Giorgio Perlasca - in World War II

In World War II

During the initial phase of World War II, Perlasca worked at procuring supplies for the Italian Army in the Balkans. He was later appointed as an official delegate of the Italian government with diplomatic status and sent to Eastern Europe with the mission of buying meat for the Italian army fighting on the Russian front. On 8 September 1943, the American general Dwight Eisenhower announced the unconditional surrender of Italy to the allied forces. Italians then had to choose whether to join Mussolini's newly formed Italian Social Republic or stay loyal to the King and fight on the Allies' side. Fully disillusioned with Fascism, Perlasca chose the latter while in Budapest. This cost him his freedom as the Hungarian government, threatened by Germany, took him as a prisoner, confining him in a castle reserved for diplomats. After a few months, he took advantage of a medical pass that allowed him to travel within Hungary to get away and use his safe pass to request political asylum at the Spanish Embassy, due to his status as a veteran of the Spanish war. Suddenly Giorgio became "Jorge", and since Spain was neutral in the war he was now a free man. He worked with the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states in smuggling Jews out of the country. The system he devised consisted of furnishing 'protection cards' which placed Jews under the guardianship of various neutral states, and of creating protected houses in mansions governed by extraterrorial conventions, thereby guaranteeing asylum for persecuted Jews.

When Sanz Briz was removed from Hungary to Switzerland in November 1944, he invited Perlasca to join him to safety. However Perlasca chose to stay on. The Hungarian government ordered the Spanish Embassy building and the extraterritorial houses where the Jews took refuge cleared out. Perlasca immediately gave the false announcement that Sanz Briz was due to return from a short leave, and that he had been appointed a substitute.

Throughout the winter, Perlasca was active in hiding, shielding and feeding thousands of Jews in Budapest, and to issue them with safe conduct passes on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that grants citizenship to Jews of Sephardi origin.

In December 1944, Perlasca audaciously rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene. Swedish diplomat/rescuer Raoul Wallenberg, also present, later informed Perlasca that the officer who had challenged him was none other than Adolf Eichmann. In a period of some 45 days, from December the 1st 1944 to the 16 of January 1945, he saved over five thousand Jews by his own initiative, about four times as many as were saved by much more famous Oskar Schindler.

After the war, Perlasca returned to Italy, but didn't reveal his actions to anyone, including his family, until 1987, when a group of Hungarian Jews he had saved finally found him. A best-selling narrative of his remarkable single-handed valour was written by Enrico Deaglio, entitled, the 'Banality of Goodness', and was turned into a film by the RAI national television corporation.

Giorgio Perlasca died of a heart attack in 1992, having received decorations from the Italian, Hungarian and Spanish governments and is considered by the State of Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. His deeds were the subject of an Italian film, Perlasca, un Eroe Italiano.