Aristides de Sousa Mendes

Aristides de Sousa Mendes
Sousa Mendes, 1922
Born	Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches (1885-07-19)July 19, 1885 Cabanas de Viriato, Viseu, Portugal
Died	April 3, 1954(1954-04-03) (aged 68) Lisbon, Portugal
Nationality	Portuguese
Alma mater	University of Coimbra
Occupation	Consul
Known for	Saving the lives of thousands of refugees seeking to escape Nazi terror during World War II
Spouses	Maria Angelina Coelho de Sousa ​ ​ (m. 1908; died 1948)​ Andrée Cibial ​ ​ (m. 1949; died 1954)​
Children	[with Marie Angelina Coelho de Sousa] Aristides César, Manuel Silvério, José António, Clotilde Augusta, Isabel Maria, Feliciano Artur Geraldo, Elisa Joana, Pedro Nuno, Carlos Francisco Fernando, Sebastião Miguel Duarte, Teresinha Menino Jesus, Luís Filipe, João Paulo, Raquel Herminia [with Andrée Cibial] Marie-Rose
Parents	José de Sousa Mendes (father) Maria Angelina Coelho Ribeiro (mother)

Righteous Among the Nations
The Holocaust Rescuers of Jews Righteousness Seven Laws of Noah Yad Vashem
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Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches GCC OL (European Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐɾiʃˈtiðɨʒ ðɨ ˈsozɐ ˈmẽdɨʃ]; July 19, 1885 – April 3, 1954) was a Portuguese consul during World War II.

As the Portuguese consul-general in the French city of Bordeaux, he defied the orders of António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo regime, issuing visas and passports to an undetermined number of refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied France, including Jews. For this, Sousa Mendes was punished by the Salazar regime with one year of inactivity with the right to one half of his rank's pay, being obliged subsequently to be retired. However, he ended up never being expelled from the foreign service nor forced to retire and he received a full consul salary until his death in 1954.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} One of Sousa Mendes most sympathetic biographers, Rui Afonso, has reckoned that he continued to receive a salary at least three times that of a teacher.^[1][2]

Sousa Mendes was vindicated in 1988, more than a decade after the Carnation Revolution, which toppled the Estado Novo.

The number of visas issued by Sousa Mendes is disputed. Yad Vashem historian Avraham Milgram thinks that it was probably Harry Ezratty who was the first to mention in an article published in 1964 that Sousa Mendes had saved 30,000 refugees, of which 10,000 were Jews, a number which has since been repeated automatically by journalists and academics. Milgram says that Ezratty, imprudently, took the total number of Jewish refugees who passed through Portugal and ascribed it to the work of Aristides de Sousa Mendes. According to Milgram “the discrepancy between the reality and the myth of the number of visas granted by Sousa Mendes is great”.^[6] A similar opinion is shared by British historian Neill Lochery, by the Portuguese ambassador João Hall Themido, by the Portuguese Ambassador Carlos Fernandes and by the Portuguese historian José Hermano Saraiva. On the other hand, French writer, Eric Lebreton argued that “Milgram did not account for the visas that were delivered in Bayonne, Hendaye and Toulouse”.^[7] In 2015, Olivia Mattis, musicologist and Board President of the Sousa Mendes Foundation in the United States, published the findings of the Sousa Mendes Foundation stating that "tens of thousands" of visa recipients is a figure in the correct order of magnitude.^[8]

For his efforts to save Jewish refugees, Sousa Mendes was recognized by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations,^[9] the first diplomat to be so honoured, in 1966.

Portuguese diplomats such as Ambassador João Hall Themido and Ambassador Carlos Fernandes have argued that Sousa Mendes actions have been inflated and twisted in order to attack Salazar. Similar opinion was voiced by historian Tom Gallagher who argues that evidence that Sousa Mendes efforts were especially directed towards fleeing Jews is also speculative. British, Americans and Portuguese, often people with means, figured prominently as recipients of visas.^[10] Gallagher thinks that the disproportionate attention given to Sousa Mendes suggests that wartime history is being used as a political weapon in contemporary Portugal.^[11]

On 9 June 2020, Portugal granted official recognition to Sousa Mendes. Parliament decided a monument in the National Pantheon should bear his name.^[12] In 2017, in the Portuguese border town of Vilar Formoso, a memorial museum was opened, known as Vilar Formoso Fronteira da Paz (Frontier of Peace) recording the experiences of refugees entering Portugal, many of whom had been given visas by Sousa Mendes.^[13]

On 19 July 2021, the Aristides de Sousa Mendes Museum was inargurated in Portugal.