salazar dictatorship, that Visa should be issued refugee Jews and stateless people, only with the Express permission of Lisbon

Salazar (far left) kept Portugal neutral during the second World War

For those who are pushing us in the Bordeaux streets in the hope The Border to Spain and escape the Nazi persecution there was no time to wait.

"had surrendered to the French and the Germans were on The Way ," says Henri Dyner. He was three, but has attacked the vivid memories of his Jewish family to escape from their home in Antwerp, as Nazi-Germany, Belgium, and marched into France and the Netherlands.

"What I remember The Sound of the bombing, the need to Wake me up, and My Mother told me that it was Thunder .

The Nazi bombardment of Belgium began in may of 1940

"My parents turned on the radio and King Leopold Belgians heard, we have been cheated and attacked by the Germans. say My Father was suspecting it could be A War since 1938. He had said a plan, and a car," Mr. Dyner, now an engineer retired and Lives in New York , to The Bbc .

Eliezar Dyner, his wife, Sprince, and five other relatives, including a seven-month-old baby, displaced by the bombing, and in France.

"My Father avoided the big roads, was in Paris a wide berth and stuck to the coast. He wanted only 10 miles from The Front all The Time because he thought it was a fast war, and why go far, when you might have to go back, could

According to the German combat aircraft of the attacking French trenches and hear the messages of successive German victories, Henri 's father, realized by The Time they reached Bordeaux , there would be No Return to Antwerpen in the near future.

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In Bordeaux , The Consul had a Moral crisis and a nervous breakdown, struck up a friendship with a Rabbi . Chaim Kruger had fled the Nazi advance from his home in Belgium.

Consul Sousa Mendes offered by The Rabbi and his Immediate Family Safe Passage across The Border to Spain, but then suffered a "moral crisis," says the historian Mordecai Paldiel.

Kruger refused the offer since he could not give up the thousands of Jewish Refugees in Bordeaux .

Rabbi Chaim Kruger said The Consul (R) he could not accept visa and leaving thousands of others behind

In a letter of 13. June 1940, Sousa Mendes wrote: "Here The Situation is terrible, and I'm in bed, because of a strong nervous breakdown. "

"no one really knows what went through his head in these two or Three Days ," says Dr. Paldiel, the righteous Among the Nations Department at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial for 25 years.

"Some say, the duty of a diplomat is to obey, orders From Above , even if these instructions are not moral.

"Later, in Lisbon , Sousa Mendes was a Rabbi said this:" If so many Jews can suffer because it is Catholic, it's all right for a Catholic to suffer for many Jews. 'He was talking about Hitler, of course. "

', No other nationalities'

What you also have is always to go through the diplomat is of the opinion that Sousa Mendes was born on Monday, 17. June with a new determination.

According to his son, Pedro Nuno de Sousa Mendes, "he open step out of his room, threw The Door to the Chancellery, and announced in a loud voice:" From now on, I'll give all the visas. There are no nationalities, races or religions". "

For Henri Dyner and His Family , This Was a life saver.

Dyner, Henri , before His Family fled to Belgium

knew, By chance, Henri ' s mother, that The Consul from his Time In Antwerp, where she was a Secretary at The British Consulate.

The Dyner family had already tried and abandoned because procurement of a Visa by the US failed-the American, British and Canadian authorities, France. Prior to its collapse Sousa Mendes, you had to put on a list in a request to the government of Salazar .

"My Mother remembers that he disappeared for a few days, and when he came, his hair had gone gray," says Henri Dyner, who still remembers the queues of Refugees outside the Consulate in Bordeaux and camping-places.

"My Mother began to work, to help for Sousa Mendes Those Days , with this kind of the production of Visa all to a long table. Sousa Mendes saved our Lives . "

Corridor to Spain

no one knows for sure how many transit visas were issued so that Refugees to pass from France to Spain and travel to Portugal. But the estimates vary between 10,000 and 30,000, and most sought to cross The Atlantic , to a variety of American destinations.

The American Sousa Mendes Foundation, approximately 3,800 recipients of this Visa has to be identified.

Refugees rushed desperately across The Border to Spain, as The National socialists

expands As If possessed with a sense of mission, The Consul began signed Visa on The Road as a spectator in Bordeaux , the shape of a human column to the South in the direction of the Border Town of Hendaye. He held on to the Consulate in Bayonne, on the subject of other lectures.

The Ministry of foreign Affairs in Lisbon , began cable grams to send to Bordeaux , ordered him to leave, amid reports from colleagues that he "lost his senses".

the Spanish authorities said his Visa is invalid, but thousands had already over the river Bidasoa in Spain in the Basque region.

Who got off?

Finally, Sousa Mendes is reported to his bosses in Lisbon on 8. July.

Among those who escaped occupied France were thanks to his Visa surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker King Vidor , members of the Rothschild banking family and the majority of the Belgian's future government-in-exile.

Henri Dyner returned to the "bridge of freedom" in the French-Spanish border,

Salazar 's Portugal would later be lauded for his role in allowing Refugees escaped from Nazi occupation and repression, but Sousa Mendes, was expelled from the diplomatic corps, and left without a pension.

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fell into His Family home in Cabanas de Viriato, and remains so today.

"Sousa Mendes was being abused by Salazar . He died in poverty, like a beggar, and his children emigrated to find to try and find a future Somewhere Else ," says Henri Dyner.

Henri 's family ended up in Brazil, before he moved to the United States for professional reasons. But he remembers A Man who had the courage of his convictions.

"how are things in The World today, we need more people ready for the to stand up for what is right and to take a position. "

Who was Aristides de Sousa Mendes?

the holocaust, france, nazi germany, portugal, world war two

Source of news: bbc.com