Castellanos Jose

José Arturo Castellanos Jose Arturo Castellanos from El Salvador began his professional life as and army colonel. In 1937 he entered his country’s foreign service, first served in Liverpool and in 1938 was nominated as consul in Hamburg. In face of the desperate situation of the Jews in Germany in the late 1930's, he asked his superiors for permission to issue visas that would enable the Jews to leave Germany. He received written orders not to issue such visas. On 2 January 1939 he sent a letter to his Foreign Minister, describing the terrible situation of the Jews, and trying to persuade him to change his policy, but in vain. He did not receive permission to extend help. In 1941 Castellanos became Salvadoran consul in Geneva. During this time Castellanos decided to deviate from his instructions. His consulate provided citizenship certificates to thousands of Jews in occupied Europe in an effort to protect them from deportation. The citizenship papers were given to Jews who had no connection whatsoever to El Salvador and who didn’t even speak a word of Spanish. Such documents, issued by neutral countries, provided a certain protection and were therefore life-saving. This rescue operation was a joint effort of Castellanos and George Mandel, a Hungarian Jewish businessman, who had assumed a Spanish-sounding version of his last name, “Mantello”. Mandel-Mantello had met José Arturo Castellanos in the years leading up to World War II, and after Castellanos was named El Salvador’s Consul-General in Geneva, he appointed Mantello, to serve as the Consulate’s first secretary. With the consent of Castellanos, George Mantello issued documents identifying thousands of European Jews as citizens of El Salvador. The papers were sent to Jews in France and other occupied countries, and starting in 1944 to Jews in Hungary. In May 1944 El Salvador’s government changed and the new president aligned himself with other western countries that were active in rescuing the Jews inHungary. From that point on Castellanos received his country’s support for his rescue activity. On 3 May 2010 Yad Vashem recognized Jose Arturo Castellanos as Righteous Among the Nations.