The Memory of a Hero: Aristides de Sousa Mendes' Legacy Preserved in Testimony

By: Benjamin Biniaz

Earlier this summer, Eleanor Beardsley of NPR met with a group of Holocaust survivors and relatives gathered in Bordeaux, France. They were beginning a 10-day trek, tracing a specific escape route from France to Portugal by way of Spain. These survivors were brought together by the memory of one man: Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

Benjamin Biniaz

Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese diplomat stationed in Bordeaux in the late 1930s who issued tens of thousands of visas to Jewish families, in direct violation of anti-Jewish laws instituted by Portugal’s fascist government at the time. For this act of resistance, Sousa Mendes faced trials and conviction, leaving him to live out the rest of his life in poverty and disgrace, and his 15 children scattered all over Europe and the U.S.

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