(Jewish Group) The man who saved more Jews than Schindler

[Behind the Aegis]

As a journalist in Israel in the 1980s, I’d covered the Lebanon War and violence in the West Bank. But I’d always felt like an outsider. Last month, I returned to Jerusalem after nearly 35 years away. This time, though, I wasn’t just an observer. Dancing around a Torah scroll at a tiny Haredi yeshiva, I was a participant.

That Torah was saved thanks to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese official who rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazis — including my grandparents.

For two days in November, Sousa Mendes was posthumously honored by the city of Jerusalem and Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust. I attended those celebrations along with others — mostly secular American Jews like me — whose family members owed him their lives.

Defying his own government
Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, when German forces overwhelmed the country in 1940. He defied his own government and issued thousands of visas that allowed an estimated 30,000 refugees to escape. Ten thousand Jews were said to have been saved, including my beloved grandmother Dora Friedmann, my grandfather Jozef Friedmann and my uncle Marcel Friedmann.

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