Mineola honors Portuguese WWII hero

Richard Tedesco

In 1940, Portuguese diplomat Aristedes de Sousa Mendes defied the Third Reich by issuing 30,000 visas to people in danger of being sent to Nazi death camps.

Members of the Mineola community gathered at the Mineola Memorial Library on Saturday to observe the 75th anniversary of the death of de Sousa Mendes, who risked his life and his career as Portuguese consul in Bordeax, France.

Those attending the observance, which included many grade school children, watched the presentation of a rough cut of the film, “The Consul of Bordeaux,” a Portuguese-Belgian production about de Sousa’s efforts to issue in 10 days 30,000 visas to people, including 12,000 Jews, who were in danger of being sent to Nazi death camps.

Those attending to anniversary also heard from J.J. Prins, who received one of those visas, and Village of Mineola Trustee Paul Pereira, who teaches history at Mineola High School.

“I happen to teach history and I happen to be of Portuguese descent. So this is close to my heart,” said Pereira, who compared de Sousa Mendes to Visiato, a Portuguese man who led his people in opposition to ancient Rome.

Pereira said that the humanitarian actions of de Sousa Mendes was a bright spot in an otherwise dark period of Portugal’s history when its fascist dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar collaborated with Germany’s Third Reich.

“Good triumphed over evil, light over darkness, thanks to Aristedes de Sousa Mendes,” Pereira said.

Those who received the visas quickly departed on ships bound for New York City; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Havana, Cuba and Haifa, Palestine.

The organizer of the event, Joao Crisostomo, said the producers of the de Sousa Mendes film are hoping to strike a deal to distribute the film, directed by Belgian Henri Seroka, in Europe and the U.S. later this year.

“We can do things in this word when we want to,” Crisostomo said, in commenting on de Sousa Mendes’s legacy.

Crisostomo, who said he has been working to raise public awareness about the de Sousa Mendes story for the past 16 years, started a foundation last year that he said he hopes will carry on his work. Information about the foundation is available online at www.sousamendes.org.

Prins said the survival of his parents, grandparents and himself was “all because of de Sousa Mendes.”

In the film, the de Sousa Mendes character says, “We’re the only ones who can save souls from this hell. Maybe God has forgotten about us. Maybe we have forgotten him.”

After issuing the visas – contrary to the policy of the French puppet government – de Sousa Mendes was recalled to Portugal, put through a trial, stripped of his diplomatic credentials and his pension.

During the trial, de Sousa Mendes said, “I could not differentiate between nationalities. I was obeying the dictates of humanity that distinguish between neither race nor nationality.”

The publicly disgraced consul remained in Portugal, and eventually died destitute in Lisbon in 1954, according to Pereira, who said that de Sousa Mendes was in the care of Jewish refugees when he died.

Pereira said he had already graduated from college when he first learned the story of de Sousa Mendes and he said he was pleased that so many young students in the community had come to see the film.

“Hopefully they will take this with them. By being exposed to it, they will ask questions,” Pereira said. “Hopefully this will begin to gain a larger audience.”

The event also marked the concluding weekend of a traveling exhibit about de Sousa Mendes’s legacy as a hero of the Holocaust. The original handwritten list of those people who de Sousa Mendes is credited with saving currently is on display in the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan.

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