“I could not have acted otherwise, and I, therefore, accept all that has befallen me with love.” – Aristides de Sousa Mendes
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese Consul General in Bordeaux, France in June of 1940, issued visas to safety to thousands of desperate refugees.
This heroic feat was characterized by the Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer as “perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.”
The Salazar government punished him severely and erased him from the history books.
