The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

32 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 ter in Drancy, France. Radu Flon- dor, a Romanian consul in Vienna, is on the list for issuing passports to Jews of Romanian origin in Vienna, allowing them to escape Nazi perse- cution. Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquin- ho, the Portuguese chargé d’affaires in Budapest in 1944, acted with the permission of the Por- tuguese government to issue safe conducts to persons with relatives in Portugal, Brazil or the Portuguese colonies. Diplomats from other countries also issued visas and pass- ports liberally to Jewish refugees. Although he acted on behalf of Jewish applicants, the U.S. consul general in Tangier, Rives Childs, exercised a familiar consular role when he persuaded Spanish author- ities to issue visas and access to Spanish safe houses until Jewish refugees could emigrate from Algeria. The consul general at the U.S. embassy in Berlin until 1941, Raymond Herman Geist, was also cited for helping Jews and anti- Nazis to emigrate fromGermany, intervening on their be- half with high-ranking Nazi officials. Many of these people were under imminent threat of deportation to concentra- tion camps. Acting on Their Own Authority Another group of savior diplomats took actions that, while part of normal diplomatic and consular roles, ex- ceeded their instructions or included activities that would normally be considered improper or even illegal. A U.S. vice consul in Breslau, Stephen B. Vaughan, issued visas for entry to the Philippines (then a U.S. territory) to more than 700 Jewish families escaping Germany in 1938 and 1939, on the basis of their qualifications as agricultural ex- perts — although none were farmers. Monsignor Angelo Rotta, as a diplomat of the Holy See in Bulgaria, issued false baptismal certificates and visas so that Bulgarian Jews could travel to Palestine. And Thomas Preston, a British consul serving in present-day Kaunas, Lithuania, provided 400 illegal Palestinian certificates and 800 certificates of legal journey to Jews so they could escape through Istan- bul to Palestine. A third group violated their instructions. Conspicuous among these was the trade attaché at the German embassy in Copenhagen, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz. Though a member of the Nazi Party, he alerted the Danish govern- ment to Germany’s plans to deport Danish Jews and clan- destinely arranged for Sweden to provide them with safe haven. He later became Germany’s ambassa- dor to Denmark. Gerhart Feine, director of the Jewish Department of the German Plenipotentiary in Budapest, was also instrumental in alerting Wal- lenberg and other diplomats regarding Adolf Eichmann’s plans to deport Hungarian Jews, allowing them to take timely action to accelerate their programs. His actions went undetected. Portuguese Consul General Aristides de Sousa Mendes in Bordeaux, Brazilian Ambassador Luis Martins de Souza Dantas in Paris, Chinese Consul General Feng Shan Ho in Vienna, and Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara in Kaunas, Lithuania, all issued visas against the express orders of their government or superiors. At Risk for Reprisal While diplomatic or consular immunity largely pro- tected savior diplomats from retaliation, this was not al- ways true. The Nazi authorities bombed the house of the Turkish consul general in Rhodes, Selahattin Ülkümen, fa- tally injuring his pregnant wife, as punishment for his ef- forts to exempt 42 Jewish families, comprising more than 200 people, from deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazi authorities also took action against diplomatic representatives of countries occupied by Germany. The Polish chargé d’affaires in Budapest, Henryk Slawik, was arrested after issuing documents falsely certifying Hun- garian Jews as Christians and deported to Mauthausen, where he died. Nazi and French authorities arrested the Czech consul in Marseilles, Vladimir Vochoc, for issuing false visas and passports to Jews and anti-Nazis, but he managed to escape. Raoul Wallenberg’s disappearance at the hands of the Soviets was unlikely to have been related to his efforts to rescue Jews. However, a close associate of his, Swiss Vice Consul Carl Lutz, was arrested and beaten as Allied forces closed in on Budapest. These diplomats and consular officers also had to strug- gle against an organizational and bureaucratic culture that discouraged risk-taking. So the moral, and sometimes physical, courage required to defy the orders of their su- periors is all the more remarkable. The Japanese consul in Kaunas, Chiune Sugihara, began his rescue effort when a Dutch Jew applied for a F O C U S In 2002, AFSA presented Harry Bingham’s family with a posthumous constructive dissent award.