Portugual posthumously honours its own ‘Schindler’

Portugal paid tribute to its former diplomat, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, on Tuesday by unveiling a plaque in his honour in its national pantheon in recognition of his rescue of thousands of refugees caught up in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

“Portugal bows before the moral personality” of Sousa Mendes, said President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at a ceremony attended by top state officials, members of Sousa Mendes’ family and descendants of those whom he helped save.

The plaque was mounted on the wall of the pantheon, while the former consul’s mortal remains will be kept in the family’s tomb in Cabanas do Viriato in the centre of Portugal.

As Portugal’s consul-general in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux in 1940, Sousa Mendes defied the orders of then-dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, and issued visas to refugees fleeing the German authorities.

In this way, he is credited with saving 30,000 people, including 10,000 Jews.

As a result of his actions, he was tried and stripped of his diplomatic title and he died penniless in a Lisbon hospital aged 69 in 1954.

Often compared to the German industrialist Oskar Schindler who was credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, Sousa Mendes was named “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Shoah Memorial in Jerusalem in 1966.

Portugal took a first step to rehabilitating Sousa Mendes by posthumously awarding him the Cross of Merit in 1986 and then reinstating his diplomatic title.

In 2023, a museum is to be opened his family’s abandoned mansion in Cabanas do Viriato.