Sousa Mendes helped saved Jews in France, finally receives

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53006790



To me, this is good news. First off, the initial facts themselves. Upon being challenged by a rabbi he was friends with, Sousa Mendes shut himself up in his home and fell into a depression.

He emerged convinced that he had to do the right thing, which was to issue passports to as many Jewish persons as he could.

And these passports enabled Jews in France to enter Spain and then Portugal.

Of course, no authority likes different defiance. Sousa Mendes lost both his job and his pension, but he saved between 10,000 and 30,000 people. And in this case, there may not have been a way to finesse the situation and still keep his job.

The second part — that it took the gov’t of Portugal this long to finally recognize him as a national hero — is not so cheerful and optimistic. Maybe in the 1980s, they didn’t want to admit they had made the mistake, and it was still too close. Dear reader, you may have experience yourself with schools not being able to admit mistakes. I certainly do.

In any case, it’s good that Aristides de Sousa Mendes finally got positive recognition from his country of Portugal that he was a moral hero during World War II.