Everyone knows what happened to the Jews in Europe in WWII. They are also aware of the fact some people risked life and limb to save them – Oskar Schindler, being one. There were others. For example, Giorgio Perlasca saved more Jews than Schindler did and he was both a Fascist and a liar.
In 1920, Italy was being torn apart by strikes as workers and peasants demanded better wages and treatment. New ideas became popular – Marxism, Fascism, Anarchism, etc. Of them, Fascism offered a middle ground providing a minimum wage, equality for women, an end to Roman Catholic hegemony, and so much more.
Giorgio Perlasca was born on January 31, 1910, in Como to a working-class family. Perlasca fell in love with Fascism’s promise of an egalitarian society that took care of all. The Prime Minister Benito Mussolini vowed to rebuild the ancient Roman Empire for the benefit of all Italians.
The 24-year-old Perlasca took part in the invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. Two years later, Italy sided with Spain’s Nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War, so Perlasca saw combat there, as well. When the Nationalists won, they gave the idealistic, young Italian guaranteed safe conduct status at all Spanish embassies worldwide.
However, the Italy Perlasca returned to was not the country he had been fighting so hard for. There was no equality of the sexes nor egalitarianism for all as Mussolini needed support from the aristocracy and business barons. In 1938, Mussolini adopted Nazi racial policies as he began relying more and more on Germany for support.
Perlasca was appointed to the Italian government and given diplomatic status. He was sent to East Europe, to procure meat for the Italian Army which was fighting the Russians. Everything changed on September 8, 1943, when the Italian government in Rome surrendered to the Allies. In so doing, however, they split the country in half.
Mussolini did not surrender. He declared the northern half of Italy to be the Italian Social Republic in a reformed Republican Fascist Party allied with Nazi Germany. The Italians had a choice – King Victor Emmanuel III and his pro-Allied government in the south, or Mussolini and his new republic in the north?
Perlasca sided with the King. As he was in Hungary – a client state of Nazi Germany – he was arrested and sent to a special prison reserved for diplomats. After a few months, he was given a medical pass. Instead of going to a hospital, Perlasca went to the nearest Spanish Embassy which honored his guarantee of safe conduct and granted him Spanish status. He adopted the name “Jorge,” and as Spain was a neutral country, was allowed to stay in Hungary unmolested.
He could have left for Spain or any other safe country, but he did not. Perlasca worked with the Spanish and other embassies doing what they could for the Jews. It was due to Ángel Sanz-Briz – the Spanish ambassador in Budapest.
Briz was part of a network of diplomats who issued visas to Jews so they could leave Hungary. It was part of a plan masterminded by Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg – Sweden’s special envoy to Budapest. Wallenberg knew that not all Hungarian Jews could afford to leave, so he bought and rented buildings throughout the city.
He then stuck Swedish flags on them – turning them into official Swedish territory and beyond Hungarian law. Jews who could not leave were housed there, rendering them safe from deportation to concentration camps. Wallenberg could not do it alone, so many other diplomats and wealthy businessmen helped.
Sephardic Jews (those from Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal) had a right to Spanish citizenship so giving them passports was easy. Ashkenazi Jews (those from northern Europe) were another matter entirely. Along with handling paperwork, Perlasca conducted Jews to safe houses throughout the city. It worked; for a while.
In November 1944 the Soviet Army marched toward Hungary. Briz and the other diplomats were ordered out of Budapest for their own safety. He went to neutral Switzerland. Perlasca refused to leave, however. He had work to do.
Eager to get rid of as many Jews as they could before they were overrun by the Soviets, Hungarian officials ordered Perlasca to empty his safe houses of Jews. To buy himself time, he claimed Briz was only away on a short leave. Perlasca claimed he was in charge while Briz was away making him the new Spanish Chargé d’Affaires. He was not, and Spain knew nothing about it.
Perlasca then went into overdrive. He used his business contacts to keep thousands of Jews fed, moving them to safe locations, and smuggling those he could, out of Hungary. In December, he grabbed two boys from a freight train, earning the wrath of Otto Adolf Eichmann – the German officer tasked with transporting Jews to the death camps.
In retaliation, Eichmann ordered the Jewish ghetto blown up – while it still housed some 60,000 people. Perlasca, therefore, demanded an audience with the Hungarian interior minister and threatened legal and economic punishments against the 3,000 Hungarian citizens in Spain.
There were not that many Hungarians in Spain. It is believed there may have been no more than a few hundred, at the time. However, the minister did not know that so he overturned Eichmann’s orders.
When the war ended in 1945, Perlasca returned to Italy. He did not speak about his actions, even with his wife.
However, those he saved never forgot. About 5,200 of them (or almost 4,000 more than Schindler). They finally found him in 1987 – living a quiet life in Italy. Israel made him a Righteous Among the Nations, while Italy, Hungary, and Spain heaped him with honors.
Perlasca claimed he was no hero, however, saying that all he did “was tell a lot of lies.” He certainly did – but they were lies that saved lives.