Passport with life-saving visa by Aristides de Sousa Mendes
Fall of France and the race to safety in 1940.
By 1940 the conditions for Jews in Europe were getting worse by the day. Be it in direct German control, axis countries or even in neighboring relatively safer places, Jews were being hunted or under threat. It was not safe. Europe was no longer the warm house they thought it was.
By the middle of 1940 it was already clear that France was doomed. Thousands of refugees were fleeing south, in an effort to find a way out of the country that was being overrun by the German army. In June the Germans were marching into Paris, and in the south the highways were clogged with women, children and the elderly.
French and non-French Jews were also desperately trying to find a way out and one of the methods was applying for foreign entry visas into neighboring or neutral countries. One such country was Portugal. Obtaining a visa was relatively easier for non-Jews since by 1938 the borders worldwide were shutting down with explicit orders not to issue them visas. The case for Portugal is not clear though some historian’s recon that the November 11th, 1939 “circular 14” issued by Lisbon to all their missions abroad not to issue visas to those who cannot prove they are ONLY transiting through the country was not done specifically against the Jews but possibly because of economic reasons and to ease the financial burden on various institutions in the country. And when Aristides de Sousa Mendes began issuing visas to Jews, defying such a direct governmental decree, though it was unthinkable, he did so because of human reasons. By June of 1940 he had already issued score of visas and false papers to various refugees, and now he was disobeying a direct decree as well.
The document here on its’ own is a rarity: the scarcest of travel documents issued to refugees were the “Nansen passports“, which were issued following the 1922 international conference regarding the issuing of Identity Certificates for Russian Refugees, convened in Geneva, Switzerland by Fridtjof Nansen for 2 days in July. French Nansen Passport issued in Parsi on August 22nd, 1939, to 34-year-old Valentine Kurow, originally from Odessa, Russia (she and her mother escaped the Russian Civil War on an Imperial Russian passport issued in 1919). The travel document number 27.699 has several interesting visas inside: US, Spanish and most important of all, the visa was issued by the famed righteous among the nations, Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
As mentioned above, it was a race against time to escape France and obtain the exit visas out of the country, starting with visas from the Spanish & Portuguese consulates.
Portuguese visa umber 1203 was issued on June 5th, 1940, and hand signed by Aristides de Sousa Mendes himself.
Valentine was fortunate enough to board a ship that took her to the US safely.
Once again, we are confronted with the acts of courageous individuals who put their lives and careers at risk in order to do the right thing…life is very precious, we all need to cherries it.
Smaller image source: Wikipedia.
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