August 15: A Former Fascist Who Saved Thousands

Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary and saved more than thirty-five hundred Jews from destruction in the winter of 1944, died in Padua on this date in 1992. Perlasca had fought in northern Africa with Mussolini’s fascist army, and then in the Spanish Civil War for the victorious dictator Francisco Franco, who rewarded him with safe conduct pass for all Spanish embassies. As a businessman in Hungary, Perlasca continued to serve the fascist cause, procuring supplies for the Italian army until it surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943. Perlasca then refused to return to his homeland, which was largely controlled by the Nazis. He received political asylum at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest and immediately began to work with the Spanish chargé d’affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, to hide Jews in “safe houses” and smuggle them out of the country. In 1944, when Sanz Briz was reassigned to Switzerland, the Hungarian government sought to clear out the embassy building and the extraterritorial houses of refuge they had established; Perlasca, rather than leaving with Sanz Briz, falsely announced that he had been appointed as his substitute. Under that pretense, he spent forty-five days of winter working with Raoul Wallenberg and other diplomats from neutral countries to hide, shelter, and feed thousands of Jews. Perlasca also issued thousands of safe-conduct passes, using as his pretext a 1924 Spanish law that granted citizenship to Jews of Sephardic origin. After the war, Perlasca said nothing about his rescue work until a group of Hungarian Jews rediscovered him. He was named one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel’s Yad Vashem and was decorated by the Italian, Hungarian, and Spanish governments. The Banality of Goodness, a book about Perlasca by Enrico Deaglio, became an Italian best-seller and was turned into a television film. “I did what I had to do. I was lucky. I had friends among the Jews who were being killed by the Nazis. That gave me courage.” —Giorgio Perlasca