Aristides de Sousa Mendes

Aristides de Sousa Mendes was born in 1885 into a landowning family in central Portugal, trained as a lawyer and entered the consular service, serving in Brazil, the United States, Belgium and elsewhere. He was a sociable, rather extravagant man with a large family, and by 1940 was consul-general in Bordeaux.

In November 1939 Portugal's dictator Salazar issued an instruction known as Circular 14, which barred consuls from giving visas to stateless people, Jews and other undesirables without approval from Lisbon. When France collapsed in June 1940, tens of thousands of refugees poured into Bordeaux, and Portugal, neutral and with a port at Lisbon, was one of the few ways out of Europe. They queued outside his consulate day and night.

For a while he did what he could case by case, and for several days he shut himself away, ill and in anguish. Then, around 17 June, he came out and told his staff he would give a visa to anyone who asked. He signed for days, at the consulate, in the street and later at the Spanish frontier, with a rabbi named Chaim Kruger helping him. The number of visas is disputed; certainly thousands of people, Jewish and otherwise, crossed into Spain on them.

Lisbon recalled him, held a disciplinary hearing and dismissed him from the service. Barred from practising law, with fourteen children, he was reduced to eating at a Jewish community soup kitchen in Lisbon. He died in 1954. Portugal formally restored his honour in 1988.