Defying Orders, Saving Lives: Heroic Diplomats of the
Holocaust
Richard Holbrooke
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007
Richard Holbrooke is Vice Chair
of Perseus LLC and was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from
1999 to 2001 and Chair of Refugees International from 1996 to 1999.
This article was adapted from his introduction to Diplomat Heroes
of the Holocaust, by Mordecai Paldiel.
Imagine that you are a consular officer in the middle of a
diplomatic career that you hope will lead to an ambassadorship.
There are two rubber stamps on your desk. Using the one that says
"APPROVED" would allow the desperate person sitting in front of you
to travel to your country legally. Using the other stamp, which
says "REJECTED," could mean consigning that person to prison or
even death.
It sounds like a simple choice, but there is a catch -- a very big
one. The person in front of you is Jewish, and your boss has told
you to devise ways not to use the "APPROVED" stamp. Your government
does not want these people -- these people waiting outside your
office, milling around in the street, hiding in their houses -- in
your country. Approve too many visas and your career will be in
danger. Follow your instructions and people will probably
die.
What would you have done if you had been faced with this situation
in 1940? Or if you faced a version of the same situation today
featuring, say, refugees from Iraq?
In a movie, the hero would stare out the window, the music would
swell, and he would do the right thing (like Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca, with the famous "letters of transit"). But in the real
world, there are few heroes in such situations. Government service
is based on the well-founded principle that career officials must
follow instructions, lest anarchy prevail. But what happens if
those instructions have horrible, or even fatal, consequences --
and not heeding them means jeopardizing your career?
We mocked the defense of many Germans after World War II when they
said that they were just following orders or did not know about the
death camps. But a similar rationale was used by an overwhelming
majority of non-German diplomats in Europe during the 1930s to deny
Jews entry into their countries. For every diplomatic hero, there
were hundreds of consular officials who played it safe by following
orders to restrict Jewish immigration. As a result, hundreds of
thousands of Jews whose lives could have been saved were left to
fend for themselves; most later died in concentration camps. And
this was not just a case of officials passively following
instructions. Some were enthusiastic in their rejection of Jewish
visa applications. Take, for example, the Brazilian consul in Lyon,
France, in 1940, who proudly wrote to his foreign minister that the
people swarming around his office were "almost all Jewish or of
Semitic origin, and only a few of them may be of interest to us. I
therefore believe that by my categorical refusal to grant the visas
they request, I will have done Brazil a great service."
Yet a handful of Brazilian, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian, Spanish, Swiss, Turkish, Vatican, Yugoslav, and even
Japanese and German diplomats risked their careers, their
reputations, and sometimes even their lives to save those who were
endangered, mostly Jews whom they did not know, because they
believed that their instructions were immoral. Tens of thousands of
lives were saved by these heroes. Were it not for the careful
investigations carried out by the Commission for the Designation of
the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust
Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, in Jerusalem), we would
probably not even know most of their names.
PROFILES IN COURAGE
As Mordecai Paldiel points out in his new book, it was not the
Germans who punished these brave men and women. It was often their
own governments. Yet in the face of such risk, a few diplomats
showed great moral courage, knowing full well that they might pay
dearly for it.
The most famous of these was Raoul Wallenberg, whose courage and
creativity are now legendary. He paid with his life, not at the
hands of the Nazis but at the hands of the Soviets, who thought
that he was a U.S. spy. Wallenberg, a member of an aristocratic
Swedish family, had been sent to Budapest on a special humanitarian
mission by President Franklin Roosevelt, which he expanded to
include an unauthorized crusade to save Jews.
Most of those in Paldiel's narrative had been given more routine
consular or diplomatic assignments, only to find themselves in an
unexpected moral dilemma of historic dimensions. Consider, for
example, the astonishing story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the
Portuguese consul general in Bordeaux. After the Portuguese
dictator António de Oliveira Salazar prohibited the issuance of
transit visas to stranded Jewish refugees, Sousa Mendes, a devout
Catholic, visited the stranded Jewish refugees on the streets, then
retreated to his house and tossed and turned in his bed for three
nights, sweating profusely. Then he emerged and, according to
Paldiel, "flung open the doors to the chancellery, and announced in
a loud voice, 'From now on I'm giving everyone visas.'" Sousa
Mendes later told his sons that he had "heard a voice, that of his
conscience or of God." For a few weeks in June 1940, Sousa Mendes
was in a frenzy, issuing visas as fast as he could, even going to
the Spanish border to make sure that skeptical border police would
honor them. He knew that he was racing against his own government.
In July, he was removed from his post and subjected to a nasty
investigation personally supervised by Salazar. But Sousa Mendes
was unrepentant. "My desire is to be with God against man rather
than with man against God," he told his superiors, one of whom
later told the investigating tribunal that Sousa Mendes had gone
crazy. He was dismissed from government service and, although
supported by the Jewish community in Lisbon, died in poverty. Not
until after the fall of the Salazar regime did the Portuguese
restore his good name and honor to him. Today, there are schools
and streets named after him in Portugal. Sousa Mendes' story is
typical of those remembered in Paldiel's book -- but these are so
few.
So far, Yad Vashem has not honored any U.S. officials as Righteous
Among the Nations (although it has recognized a small number of
private American citizens, led by Varian Fry). Only one, Hiram
Bingham IV, appears to be under serious consideration, and he
deserves to be honored. Bingham defied the infamous Breckinridge
Long, who headed the European Bureau of the State Department in the
late 1930s and outmaneuvered Eleanor Roosevelt when she tried to
get more visas issued to Jews. He instructed his consuls "to put
every obstacle in the way and ... postpone and postpone and
postpone the granting of visas." Long removed Bingham from his post
in Marseille and replaced him with an officer who enthusiastically
carried out Long's anti-Semitic policies.
The situations brave men such as Wallenberg, Sousa Mendes, and
Bingham faced are not just ancient history. They are similar to
what is happening now in Iraq. Since the 2003 invasion, the U.S.
government has allowed only 466 Iraqi refugees to enter the United
States, even though more than two million have fled the country
(mostly to Jordan and Syria). Among those desperately seeking
safety are thousands of Iraqis who worked with or supported U.S.
personnel in Iraq. They are at the greatest possible risk. In an
embarrassing interview recently, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant
secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, told 60
Minutes that the small number and slow processing is the result of
new, post-9/11 security requirements. Even Iraqis who were given
security clearances to work with U.S. troops in sensitive positions
in Iraq have to wait several years to get approved. Sauerbrey
boasted about increasing this year's Iraqi refugee quota to 7,000
-- still a pathetically small number given U.S. responsibility for
the desperate plight of fleeing Iraqis. Under similar
circumstances, between 1975 and 1980, Presidents Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter took in over 500,000 refugees from Vietnam and
Cambodia. Those refugees were initially put into camps of "first
asylum" for security screening before being permitted to settle in
the United States, where today they are a vibrant part of American
life.
In fact, if it were not for Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who
has made refugees a prime concern for over 40 years, the Bush
administration would probably still be ignoring the issue;
President George W. Bush has yet to mention it in public. That the
sorry story of the 1930s is being repeated -- with so little public
outrage -- is more than disturbing; it is shameful. Why is the
White House doing so little? And where are the Binghams and Sousa
Mendeses of 2007?
Every age will present people in positions of authority with
similar difficult dilemmas. The details will vary, but the
challenge will be the same. If you were in such a situation, would
you realize it? And if you did, what would you do?
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501fareviewessay86313/richard-holbrooke/defying-orders-saving-lives-heroic-diplomats-of-the-holocaust.html
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Would you? I think I might..
