Giorgio Perlasca
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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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 Ambassador, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states in smuggling Jews out of the country.
When Sanz Briz was removed from Hungary to Switzerland in November of 1944, 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 of 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.
After the war, Perlasca went back to Italy and didn't reveal his actions to anyone, including his family, until he was found again in the 1980s by a group of Hungarian Jews.
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.
[edit] External links
- www.giorgioperlasca.it (RAI. Contains PDF versions of original documents; in English and Italian)
- Perlasca. Un eroe italiano at the Internet Movie Database
- An article from Commonweal on Perlasca's encounter with Eichmann
