Bordeaux, June 1940. An overcrowded city of chaos and fear. Military experts were confounded by the rapid breakthrough of the German Panzer divisions, the rout of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk and the Fall of Paris, all in a matter of six weeks. And now the Germans were closing in on the city, the new seat of the French Government.
It held tens of thousands of displaced people, moving ahead of the war area, but others were fugitives of a special kind - thousands of Jews and even Germans who had opposed the Nazi regime, all hoping to escape from French territory before the German arrival. A visa, enabling them to enter Spain to travel to neutral Portugal, meant life. The absence of the necessary papers meant death.
The Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, was a career diplomat who had served his country in many countries, including Belgium, Japan and Brazil. He came from a conservative, Catholic, middle-class background and nothing in his career suggested that he would put conscience and humanity before the instructions of the dictator Ant≤nio Salazar.
Government circular
The Portuguese government Circular 14 clearly forbade consuls from granting visas to various categories of people, including Jews, Russians and those who were unable to return freely to their country of origin.
Mendes was confronted by the tragic situation of thousands of frightened people besieging the consulate, begging for visas. Rabbi Kruger, to whom he gave free accommodation in the embassy, told him: "It is not just me that needs help but all my fellow Jews, who are in danger of their lives." On reporting the grave situation to his government, he was bluntly instructed: "Obey Circular 14."
He refused, saying to his staff: "From now on I am giving everyone visas. There will be no more nationalities, races or religions. I cannot allow people to die. Many of them are Jews. The only way I can serve my faith as a Christian is to act in accordance with the dictates of my conscience." And that conscience resulted in the issue of 10,000 visas and the greatest rescue operation carried out by a single person during the Holocaust.
Rabbi Moise Elias, one of those he saved, said later in the United States: "I recognise as an Act of God that such a man as this was at the right place at the right time."
When the Germans completed the occupation of France, Mendes was recalled to Portugal and presented with a 15-point bill of indictment for disobedience. His defence that he acted on humanitarian grounds was spurned. He was demoted to a rank below that of consul, suspended for a year, and then forced to retire without a pension.
Aged 45, unemployed, with a wife and a large family to support, he was to live out the rest of his life in poverty and misery, largely dependent on charity and at one stage having to obtain free meals from Jewish welfare centres in Lisbon.
Friend of Salazar
In his long but unsuccessful campaign for re-instatement, Mendes even approached the Portuguese cardinal, whose name is not worth recalling, but who was a close friend of Salazar. He refused help and advised him to pray to Our Lady of Fatima. As a Spanish poet said in reference to a similar situation: "You have my prayers, I can no more, And with those words, He shut the door."
Mendes was deserted by most of his friends and colleagues, for only the bravest would risk career and even liberty by associating with somebody who was persona non grata to the establishment. Predeceased by his wife, and with his family forced to emigrate for employment, he died in 1954. He was a good and courageous man in evil times.
The Israeli Government honoured him as they honoured all others who helped the Jews in their hour of need. They erected a special memorial to him in the Garden of the Righteous in Tel-Aviv. The Portuguese Government, however, did not restore his good name until 1988 when the parliament proclaimed him as a hero - "just among the nations" - and restored his name to the list of consuls. This came as a result of a long campaign waged by Jews whom he had saved, by his own family, and by a remarkable Capuchin worker-priest in Bordeaux - Father Jacques RiviΦre - who heard the story, wrote much about it and never ceased his campaign until the Portuguese President, Mario Soares, unveiled a statue to Mendes in Bordeaux in 1994. In his oration, he atoned for the past and referred to Mendes as "a simple and modest man whom managed to perform his duties as a human being against the orders of the dictator Salazar".
Diplomats in Europe
But thank God for us Irish. Before and during the second World War, there was nothing like "Circular 14" issued to our diplomats in Europe and even if there was, our boys would still have followed their consciences and issued visas to protect terrified Jews. They would not have been fired for disobeying orders. If such an attempt had been made, our own civil servants would have stood by the offenders and if they had not, our religious leaders would have supported those who implemented Catholic and Christian principles, rather than pontificating about them.
And if you believe the above, why not go the whole hog and believe also that leprechauns exist, that the corrupt criminals in our establishment will eventually end up in jail, the immortality of the Celtic Tiger, the Partnership for Peace, fairies at the end of your garden, UFOs, and much more?