In this episode, I am talking to Lee Sterling who tells me how his family escaped and how in 1939 Jews, gypsies, communists, and gays - everyone that the Germans wanted to annihilate, walked towards Bordeaux France so that they can run away from the Nazis.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes the Portuguese consul-general in the French city of Bordeaux , France, he defied the orders of the Salazar Portoguese regime, and in June 1940 issued visas and passports to an undetermined number of Jews and other refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
For this, Sousa Mendes was punished by the Salazar regime.
For his work to save jews, Sousa Mendes received the honour Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Va’Shem.