FYI – In case you don’t get tomorrow’s (May 17) copy of the Jewish News of Phoenix. It concerns an obscure historian that some of you know.
FeatureHistorian’s research gets personal
Stamp design
Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes is pictured in a stamp design by historian Steven Carol, of Scottsdale.
Graphic courtesy of Steven Carol
Posted: Thursday, May 16, 2013 10:00 am | Updated: 10:05 am, Thu May 16, 2013.
It’s not unusual for a historian to highlight a little-known incident or figure in history, but it’s not often that the historian has the kind of connection that Scottsdale resident Steven Carol has with the late Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
“My parents got out of France thanks to this little bit of paper,” Carol says, referring to a visa issued by Sousa Mendes, who was the Portuguese consul general stationed in Bordeaux, France, when the Nazis invaded during World War II.
Because of that connection, Carol will speak after the 2 p.m. showing of “Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story” at Harkins Shea 14 Theatres on Sunday, May 19. (The movie is being shown through May 23.)
Carol didn’t really know about Sousa Mendes’ role in his parents’ escape from Nazi-occupied France until his interest in Sousa Mendes was piqued by a May 4, 1986, article in the New York Times headlined: “Consul who aided Jews gains recognition.”
As a historian, Carol told himself at the time, “I should know this guy,” much like he knew about rescuers like Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and German industrialist Oskar Schindler. And something about Sousa Mendes’ story did sound familiar to him because his parents had been able to leave France in the period that Sousa Mendes issued the lifesaving visas that the newspaper article highlighted.
After his father died in 1976, Carol kept all of his papers. Subsequent to reading the article, he says, Carol found among his father’s papers a French police identification document, about 3.5 feet long, with a Sousa Mendes visa attached.
Carol’s parents lived in Paris when the Nazis invaded France. Like many others (2 million Parisians fled before the Nazis entered the city on June 14, 1940), they wanted to leave the city. Having heard about a diplomat in Bordeaux who was issuing visas, they “got out of the city with the assistance of a doctor who said my mother had a severe case of jaundice and needed the country air.” Their visas, signed by Sousa Mendes, were issued June 5, Carol says.
“Because of my discovery, I made contact with the [Sousa Mendes] family,” he says. That initial contact developed into a relationship with Sousa Mendes’ survivors, who fought for 40 years to have the diplomat’s position and honor restored and recognized by the Portuguese government.
Carol has wholeheartedly joined in the effort, and is now a board member of the Sousa Mendes Foundation, which seeks to restore Sousa Mendes’ family estate as a museum and memorial and to perpetuate Sousa Mendes’ legacy. Carol has delivered many presentations on Sousa Mendes and designed a U.S. postage stamp in his honor, elements of which were used by the Portuguese post office when it issued a Sousa Mendes memorial stamp. Carol coined the phrase, “His signature saved thousands,” one of the elements used in the Portuguese stamp and in publicity materials for “Disobedience.”
“I believe he’s on a much higher moral plane than Wallenberg and Schindler,” Carol says. What made Sousa Mendes different was that he saved the refugees in defiance of his orders, declaring, “I would rather stand with God against man than with man against God.” In June 1940, thousands of refugees stood outside his consulate in Bordeaux seeking visas to escape the Nazis. The visas would provide passage out of France through Spain and to Lisbon, where visa holders could ship out of Europe to ports of safety. However, Portugal’s fascist dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar issued “Circular 14,” which directed Portuguese diplomats to deny safe haven to such refugees, including (as the Sousa Mendes Foundation website notes) “explicitly Jews, Russians, and stateless persons who could not freely return to their countries of origin.”
Sousa Mendes defied that order, issuing 30,000 visas, including about 10,000 to Jews, in just a few days. The key to their safe passage was his signature. “In the movie, you see him [signing visas] again and again,” running out of official paper and using any bit of paper to create the visas, says Carol, who vouches that the movie is historically accurate throughout.
Not many of those stray bits of paper that were actually visas survive, Carol says, and he makes a plea to any and all survivors and their descendants to determine what an odd-looking piece of paper actually says before disposing of it. The Sousa Mendes Foundation would like to recover and preserve as many of these visas a possible.
Sousa Mendes was stripped of his diplomatic post and license to practice law. Although a grateful Jewish community helped him and his family, Sousa Mendes’ estate was sold to pay debts and he died in poverty in 1954. He has since been honored by Israel, the United States and Portugal.
Visit sousamendesfoundation.org for details.
Details
What: “Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story” and historian Steven Carol
When: 2 p.m. Sunday, May 19 (talk begins about 4 p.m.)
Where: Harkins Shea 14 Theatres, 7354 E. Shea Blvd., Scottsdale
Contact: 602-222-4275, harkinstheatres.com for advance tickets, prices and other showtimes
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