Aristides de Sousa Mendes - Posthumous Honors

Posthumous Honors

Family members seeking to clear his name sought to have his story published in magazines and began to contact Jewish visa recipients living in New York. In 1966 Sousa Mendes was honored at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust as one of the "Righteous Among The Nations," one of the first steps in the long journey. In 1986, inspired by the election of a civilian president in Portugal, his son John Paul Abranches began to circulate a petition to the Portuguese president within his adopted country, the United States. He and his wife Joan worked with Robert Jacobvitz, an executive at the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay (Oakland, CA), to start and run the "International Committee to Commemorate Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes." They were able to gain the support of various political actors, including: Colette Avital, the Israeli Ambassador to Portugal who liaised with the Portuguese government; and two members of the California delegation of the United States House of Representatives, Portuguese-American Rep. Tony Coelho and Rep. Henry Waxman, who had a family member saved by Sousa Mendes' signature, who introduced a resolution in Congress to recognize his humanitarian action (passed in 1987).

Also in 1987, the Portuguese Republic began to rehabilitate Sousa Mendes' memory and granted a posthumous Order of Liberty medal, one of that country's highest honors, although the consul's diplomatic honors still were not restored. On March 18, 1988 the Portuguese parliament officially dismissed all charges, restoring him to the diplomatic corps by unanimous vote and honoring him with a standing ovation. He was promoted to the rank of Ambassador He also was issued the Cross of Merit for his actions in Bordeaux. In December of that year, the U.S. Ambassador to Portugal, Edward Rowell presented copies of the congressional resolution from the previous year to Pedro Nuno de Sousa Mendes, one of the sons who had helped in the assembly line at Bordeaux, and to President Mário Soares at the Palácio de Belém. In 1994 former President Soares dedicated a bust of Sousa Mendes in Bordeaux, along with a commemorative plaque at 14 quai Louis-XVIII, the address at which the consulate at Bordeaux had been housed.

In 1995, a commemorative stamp was issued in Portugal.

In 2004, the 50th anniversary of Sousa Mendes' death, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee organized more than 80 commemorations around the world. Religious, cultural and educational activities took place in 30 countries in the five continents.

A great homage was done in memory of Aristides Sousa Mendes at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 11 May and 10 November 2005, in a benefit performance on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of UNESCO and the fortieth anniversary of Portugal's admittance. The baritone Jorge Chaminé gave a recital at the Great Hall. The French writer Jean Lacouture wrote that "in more than 50 years as a listener all over the world, I never heard such an incredible performance. What a marvellous homage to this great man!"

The mansion that Sousa Mendes had to abandon and sell in the poverty of his final years was left for decades to rot and decay, and at one time was to be razed and replaced by a hotel. However, with reparations funds given by the Portuguese government to Sousa Mendes' heirs in 2000, the family decided to create the Aristides de Sousa Mendes Foundation (Fundação Aristides de Sousa Mendes, in Portuguese). With assistance from government officials, the foundation purchased the family home in order to develop a museum in his honor. The house was classified as a Portuguese National Monument on February 3, 2005. The two events at UNESCO raised a 6,000 euro donation for the foundation; even so, the foundation's president said in 2006 that the organization was finding it difficult to raise sufficient additional funds for the renovation.

On 14 January 2007, he was voted into the top ten of the poll show Os Grandes Portugueses (English: The Greatest Portuguese), on 25 March 2007, the day of the results revelation, he was voted into third place, behind deceased communist leader Álvaro Cunhal (runner-up) and deceased dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (winner).

In February 2008, Portuguese Parliamentary Speaker Jaime Gama led a session which launched a virtual Museum, on the World-Wide Web; it offers access to photographs and other documents chronicling Mendes' life. The site includes content in Portuguese, but translations into other languages are planned.