John Paul Abranches
Son Of Aristides De Sousa Mendes
Portuguese Righteous Gentile
by Anne Treseder
from HaLapid, Spring 2009
•John Paul Abranches, who spearheaded efforts to honor and
“rehabilitate” his father, Portuguese diplomat and Righteous
Gentile Aristides de Sousa Mendes, passed away in Antioch,
California, on February 5, 2009, after a long illness.
John Paul was 78. He was the last surviving son of his parents, Aristides
and Angelina de Sousa Mendes. (His full name was Joao Paulo de
Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches.) John Paul was my friend, and,
along with many others, I helped him in his efforts. I also served as the
“archivist” of the International Committee to Commemorate Dr. Aristides
de Sousa Mendes, as described more fully below.
John Paul’s father, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who had been Portuguese
consul in San Francisco, California, in the early 1920’s, was the
Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, in 1940, when Paris fell to the
advancing German army and Jewish and other refugees fled southwestward
to escape into neutral Spain. But the Spanish authorities would
not allow refugees to enter Spain without a Portuguese visa.
Against the orders of Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar, who had directed
that no Jews or other “undesirables” be allowed visas, Aristides de
Sousa Mendes, with the support and assistance of his wife Angelina, his
older sons Pedro Nuno and Jose’, and Rabbi Haim Krueger, issued Portuguese
visas “around the clock” in June 1940 to as many refugees as possible,
without regard to nationality or religion. He is credited with saving the lives
of 30,000 refugees, including 10,000 Jews. [An article in the August 1941
National Geographic Magazine (“Portugal--Gateway to a Warring Europe”)
documents the presence of the many rescued refugees in neutral Portugal.]
Aristides de Sousa Mendes’ acts of moral courage and “disobedience”
resulted in his dismissal from the Portuguese diplomatic corps,
his public disgrace, and his own impoverishment. He died a pauper in
Lisbon, Portugal, in 1954; his wife Angelina had predeceased him.
Because of his “disgrace,” most of Aristides’ children could not find
employment in Portugal, and were forced to immigrate to other countries.
As set forth in the death notice placed by the Abranches family in
the Contra Costa Times, Feb. 8, 2009, John Paul was born on January 7,
1931, in Louvain, Belgium, and was raised in France and Portugal.
With the assistance of Jewish charitable agencies, John Paul moved to
the United States at the age of 19. He joined the U.S. Army in 1951 and was
stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska. Following his Army stint, he moved to San
Francisco and met the love of his life, Joan (Casey), to whom he was married
for 51 years. Together, while living in Dublin, CA, they raised four
children: Paul (Nelly), Newman, CA; Peter, Antioch, CA; Sheila, Queens,
NY: and Eileen (Joe), Oakley, CA, all of whom survive him.
John worked as an Architectural Draftsman for The Hofmann
Company in Concord for many years. As his family relates, in his spare
time John was a big believer in helping others. As a member of the St.
Raymond’s Catholic Church in Dublin, CA, he was an active participant
in the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and the Chairman of the Vietnamese
Refugee Committee in Dublin; he helped many new immigrants to his
community learn to read, write and speak English.
But John’s great passion during his entire adult life was to honor and
rehabilitate the name of his father Aristides, who, even after Portugal’s
democratic revolution in 1974, remained a “non-person” in Portugal.
In 1967, through the efforts of John’s sister Joana, Aristides de Sousa
Mendes was recognized as a Righteous Gentile at Yad Vashem in Israel.
Despite this honor in Israel, Aristides de Sousa Mendes remained
largely unknown in the larger Jewish and Portuguese communities, and
unheralded in his homeland.
I met John Paul when I hired his nephew, Carlos de Sousa Mendes,
as a Portuguese tutor in 1985. Carlos told me the story of his grandfather,
Aristides, and introduced me to his uncle John Paul and to John
Paul’s wife Joan, who became my friends. Later that year, I traveled to
Lisbon and met more of the Sousa Mendes family, including Dr. Pedro
Nuno de Sousa Mendes, John Paul’s older brother, who had helped their
father Aristides issue the precious visas in June 1940.
I learned that John Paul had been trying for decades to rehabilitate
and honor the name of his father. For instance, he gave me a copy of an
article about Aristides de Sousa Mendes written by San Francisco News
Call-Bulletin columnist Guy Wright in 1961, at the request of a young
John Paul Abranches. I tried to interest press people in the story, but
was told that we needed a current news event on which to “peg” the
story of Aristides.
