President of Portugal Visits ASF’s Multi-Partner Exhibit

The American Sephardi Federation hosted the President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa 2016 at the Center for Jewish History in Chelsea for a tour of “Portugal, The Last Hope: Sousa Mendes’ Visas for Freedom.”

“Your history is our history,” said the President before a private reception of Holocaust survivors saved by Aristides de Sousa Mendes and board members of ASF, American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, Sousa Mendes Foundation, and Sephardic Home for The Aged Foundation, as he announced his intention to confer on Mendes Portugal’s Grand Cross of the Order of Liberty.

Photos courtesy of Chrystie Sherman

The exhibit honors Mendes, who, as the creative and courageous Portuguese Consul General at Bordeaux, France during the Holocaust, saved Salvador Dalí, the authors of Curious George, and thousands of people, many of them Jews, by issuing visas against the orders of the Salazar regime. 50 years ago Mendes was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem.