The Other Schindlers (10 page)

It was the pressure of all these desperate people and the failure of Lisbon to understand or care which made Aristides so ill. The three days he took to his bed were 13, 14 and 15 June 1940. Whilst Aristides wrestled with his soul, Angelina coped. ‘She became the rock, bearing up under the pressure and sustaining her husband as he lay prostrate, rent by anguish. One son, Sebastian, later heard the father speak of a night spent entirely in prayer, together with his wife. It was during those three days that his father’s hair turned white, wrote Sebastian.’
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But afterwards he was clear about what he would do. He got up, washed, shaved and dressed, and marched into his office and announced to all that he would issue everyone with a visa. He added:

Thus, on 16 June the work on issuing visas was begun and it continued for three days. A production line was created with passports collected, often by Rabbi Kruger, and de Mendes Sousa signed them all – no questions were asked. The Rabbi’s son was astounded by his father’s role and noted that in his enthusiasm to save as many people as he could, ‘he went out into the street without his black
jacket, without his hat and even without his skullcap – something I’d never seen him do before’.
177

On the night of 19 June, Bordeaux was bombed by German planes and the desperate refugees fled closer to the Spanish border, to Bayonne and Hendaye. De Sousa Mendes left his family and struggled through the crowds to Bayonne where some 25,000 people were besieging the Portuguese Consulate in which the Consul had locked himself. Aristides used his seniority to tell Consul Machado that he would be responsible for issuing visas and began a new ‘visa assembly line’. During the next forty-eight hours thousands of visas were issued, but meanwhile, the Consul was reporting this activity to Lisbon and the Portuguese Ambassador in Madrid.

On 22 June Aristides followed the frantic crowd to Hendaye, which is on the French side of the border marked by the river Bidassoa. There, too, he
distributed
visas for entry into Portugal, often written on odd scraps of paper. However, the border gates were firmly shut and Aristides personally went to speak to the border guards. Eventually he opened the gates to Irun – the town on the Spanish side – himself so people could get on the trains to Portugal. He later spoke of people he could not help committing suicide in front of him. It was this scene that greeted Ambassador Pereira when he arrived at Irun, and that he described in his letter to Prime Minister Salazar.

The visa signing, called by Yehuda Bauer ‘The greatest rescue operation carried out by a single person during the Holocaust’, continued for three to four days and many famous names were amongst those he saved, including Otto of Hapsburg and his family, who went to Portugal and then on to the USA. Otto himself saved many of his compatriots but he commented: ‘I was only doing my duty, whereas what Sousa Mendes accomplished was an admirable action.’
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Nevertheless, he was recalled to Lisbon and disgraced. Some time after his return to Lisbon he again met Rabbi Kruger, who asked him:

When de Sousa Mendes got back to Lisbon there was a hearing about his actions, with fifteen separate charges, on 10 August 1940; the tribunal decided on 29 October 1940 that he should be reduced to a lower rank, which permitted him to carry on working. This was too lenient for Salazar who quite
unconstitutionally
forced him out of the diplomatic service, causing him financial ruin because his pension was forfeited. He still had his large family to feed and he continued
to try to fight the authorities. His pleas for financial aid from the government were ignored and he was only helped by the Jewish community of Lisbon, who gave him a small monthly allowance and fed the family in their soup kitchen. Meanwhile, during 1941, he was struggling to justify his actions as ‘the
powerful
imperatives of human solidarity’.
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In 1945 he presented a protest to the President of the National Assembly. An English version was sent to me by John Paul, and Aristides defended himself yet again, asking for financial compensation. He concludes:

No response was received. But the validity of his actions was corroborated as a liberated Europe revealed the full horror of the Holocaust and the fate that one brave man had saved so many people from. Angelina died in their poverty in 1948 and Aristides himself in April 1954.

After his death, his children gradually left Portugal to live in different
countries
, and his heavily mortgaged home at Cabanas de Vriato was sold to pay debts. In 2007 his grandson Antonius told of plans to restore the dilapidated house as a library and a centre for the Aristides de Sousa Mendes Foundation with the support of the Israeli Embassy.

John Paul Abranches wrote to me that Cavaco Silva, Prime Minister of Portugal (1985–95), and President since 2006, told his sister Joana in 1986: ‘My dear lady, if any of my ministers disobeyed my orders, they too would be dismissed.’
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The following fact emerged during the course of researching de Sousa Mendes: Henrie Zvi Deutsch, a recipient of one of de Sousa Mendes’
life-saving
visas, explained:

Even after Portugal became a democracy in 1974, Aristides was not recognised by the state. It was only in 1986, following a petition by John Paul, that the then President of Portugal, Mario Soares, rehabilitated and honoured Aristides. He himself had been exiled by the dictator Salazar, so presumably he was more
sympathetic
to a rebel’s cause.

