Diplomatic Heroes Stood ‘With God Against Men’

“We want the names Bingham, Mendes, Lutz and Duckwitz to become better known than the names of the villainous monsters from whom these courageous consuls rescued us.”

--UCLA psychology professor

Lissy Jarvik

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Lissy Jarvik was a teenager when her family was issued unauthorized Portuguese visas in 1940 by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul general in Bordeaux, France. She was among more than 30,000 refugees he saved from internment by the Nazis.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” said Jarvik, a special guest at the screening of “Diplomats for the Damned,” a new documentary exploring the heroic acts of four non-Jewish diplomats from 1938 to 1945.

More than 700 guests packed the Motion Picture Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on Oct. 25 for a buffet supper and preview to benefit the Committee for Righteous Deeds. The organization, established by Rabbi David Baron of Temple Shalom for the Arts in Beverly Hills, publicizes acts of heroism during the Holocaust.

For Jarvik, the occasion was an opportunity to pay tribute to Mendes’ son, Jon Paul Abranches, an engineer who lives in the Northern California town of Pleasanton. His father was fired by his government, lost all his property and died in poverty in Lisbon in 1954. In 1995, through Abranches’ efforts, Portugal awarded Mendes a special medal, and now every schoolchild in Portugal is taught the story of his heroism.

“He didn’t hang around waiting for someone else to do the right thing. My father said, ‘I would rather be with God against man, than with man against God.’ It’s important to learn that at an early age. Then when you’re faced with a moment of truth, you know what to do.”

Carl Lutz was the consul for Switzerland in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944-45. He devised a protective letter--the same kind of document used by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Lutz was able to send 10,000 Jewish children to Palestine. He eventually issued more than 50,000 unauthorized letters and, like Wallenberg, established safe houses in Budapest under the protection of his government. Jewish relief agencies estimate Lutz saved 62,000 lives from 1943 to 1945.

Lutz’s daughter, Agnes Hirschi, flew in from Switzerland for the premiere with Theo Tschuy, his biographer. “He felt that God gave him this job and the strength to do it,” Hirschi said through misty eyes. “He was hurt by it when he returned to Switzerland. He would be so happy to see this film.”

Georg Duckwitz, a member of the Nazi Party, was trade attache to the German embassy in Copenhagen in 1943. When he learned that the Nazi occupation government was planning to deport Danish Jews, he alerted the Danish government and made a secret trip to Sweden to arrange a safe haven. More than 7,000 Jews were smuggled into Sweden. After the war, Duckwitz became the German ambassador to Denmark.

Abigail Bingham Endicott, a voice coach in Washington, D.C. and one of Hiram Bingham IV’s 11 children, brought her guitar to sing her father’s praises.

“Daddy taught us to always stand up to a bully,” she said. “That’s why he did what he did. Hitler was a bully.” Bingham was the American vice-consul in Marseilles in 1940. Shortly after the fall of France, he too defied superiors and falsified visas for more than 2,000 Jews, among them Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Heinrich Mann and Jewish Nobel Prize winners.

Sitting in the audience with comedian Jack Carter, director Arthur Hiller and Chicago philanthropist Leo Melamed were Jayne Meadows and Steve Allen, at one of his last public outings before his death Monday. As Allen departed that night, said Baron, he told the rabbi, “This is the kind of program that redeems television.”

“Diplomats for the Damned” is scheduled to be aired by the History Channel at 10 p.m. on Nov. 26.