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European Parliament Pays Tribute to Aristides de Sousa Mendes
The European Parliament pays tribute to Aristides de Sousa Mendes at their headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday, September 27, 2017. The President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani will participate. Other speakers will include Sousa Mendes visa recipient Françoise Wybauw, Sousa Mendes’s grandson Gerald Mendes, and SMF President Olivia Mattis. On view will be the exhibition “These are my people!” The Story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
Event WebsiteConference: Refugees, Statelessness, Migration, and the Work of the Joint”
Joan Halperin and Diana Cooper-Clark will speak about Polish refugees who escaped Nazi-occupied Europe via Portugal, many with visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes, and found refuge on the island of Jamaica. The talk is part of a two-day conference organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Event WebsiteLecture: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, A Man of Conscience
Mariana Abrantes de Sousa, Treasurer of the Sousa Mendes Foundation, will speak about Aristides de Sousa Mendes and the work of the Sousa Mendes Foundation during the International Council of B’nai B’rith Meeting from June 23-25, 2019. Mariana’s talk will be held on Sunday, June 23rd at 11:45 a.m. and will be followed by a testimonial of Monica Barzilay, whose family received visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
Event WebsiteEleanor Roosevelt and the Jewish Refugees She Saved: The Story of the S. S. Quanza
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Passengers on board the Quanza, unable to disembark, 1940
The Sousa Mendes Foundation and the American Sephardi Federation present the New York premiere of the documentary film, Nobody Wants Us (2019, dir. Laura Seltzer-Duny) on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 2-4:30 p.m. at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York City.
Synopsis:
In 1940, a ship called the S.S. Quanza left the port of Lisbon carrying several hundred Jewish refugees — most of whom held Sousa Mendes visas — to freedom. But events went terribly wrong, and the passengers became trapped on the ship because no country would take them in. Nobody Wants Us tells the gripping true story of how Eleanor Roosevelt herself stepped in to save the passengers on board because of her moral conviction that they were not “undesirables” (as the US State Department labeled them) but rather were “future patriotic Americans.” This is an episode in American history that everyone needs to know.
Program:
The film, which is 35 minutes in length, will be introduced by the filmmaker Laura Seltzer-Duny and followed by a panel discussion moderated by Michael Dobbs of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, author of The Unwanted. Other participants will include:
Blanche Wiesen Cook, the leading world expert on Eleanor Roosevelt and the author of her three-volume biography.
Annette Lachmann, who was a passenger on the Quanza in 1940.
Kathleen Rand, whose father Wolf Rand was the passenger who successfully filed suit against the shipping company, forcing the vessel to remain in port until the conflict was resolved.
Stephen Morewitz, the leading world expert on the Quanza story, whose grandparents’ Newport News, Virginia law firm of Morewitz & Morewitz was hired by Wolf Rand and successfully litigated the case.
Significance of the story:
According to Michael Dobbs, “The Quanza incident is a timely reminder that individuals make a difference. Without visas supplied by the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, many of the Jewish passengers on board the Quanza might well have been stranded in Nazi-occupied Europe. Without the legal brilliance of a maritime lawyer named Jacob Morewitz, the ship would have been obliged to sail back to Europe. Without the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the passengers would not have been permitted to land. It took three people, from entirely different backgrounds, to save dozens of lives that might otherwise have been lost.”
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