In March 1995 President Mario Soares and his wife hosted a reception for fifty members of the Mendes family, together with supporters from America. Henrie Zvi was the only visa receiver present and noted wryly: ‘Unfortunately the
goodwill
of the former president and first lady have not affected the official stance towards Mendes; the Portuguese prime minister informed Pedro Nuno, one of two sons who helped issue visas, that if his father were to disobey his
government’s
orders today, he would be punished just as severely.’
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De Sousa Mendes’ Jewish ancestry has often been mentioned as a motive for his rescues. David Shpiro, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, dismissed this theory:

John Paul Abranches established the International Committee for the Commemoration of Aristides de Sousa Mendes in 1986 with other family members. I met him in London in April 2002 at the London Jewish Cultural Centre at the launch of the exhibition called ‘Visas for Life’, about diplomats who between them saved about 250,000 Jews from the Nazis. John subsequently sent me considerable personal information on his father. Sadly, he died on 5 February 2009 – the last surviving son of Aristides de Sousa Mendes. His nephew, Sebastian Mendes, an art professor in Washington, told me that he now speaks about his grandfather all over the world and that it was his own father, Sebastião Miguel Darte de Sousa Mendes, who wrote the first book about his grandfather in 1952.
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The family had worked valiantly to get Aristides rehabilitated and to tell the world about his actions. John Paul ended a letter to me: ‘Whenever I give a talk, I always remind the audience that one day they too will have their “moment of truth”. There will be no time to think, only to act. Hopefully, helping your neighbor will be second nature to you.’
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Jelle (1912–93) and Elizabeth (1912–92) van Dyk
. Miriam Dunner (1941– 2006) was born in Rotterdam as Miriam Cohen. Her parents were Arthur and Rosetta, and in 1942, when she was 16 months old, her parents, who went into
hiding, left her with a Protestant couple. The couple, who were childless, were Jelle van Dyk, a baker, and his wife Elizabeth. Miriam could not speak yet – children of such an age were easier to place because they could not betray any confidences. They called her Anke.
188

The van Dyks were in a risky position because they owned a bakery,
employing
staff who would be aware of Miriam. They said Miriam had been left on the doorstep and they adopted her legally, so she then had two birth certificates. Her father and Jelle were both in the Underground and it was as a result of that contact that Jelle agreed to care for Miriam. It was not easy for them – in 1944 Jelle was caught with false ration cards, in the course of his work for the Underground, and was sent to a camp where he had to stay until the end of the war. Elizabeth then looked after Miriam on her own and they became very close. When the war ended she was 4½ years old. Her parents returned to Rotterdam and Miriam went back to them in September 1945 without warning or explanation. She was merely put in a car and sent off to her parents where she was told she was a Jewish child with different parents and a different name. As a result, in those days before counselling, she was completely traumatised and never really bonded again with her own mother. Miriam described her as a cold, jealous woman who resented the relationship Miriam had with Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, although the van Dyks saved Miriam’s life, the traumatic
experience
of failing to readjust after the war caused Miriam great emotional problems. She was married in 1960 and came to England. She kept in touch with the van Dyks and Miriam knew that Elizabeth was very ill the last time she visited her, before she died in November 1992. She attended the funeral with her husband but was so overwhelmed with emotion that it made her ill. She spoke to Jelle on the telephone every Sunday until he died months later. It was the end of an era to her and she felt she had lost part of her identity. She has visited her foster brother in America.

Her own parents died within five weeks of each other in November/December 2000. Her mother had been incapacitated for four years and died first. Her father had always been very wrapped up in his wife and constantly took her side. She remained extremely angry with her parents for the way they treated her. She had seen a British psychologist but he did not understand about ‘hidden children’. She later saw a Dutch one and attended a conference with 700 other hidden children which she found helpful. She told me, ‘Hidden children feel that no one likes them and are always trying to be good and to be liked’. She explained that she had such a personality. However, she grew up knowing little about the Holocaust until she read the book
Exodus
in the 1960s.

In spite of the trauma Miriam suffered, the van Dyks were extremely good to her and certainly put themselves at risk by taking her in. They could have been
betrayed at any time by their employees. They were very religious, particularly her stepmother Elizabeth, who was also very strong, and they really wanted to save her. They were also extremely anti-Nazi. Miriam felt that perhaps they thought they would be able to keep her if her parents did not survive the war. In fact, they subsequently adopted a little boy when the war was over.

Miriam trained in education and later became a remedial teacher. She had five children: four boys and a girl. Sadly, Miriam Dunner died very unexpectedly in 2006, at which time she and her husband had thirty-four grandchildren.
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I discovered, after meeting Mrs Dunner in 2001, that the question of the return of such ‘hidden’ children had been the subject of legislation in the Netherlands. Apparently, the united Dutch resistance groups proposed to the Dutch
government
in exile in London in 1944 that all Dutch Jewish children who were being hidden from the Nazis should remain with their foster parents after the war. This legislation was implemented in May 1945 and caused tremendous problems. Jewish parents had to defend their claim in front of a committee and had to prove that they were able to bring their children up properly; that they had the financial means to do so; that they had a house; and that they were practising Jews.