麻豆约拍

A Portuguese diplomat, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who was shunned and punished by his government, has now been given the highest honour by his government and his tomb has been placed in the country's National Pantheon.聽

Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese consul in the city of Bordeaux, in western France, during World War Two.聽 He defied his superiors and handed out visas to Jews who had fled from elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.聽 He saved the lives of thousands, but after the war, the dictatorship which ruled Portugal sanctioned him for his disobedience.聽 He was stripped of his job and ability to work, and died in 1954, his deeds unknown and forgotten.聽

Olivia Mattis is the granddaughter of one of the many Jews he saved from the Holocaust. She is the president of the Sousa Mendes Foundation in New York, and explains how he came to save so many lives, and how his family have secured this posthumous honour.聽

"He came to the decision that there was one moral way to go."

Photo: One of the visas supplied by Aristides Sousa Mendes Credit: EPA

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