In early 1986, John Paul and his wife Joan, inadvertently created
such an “event”: a petition to the new Portuguese President, Mario
Soares, who himself had been a victim of the Portuguese dictator Salazar,
to rehabilitate and honor Aristides de Sousa Mendes. John Paul and
Joan set up a card table with the petitions in front of their parish church
(St. Raymond’s, in Dublin, CA).
This “event” caught the attention of an Oakland Tribune writer, Roland
De Wolk, whose article (Oakland Tribune, March 17, 1986), in
turn, caught the eye of Robert Jacobvitz, executive director of the Jewish
Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the Greater East Bay. Robert
had not heard of the Righteous Gentile Aristides de Sousa Mendes,
but he quickly confirmed the importance of Aristides’ rescue efforts
with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance authority in Israel.
Thereafter, under Robert’s direction, we (Robert, John Paul, Joan,
and I) formed the International Committee to Commemorate Dr.. Aristides
de Sousa Mendes. Our letterhead was in three languages: English,
Portuguese, and Hebrew.
It was an act of loving chutzpah.
As Robert related in an e-mail to me:
“I realized that the Sousa Mendes family were themselves unidentified
victims of the Holocaust, and that they had no one in any position
of authority, either within the Jewish Community or anywhere else, to
advance their cause: To correct a terrible wrong that had befallen a Man
and his family, I had no choice as a Jew but to help this family.”
We all commenced to work full time (in addition to our “day
jobs”) on this cause. My Portuguese helped me with Portuguese-language
media and contacts. Robert contacted the JCRCs throughout
the nation where there were significant Portuguese-American populations.
Events joining the Portuguese and Jewish communities began
happening all over the U.S.; resolutions were passed in State Legislatures.
And in House of Representatives, Portuguese-American Congressman
Tony Coelho and Jewish-American Congressman Henry
Waxman also joined the cause. Newspaper articles began appearing
in the mainstream, Jewish, and Portuguese-language press. The New
York Times covered the story. (New York Times, May 4, 1986, p. 16.).
In San Jose, CA, the Portuguese Tribune took up the cause. People
whose lives had been saved by Aristides’ visas came forward. People
and groups from all over expressed interest. Our little “international”
committee became, in fact, truly international. International attention
mounted, including in Portugal.
In May 1987, Portuguese President Mario Soares came to Washington,
D.C., and presented a Portuguese medal to the late Aristides de Sousa
Mendes at the Portuguese Embassy. I watched in amazement as most of
Aristides’ surviving children, and many of the grandchildren, met, all together
for the first time, in Washington. There were happy conversations
in Portuguese, French, and English. These were beautiful sounds.
The day after the medal presentation, we met again with President
Soares at the Library of Congress building in Washington, where President
Soares apologized to the Sousa Mendes family for the wrong done
to them and their father during the Salazar dictatorship. Robert and I
knew that we were witnessing history being properly rewritten.
On March 18, 1988, in the presence of Sousa Mendes family members,
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was finally rehabilitated and posthumously
honored by Portugal’s Assembleia da Republica (its Parliament).
At present time, Aristides de Sousa Mendes is honored in Portugal
as a hero and humanitarian. Schools and streets are named after him.
In a recent public poll, he was voted among the ten greatest Portuguese
of all times. (New York Times, July 25, 2007.) And he continues to be
honored worldwide, and is presently the subject of a play that opened
recently in London.
From 1986 until 2005, John Paul Abranches spoke to many groups and
at many events throughout the United States and beyond. He was fluent
in English, Portuguese, and French. John Paul told me once that public
speaking was hard for him, and that even after many speeches, these undertakings
were stressful, but that he felt a duty to accept each request for
a presentation in order to speak on behalf of his beloved father. He always
made the point that his father should not only be honored, but emulated, as
people continue to need help to survive in the present day.
At the Tifereth Israel synagogue, New Bedford,
Massachusetts, in April 1987, John Paul said that his father did not want to disobey
orders, but he could not ignore the tragedy that was befalling he Jews. His
father had taken his own children to the safety of Portugal earlier, and he
felt that he could not deny the same opportunity to the fleeing refugees.
What the example of Aristides de Sousa Mendes shows us that
each person can make a difference by doing what is morally right, irrespective
of the consequences. That is the only way to prevent human
injustice and genocide.
In addition to his four children, John also leaves behind four grandchildren,
two sisters, Teresinha Swec and Marie Rose Faure, many beloved
nieces, nephews, and in-laws, and many dear friends.