An Amazing Bit of WWII History

From the Smithsonian November 2021 issue, this story:

Surely if you have known any children in the last 30 or 50 years, you have probably read the Children's Literary Classic - CURIOUS GEORGE. The authors and illustrators, H. A. and Margaret Rey were once trapped in southern France as the Nazi army marched and bombed its way over France. They were helped by a miraculously brave and generous hearted Portuguese diplomat named Aristides Sousa Mendez. He had been forbidden by his superiors to issue visas to the thousands of refugees piling up along the border to Spain, hoping to ecape the onslaught of the Nazi occupation. He defied his orders and set up a veritable assemply line to stamp passports and issue visas to thousands of people from all walks of life. They were making their way through Spain to Portugal and from their to any place they could get to, South America, the U.S. It was a life and death situation.

If you never read Curious George, perhaps you might have seen the classic Humphrey Bogart nd Ingrid Bergman movie, Casablanca. That movie as about those same refugees after they have escaped as far as Morocco and are trying to get away to any place safe. The young woman who begs for help from the Vichy consul and then gets help from Rick (Humphrey Bogart) wa an actress who actually got her visa from Sousa Mendez and escaped via that route to the U.S.

A descendent of one of the thousands saved by Mendez, Olivia Mattis, set up a foundation to honor his memory and preserve his legacy. Among the many professors, physician, scientists, teachers, musicians and writers along with the thousands of ordinary people trying to flee with their families, were such luminaries as Salvador Dali, the famous Surealist painter, and his wife, Gala. Sousa Mendez continued to make visas and stamp passports even after the town where he had been stationed had been bombed. Eventually, his superior in Portugal ordered that none of his signed passports should be honored at the Portuguese border. Sousa Mendex was stiffly reprimanded, punished with financial disaster, and denied his pension. One of Sousa Mendez son's actually joined the U.S. army and was part of the force that landed at Normandy. Sousa Mendes died in poverty from stroke but his memory and his nobility will be remembered by the descendants of the thousands he saved.

Happy Trails, Jo Ann