The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

F OCUS ON D I SSENT S AVIOR D IPLOMATS : F INALLY R ECEIVING T HEIR D UE 30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 he commission of the Holo- caust Memorial in Israel, Yad Vashem, has conducted an extensive search to identify “the Righteous among the Na- tions,” non-Jews who saved Jews during WorldWar II. To be recognized, Yad Vashem requires that a Jewish party make the nomination; the assistance must be repeated and/or substantial; assistance to a family member or Jew- ish convert to Christianity does not count; and there can- not have been any expectation of financial gain. More than 20,000 individuals have been so designated thus far. Drawing on Yad Vashem’s research and other sources, the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has compiled a list of 60 “savior diplomats” (not all of whom have been desig- nated “Righteous among the Nations”), including five Americans, on its Web site. The list contains only one woman, Brazilian Aracy Moebius de Carvalho Tess, who was chief of the passport section at the Brazilian consulate in Hamburg. However, this presumably just reflects the fact that few women were employed as diplomats then. Getting Out Jews attempting to flee Germany or German-occupied countries during the 1930s and 1940s had to provide evi- dence of a visa to another country in order to receive per- mission to leave. In addition, they had to obtain transit visas for any countries that they had to cross in order to reach their final destination. Jews would circulate from consulate to consulate in desperate search for the appro- priate visa, and long lines would immediately form when- ever word got around that a particular office was more generous with its issuances. In U.S. practice at the time, and continuing to this day, each consular officer had to determine whether a poten- tial immigrant was “likely to become a public charge” be- fore issuing a visa. To overcome the presumption that this was the case, the applicant had to present either proof of sufficient funds or an affidavit of support from a sponsor in the United States. Because numerical limits were not generally applied to transit visas, consular officials had more discretion to issue those. Harry Bingham While stationed at the U.S. consulate inMarseille from 1940 to 1941, Hiram (“Harry”) Bingham IV and Miles S EVEN DECADES LATER , THE EXAMPLES OF THESE 60 COURAGEOUS PUBLIC SERVANTS STILL OFFER LESSONS FOR MEMBERS OF TODAY ’ S F OREIGN S ERVICE . B Y M ICHAEL M. U YEHARA Michael M. Uyehara, a Foreign Service officer since 1986, is currently a political-military affairs officer at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna. This ar- ticle is based on a research paper he wrote for a graduate course in international relations.