Giorgio Perlasca

Giorgio or Jorge Perlasca (January 31, 1910 – August 15, 1992) was an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Early life

Perlasca was born in Como and grew up in Maserà, province of Padua. During the 1920s, he became a supporter of Fascism, fighting in East Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and in the Spanish Civil War ("Corpo Truppe Volontari"), where he received a gratitude safe conduct for Spanish embassies from Francisco Franco. He grew disillusioned with Fascism, in particular due to the alliance with Nazism and the anti-Semitic laws that had come into force in 1938.

In World War II

During World War II, Perlasca worked at procuring supplies for the Italian Army in the Balkans. When the Nazis occupied Hungary, in 1944, instead of departing with other diplomatic staff (Italy had by then surrendered to the Allies) he escaped to the Spanish Embassy in Budapest, immediately becoming a Spanish citizen under the name "Jorge Perlasca", due to his status as a veteran of the Spanish war. He worked with the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states in smuggling Jews out of the country. The system he devised consisted of furnishing 'protection cards' which placed Jews under the guardianship of various neutral states, and of creating 'protected houses in mansions governed by extraterrorial conventions and thereby guarantee asylum for persecuted Jews.

When Sanz Briz was removed from Hungary to Switzerland in November 1944, he invited Perlasca to join him in safety. However Perlasca chose to stay on. The Hungarian government ordered the Spanish Embassy building and the extra-territorial houses where the Jews took refuge cleared out. Perlasca immediately gave the false announcement that Sanz Briz was due to return from a short leave, and that he had been appointed a substitute.

Throughout the winter, Perlasca was active in hiding, shielding and feeding thousands of Jews in Budapest, and to issue them with safe conduct passes on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that grants citizenship to Jews of Sephardi origin.

In December 1944, Perlasca audaciously rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene. Swedish diplomat/rescuer Raoul Wallenberg, also present, later informed Perlasca that the officer who had challenged him was none other than Adolf Eichmann. In a period of some 45 days, from December the Ist 1944 to the 16 of January 1945, he saved thousands of Jews by his own initiative.

After the war, Perlasca returned to Italy, and didn't reveal his actions to anyone, including his family, until he was found again in 1987 by a group of Hungarian Jews. A best-selling narrative of his remarkable single-handed valour was written by Enrico Deaglio, entitled, the 'Banality of Goodness' [Enrico Deaglio, "La banalità del bene", Feltrinelli, Milan 1993 ] , and was turned into a film by the RAI national television corporation.

Giorgio Perlasca died of a heart attack in 1992, having received decorations from the Italian, Hungarian and Spanish governments and is considered by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. His deeds were the subject of an Italian film, "Perlasca, un eroe italiano".

External links

* [http://www.giorgioperlasca.it/inglese/intro.html www.giorgioperlasca.it] (RAI. Contains PDF versions of original documents; in English and Italian)
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278017/ Perlasca. Un eroe italiano] at the Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_21_126/ai_58675361 An article from "Commonweal"] on Perlasca's encounter with Eichmann
* [http://www.sandycash.com/ATSR_lyrics.html#Giorgio "Giorgio Perlasca"] song lyrics by Sandy Cash