The Legacy of Aristides

A documentary film. As the Portuguese consul to France in the early years of the Second World War, Sousa Mendes found himself restricted by the policies of Portugal's prime minister, who had assumed a position of neutrality in his desire not to offend Hitler. When the Portuguese government denied visas of Jewish refugees entering Portugal because of their religion and perceived race, Sousa Mendes began his first acts of disobedience. Over a period of six months in 1940, in accordance with his own conscience, Sousa Mendes signed thousands of visas that spared the lives of an estimated ten thousand Jews who would have been fated to die in the Nazi death camps. Sousa Mendes' acts of resistance earned him the wrath of his government, forced him to into early retirement, and later years of dire poverty. However, it also won him a place in the pantheon of truly just men and in Israel, a forest commemorating his heroism.