Souza de Luiz

Dantas, Luiz Martins de Souza Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas had been Brazil’s ambassador to France since 1922. In June 1940, in Paris and then in Vichy, he witnessed the massive southward flight of Frenchmen and refugees as the country was overrun by German troops. From 1937 onward, Brazil prohibited Jewish emigration from entering Brazil. Souza Dantas tried to find ways to get around this ban. On October 8, 1940, Souza Dantas sought authorization from the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Oswaldo Aranha, to “deliver visas, in exceptional cases, to carriers of Nansen passports (stateless persons) or other pieces of identification, under my own responsibility”. The ambassador interpreted the permission obtained from his minister in an extremely generous manner, delivering hundreds visas to Jews and non-Jewish refugees in the non-occupied zone, with the goal of allowing them to leave France. Even so, the recipients of these visas were considered “undesirables” by the Brazilian government. Souza Dantas was perfectly aware that he was contravening the instructions in the decrees sent by his minister to every Brazilian diplomatic mission in the world, which stipulated the ban on delivering visas to “Semites” or “undesirables”, as Jews were identified in the Foreign Office correspondence. Thanks to the infractions committed by the ambassador, hundreds of Jews were able to leave France and Europe. Some of them did not, however, manage to reach Brazil before the expiry date on their visas, and were subsequently turned back. When the Brazilian authorities were preparing to take judicial action against Souza Dantas, he had already reached retirement age, which offered him complete immunity. The intrepid ambassador passed away in Paris in 1954. On June 2, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas as Righteous Among the Nations.