Jews and Aristides de Sousa Mendes – Museum of Exiles

Above the Post Office in Estoril is the Museum of Exiles (Museu Dos Exilios). The modernist building, built in 1942, is the design of the architect Adelino Nunes. The museum was opened in 1999. I visited the museum in early April 2016.

Ascending a grand staircase, the visitor reaches a circular landing, which is put to good use with a semi-permanent display of exile-related documents and photos.

The information drawn from data recorded in the Cascais Municipal Historical Archives includes photographs, diaries, travel documents, hotel registrations and much more.

Between 1936 and 1955, and especially during the Second World War (1939-1945), exiled kings, dignitaries, prominent artists, thinkers, spies, and thousands of others took refuge in and around the Lisbon/Cascais/Estoril area.

To one side, a large room with a library and office branches off, while the main room is arranged to seat 60 people. On the surrounding walls, displays in English and Portuguese outline just some of the notable figures who passed through Estoril and Cascais, including, perhaps most famously, the Duke of Windsor before he became Governor of the Bahamas.

After the German invasion of France in 1940, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor fled first to Biarritz in unoccupied, southern France and then, via Spain, to Portugal, where they rented a villa outside the town of Estoril called Boca do Inferno. The villa’s owner was Portuguese banker Ricardo Espírito Santo, the grandfather of the Banco Espírito Santo family.

During World War II, Ricardo Espírito Santo also hosted the man who would later become King Juan Carlos of Spain. Ricardo died of a heart attack in 1955.

Even more compelling for a social historian, the exhibition highlights the role of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux, France, who rescued thousands of refugees in the spring of 1940.

Sousa Mendes issued visas in defiance of his government’s orders, opening an escape route.

After crossing into Portugal, refugees found a temporary haven where they awaited onward destination visas and ships to the United States, Latin America and elsewhere, receiving support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and other aid organisations based in Lisbon.

By some estimates, Sousa Mendes and his other officials may have issued 30,000 visas, including about 10,000 to Jews. The Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer calls this “the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.”

The issuance of visas at the Portuguese Consulate in Bordeaux took place like an assembly line, involving Sousa Mendes, his secretary, José Seabra, two of Sousa Mendes’s sons, and two or three refugees.

“One person would collect the passport from the refugee, a second person would stamp it, Sousa Mendes would sign it, Seabra would assign the visa a number, and someone would record the date, visa number, and name in a ledger book.”

Although put on trial and harshly punished by the Salazar government for his action, Aristides de Sousa Mendes was posthumously named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 1966.

Some of the visa recipients were prominent, such as the artist Salvador Dalí and the authors of Curious George, Hans and Margret Rey, while others are just now being discovered.

Unable to work because of the government’s blacklisting, the family received help from the Jewish Association of Lisbon, which fed the Sousa Mendes family in its soup kitchen.

A father of 14 children, Aristides de Sousa Mendes died on April 3rd, 1954, destitute and in obscurity, at the Franciscan Hospital in Lisbon.

He is recorded as saying, “I could not have acted otherwise, and I, therefore, accept all that has befallen me with love.”

In 1987, former President Mário Soares issued a public apology to the Sousa Mendes family on behalf of the Portuguese Nation. In 1989, Sousa Mendes was recognised posthumously by the Portuguese Parliament with the rank of Ambassador.

After my visit to the Museum of Exiles, I discovered a list of people who were issued visas and found that the Sousa Mendes Foundation is researching and recording much more about the Jewish survivors.

Yad Vashem official Mordecai Paldiel notes that 3,500 visa recipients have to date been identified by name, and estimates that the actual number could have been “as many as 7-8,000.”

“An important goal of our project is to put faces to as many names as possible. This is especially important in those cases where the refugee was unable to leave Nazi-occupied France despite the visa from Sousa Mendes, and was subsequently deported and murdered. We are aware of other cases where the refugees managed to embark on a ship, only to drown when the ship was torpedoed. We are able to obtain photos of the visa recipients from the Foreigner Files in the Felix Archives; Brazil immigration cards; and the families themselves, if we are in contact with them. The work done by our research team goes beyond a scholarly or educational function to serve a memorial role, as well.“

More details about the research can be found here .

If you are in New York, you can visit an exhibit co-sponsored by the Sousa Mendes Foundation, titled “Portugal: The Last Hope; Sousa Mendes’ Visas of Freedom.”
It opened April 7, continuing to September 9, 2016, at the Centre for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY.

When you consider that Schindler probably saved 1,000 lives, it is surprising that Aristides de Sousa Mendes’ courage is not better known.

NB – Julia Cook has written an article that conveys part of the elite splendour of Estoril and Cascais. Well worth a read!

Update 2026
Also check out Neill Lochery’s 2011 book Lisbon – War in the Shadows of the City of Light 1939-1945. He challenges the number of visas issued by the Sousa Mendes team.