A Good Man in Evil Times: The Story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes -- The Man Who Saved the Lives of Countless Refugees in World War II
A career diplomat for Portugal, Sousa Mendes was brought up in an aristocratic and pious Roman Catholic family. It is worth struggling through this stilted translation of the less-relevant first part of his life to learn about the heroic conviction he developed at the age of 55 to defy his superiors in order to save the lives of refugees from Nazism. In 1939 refugees flooded France, trying to obtain visas to Portugal, a neutral country during WWII. Portugal's prime minister, who did not want to alienate Hitler, issued "Circular 14," which effectively prohibited Portuguese consuls from fulfilling a "centuries-old tradition of hospitality" and, in explicitly excluding Jews, "officially introduced a hitherto unknown element of racial or religious segregation into the question of immigration." Finding this policy utterly unconscionable, Sousa Mendes, Portugal's consul general in France's temporary capital of Bordeaux, issued several passports to those fleeing France, and then, overwhelmed by the situation, took to his bed for three days. When he got up, he told his wife (who supported his actions) and children that God had instructed him to obey his conscience. Sousa Mendes set up a virtual assembly line and signed visas for the hordes of refugees who soon swamped his office and residence. He was eventually dismissed from the foreign service without a pension and died in poverty in 1954. Posthumously honored by Israel, he without doubt saved the lives of ten thousand Jews. Fralon, a journalist for Le Monde in Paris, renders a compelling tale of a courageous political act. 16 pages of b&w; photos.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.