Mendes Foundation seeks Holocaust survivors
NEW YORK — Survivors of the Holocaust who were given Portuguese visas, and their descendants, will be listed for the first time in an in-depth database that the Sousa Mendes Foundation is compiling.
According to Olivia Mattis, who is leading the project, the foundation intends to access the archives of PIDE (secret police during the Portuguese dictatorship) on the refugees who departed from Portugal to the United States, Brazil, Canada or Palestine in the early stages of World War II.
Consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches, who was stationed at Bordeaux, France, at the outbreak of World War II, defied the orders of the Portuguese government and issued thousands of visas free of charge to Jews fleeing from invading German military forces.
“We are trying to identify, locate and contact the families who were saved by Sousa Mendes. Many people who were saved by him don’t know whom they owe their rescue to,” said Mattis, a Foundation board member and granddaughter of Jews who fled the Nazi persecution with the help of the late Portuguese consul.
“Many of these former refugees thought that one day Portugal opened the doors, when in reality the Portuguese Government had closed the doors. It was because this man, who was a devout Catholic and had a deep sense of right and wrong, challenged the government policies that these families have been saved,” Mattis said.
The Sousa Mendes Foundation was established in the United States in 2010 as a partnership between the hero’s family and the families of those rescued by him. Launched recently, the project already identified a number of these families, and some of them are relatives of American personalities.
Such is the case of Jonah Peretti, Internet entrepeneur and co-founder of The Huffington Post, whose grandmother Adina Cherkin fled with a Portuguese visa. Among those refugees are also Hans and Margret Rey, the authors of the popular book series “Curious George.”
“They’re all over the world. And we must reconstruct the story of how they were saved,” said Mattis.
It is estimated that nearly 30,000 people fled the Holocaust with visas granted by Sousa Mendes, a third of them Jews.
The work to identify and contact refugee families started with the review of the former consul’s registry book, which belongs to the Diplomatic Institute and has been displayed in New York. The names on the book were then compared with the lists of passengers on trains or boats, immigration records in the United States, genealogy sites and social networks.
Few of those who received visas 70 years ago are still alive, and many of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are not aware of the former Portuguese consul’s history.
“This is a race against the mortality of the survivors. We want to find the direct recipients of the visas, who were children at the time, and tell them the story of how they were saved,” Mattis said.
But not everyone made it to Portugal, even with visas. Some ended up in Italy and Morocco, and some were even captured by the Nazis, she added.
To build the database, the Foundation has the collaboration of researchers in the United States and one in Belgium. The foundation is also looking for volunteers in Brazil, where the identification is behind schedule, and Portugal, where there are still many unexplored resources.
“The Portuguese secret police had very precise lists of the refugees. Those who were sent to Figueira da Foz, Porto and Coimbra were not even allowed to leave the city without permission. We want to have access to these lists and know who was where,” she said.
In Brazil, the main objective is the list of passengers from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. The Nagelschmidt family, who was recently located, is in Brazil.
For his efforts to save Jews persecuted by the Nazis, Sousa Mendes was honored posthumously in 1966 by Yad Vashem, the authority for the Remembrance of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust.
However, it wasn’t until the 1980s that Portugal recognized the heroic actions of Sousa Mendes.
He actually lost his career over this. António Oliveira Salazar (Prime Minister of Portugal) forced him to quit his diplomatic post and ordered that no one in Portugal show him any charity. Stripped of his pension, he died in poverty on April 3, 1954.
All charges against the former consul were officially dropped in 1988, when the Portuguese Parliament restored him to the diplomatic corps by unanimous vote. He later received various awards posthumously, including the Cross of Merit for his actions in Bordeaux.
For more information or to share any knowledge about visa recipients or their families, please contact info@sousamendesfoundation.org or visit the foundation’s website: www.sousamendesfoundation.org
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want to contact Adina Cherkin