Eduardo Propper de Callejón

Eduardo Propper de Callejón (1895-1972) was a Spanish diplomat who is mainly remembered for having facilitated the flight of thousands of Jews from Occupied France during the Second World War between 1940 and 1944.

He was the maternal grandfather of British actress Helena Bonham Carter. [ [http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&db=mila23&id=I007 RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: Kohn of Horany (Hareth), Bohemia, Czech Republic ] ] [ [http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1937548,00.html 'It's all gone widescreen' | Interviews | Guardian Unlimited Film ] ] [ [http://film.guardian.co.uk/Feature_Story/Observer/0,,44062,00.html Helena Bonham Carter: 'Couldn't she just wear a babygro?' | | Guardian Unlimited Film ] ]

Career

Propper de Callejón was First Secretary of the Spanish Embassy in Paris, when France surrendered to Germany on 20 June 1940. In order to prevent the German army from plundering the art collection that his wife's family kept at the Chateau de Royaumont, he declared this castle to be his main residence, so it would be treated in the same privileged way as the accommodation of any other diplomat. Among the art works thus saved are a triptych of Van Eyck (one of Adolf Hitler´s favourite painters).

In July 1940, he issued from the Spanish Consulate in Bordeaux, in co-operation with the Portuguese Consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes, more than thirty thousand transit visas to Jews, so that they could cross Spain to reach Portugal. When Spain's Foreign Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer learnt that Propper de Callejón was issuing visas without the previous authorisation of his Ministry, he had him transferred to the Consulate of Larache in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco. Afterwards, he would be posted to Rabat, Zurich, Washington, Ottawa and Oslo.

Miscellaneous

Propper de Callejón's father, Max Propper, was a Bohemian Jew, and his mother, Juana Callejón, was a Spanish Catholic; they raised Eduardo and his brothers in the Catholic faith. His wife, Hélène Fould-Springer was a socialite and painter. She was from a notable Jewish Austrian-French banking family, though she converted to Catholicism after World War II; [http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywood_jew/article/helena_bonham_carter_jewish_mother_20080730/] she was a sister of prominent Paris art patron and philanthropist Liliane de Rothschild (Baroness Élie de Rothschild, 1916—2003).

He never gained public recognition for his heroic acts before his death in 1972 in London.

In 2008 he was officially recognised as a Righteous Gentile Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance authority in Israel. [ [http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11&SecId=11&AId=57933&ATypeId=1 Recognition as Righteous Gentile] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/news/3302.htm A tribute to Eduardo Propper de Callejón by the International Raoul Wallenberg Found in New York]
* Jenni Frazer. [http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=57933&SecId=11&ParentId=m11 "How Helena’s grandfather was finally recognised as a true hero"] "The Jewish Chronicle" 8 February 2008, narrating how Eduardo Propper de Callejón was recognized as "Righteous Among Nations" recently. Retrieved 28 February 2008.