Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Aristides de Sousa Mendes

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

This week we highlight another little known historical hero. In this case, a Portuguese diplomat who rescued people from Nazi Germany, at his own peril. Dig in and spread the word of Aristides de Sousa Mendes.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and there's Josh, the other Josh, and this is short stuff.

Did I say that already? I don't know. Enough talk, Chuck, let's get to it. We're talking today about a man who is shamefully, or was shamefully overlooked by history, starting to get his due finally, named Aristide de Souza Mendez do Amaral at Branches. I think I came awfully close.

My Portuguese is a little rusty, seeing as how I've never spoken a word of it in my life. And not bad. We can call him the Portuguese Oscar Schindler, and that should give you a good idea of where this episode is headed. Okay, Aristide de Souza Mendez, we're just gonna leave it at that.

By the time 1938 rolled around, had become a career diplomat for Portugal. He was trained as a lawyer, and by the time he was assigned to Bordeaux, France, in 1938, he had been all over the world. He was definitely a senior diplomat in the diplomatic corps for Portugal. That's right, so in 1938, like you said,

he was in France, World War II comes knocking on his door, Germany invades Poland, and Portugal was like, I really like, we're Portuguese, we're not into this World War stuff. I don't know if you got the memo, but we'd like to remain sort of neutral and happy over here growing olives and drinking wine. And so we're gonna distribute this thing

called Circular 14, that basically says, all of our consuls all over the world, you need to deny travel into Portugal for refugees. We don't like that you're being persecuted, but we wanna stay out of this as much as possible, AKA we don't wanna make Hitler mad. So we're not gonna take your refugees, including the Jewish people.

Right, and this is the Circular 14, it gets sent out to all consulates in Europe, and that was supposed to be that. But this came at like a time, Chuck, when there were apparently the New York Times estimated something between six and 10 million people moving around Europe, because chaos was just starting to brew

as Germany invaded Poland and then invaded France. It was pushing and displacing a lot of people around who were trying to get out of here. And I looked up, that's a pretty big number, but what is it in today's terms? In Germany, 10 million people move around the country a year on their train system, in a year. This was like, at once there were six to 10 million people

moving around, and they were moving around chaotically. But again, Portugal said, now, we're not taking part in this, just stand there motionless, silent, and don't do anything, they're gonna have to figure out a different way. And if Germany gets them well, then that's too bad. And this Aristide de Souza Mendez said,

I don't think I can do that. Yeah, so he's in Southern France, so that was a hotspot for these refugees, because they were thinking, we can from there just go into Spain, then right into Portugal. Right, that's what Lauren Bacaldi in Casablanca, she flew to Lisbon.

That's right, but I don't think they could fly into Lisbon at the time. Yeah, they could, she hops on a plane at the end. Well, she did. Right, sure. Oh, you're saying the people who are seeking help from Souza Mendez. That's right.

Sure, sure, gotcha. So he knows that if he goes directly against his government, this is gonna be bad news for him, it's gonna be bad news for his family, he would be willfully disobeying a direct order of Circular 14. But he befriended a Polish rabbi named Chyme Herz Kruger, Nice.

And he offered visas to this guy in his family, but Kruger was like, you know what, I'm gonna turn down this offer, because what you really need to do is save everybody that you can. And it was a really sort of monumental moment for Souza Mendez, because he was a devout Catholic, and this guy was a rabbi,

and they had their mind on the same thing, except the rabbi was just saying like, be bold, and Souza Mendez was in fear of his life, basically. Yeah, because I mean, like him not listening to the Circular 14, it wasn't like listening, you're not listening to, in order from like the Jimmy Carter administration, there was a dictator running the show in Portugal at the time

and would continue to run the show until 1970, I believe. So it was a real conundrum that he found himself in, but ultimately he consulted his own conscience, and he said, no, morally I have to do something, I can't just sit by. And he did, he took the advice of this rabbi, and in Bordeaux, he set up basically an assembly line for stamping and signing any and every visa application

into Portugal that was handed to him by anybody. He tried to get as many people safe passage into Portugal as he physically could. Yeah, and I think given what's gonna get minor political here, what's going on in this country today, we should read this quote from Souza Mendez. I have it all in my hands now to save the many thousands of persons who have come from everywhere in Europe,

in the hope of finding sanctuary in Portugal. They are all human beings, and their status in life, their religion, or color, are all together immaterial to me. So let's dwell on that during the message break, and we'll be back right after this. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] On the podcast, paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

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from the ACLU just now. So they're running a lot of people through this thing. I mean, like you said, it was like an assembly line and they were stamping visas. Like they were running out of stamps. They were stamping visas so fast. Yeah, there's no way that he didn't get a hand cramp on the rig.

Tens of thousands of people, many thousands of which were Jewish were granted these visas under his authority and it was later said it was perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust. And that includes Oscar Schindler. That's huge. Yeah, Schindler I think was responsible

for making sure that 1200 people successfully escaped the Holocaust. Susan Mendez was responsible for likely many, many thousands more than that. Like they've identified so far at least 3,800 recipients from 49 different countries, but they're like, there's thousands and thousands more just from this assembly line that they set up from,

I believe the beginning of May until July when Bordeaux was overrun by the Nazis and the whole operation was broken up. So repercussions for sure. July 1940, he was recalled from Bordeaux to face trial for insubordination and he basically says in court, you know what? I answered a God, I would rather stand with God

against man than man against God. And he was convinced that he had a moral defense and he was right. And he was convinced that the actual constitution of Portugal prohibited persecution based on religion. And he was right there as well, but it didn't matter because like you said, they were living under a dictatorship. And in October of 1940, he was found guilty.

He was relieved of his duties and blacklisted by the government for the rest of his life. And very, very sadly died in 1954 at the Franciscan hospital for the poor in Lisbon. Yes, not penniless. I noticed this article said he was broke. I don't know how much you dislike the word penniless to describe somebody who dies broke.

I didn't see that it said penniless. There was like, I think in the Tesla episode we did, you're like, I hate that word. Oh really? Yeah, cause you're like, I'm sure he's got a penny. I didn't know that he supposedly didn't have any money, but. Yeah, he was broke. I mean, like they broke him.

They basically said, you're not gonna have any more government work and good luck finding anything but a government work in a bureaucratic dictatorship. So he, yeah, he was blacklisted, he was black bald and he died in poverty with his family also taken down with him. You know, like this guy said, and he knew the risk

and he said, I'm going to put all these other families in front of my own family. And like if you're a utilitarian that makes a lot of sense because even two families are worth more than one family, but still this is this guy's own family that he's putting under the gun to help all of these others. Yeah, but he did not regret it toward the end of his life. He said, I could not have acted otherwise

and I therefore accept all that has befallen me with love. How's that for a lesson? It is a great lesson. And now he is typically mentioned along with Oscar Schindler who is no slouch himself. No, no, no shade on Schindler and what he did. But I mean like Susa Mendez also deserves a decent amount of credit as well.

And slowly but surely it started to come around. His daughter Joanna Susa Mendez really started to beat the drum to revive her father's standing in the world in 1966. She got a petition approved so that her father would be named a righteous among nations, which is what the Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

It's an honor that they bestow on non-Jews who went to great lengths and placed themselves at great risk to save people from the Holocaust. So that was a big first step. And that took place in 1966, but they kept going. And then eventually a daughter from one of the people that he saved directly joined this too. Yeah, I mean he was honored a few times.

In 1987 the US Congress convinced the Portuguese government to officially apologize. And then after these ancestors of the survivors started coming forward. And they started digging these people up and compiled of a list so far, this foundation, the Susa Mendez Foundation, which is co-founded by his grandchildren and descendants of the people

that he saved, which is just an amazing story. They've compiled a list of about 3,800 visa recipients in 49 different countries. And they are still on the lookout for more people. It's like this big sort of dispersed family all over the world. Yeah, and they make the point too that not only did he save all these people,

this minimum of 3,800, but probably thousands and thousands and thousands more, he directly saved their lives. He also ensured the lives of their offspring who hadn't even been born yet, who are now born and have managed to live who otherwise wouldn't have lived had it not been for the direct intervention of this guy. Amazing.

Yeah, so hats off, Aristides Susa Mendez. That's a great name and you're a great guy. We do a lot of hats off in these shorties, I like it. Yeah, it's kind of a celebratory series, isn't it? Yeah, here and there is for sure. Or we talked about some weird dumb thing that no one knows about, never understands. Right, but that's what people like, right?

That's right. Okay, well, hopefully you like this one. If not, don't tell us, okay? See you later. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

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