In June 1940, as German forces advanced through France, refugees crowded outside the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux. They needed visas to cross into Spain and reach Portugal. Aristides de Sousa Mendes had been ordered to restrict who could receive them.
He issued them anyway. This episode tells the story of a diplomat who used the authority of his office to help people his government had told him to turn away. He signed visas for refugees fleeing the Nazis, including Jewish families, and continued even after he was ordered to stop.
Those signatures gave people a way out.
For Sousa Mendes, defying the order brought punishment and the loss of his diplomatic career.
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