The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem awarded the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ award to Salvadoran Colonel José Arturo Castellanos Contreras for helping save tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.
Colonel and diplomat José Arturo Castellanos served as the Consul General of El Salvador in Geneva from 1942 to 1945, and during these years he issued certificates of Salvadoran nationality to at least 40,000 Jews who managed to avoid the extermination camps, including Auschwitz.
The announcement was made by El Salvador’s Foreign Minister, Hugo Martínez, at the ceremony in which the award was announced alongside the Israeli ambassador, Mattanya Cohen, expressing his gratitude to the colonel’s family.
“Today marks the end of a process that gives just recognition to a Salvadoran who stood out for his humanism and for his work to benefit a population that at the time was persecuted and threatened existentially,” said the Salvadoran foreign minister.
“This recognition is an act of justice in memory of a Salvadoran who in turbulent times had the courage to act. That courage gave the option of life to thousands of people from the Jewish community who were escaping the Holocaust,” said Martínez.
For his part, the Israeli ambassador to El Salvador said that he becomes the fourth Latin American to receive this award, previously awarded to two Brazilians and a Chilean. Mattanya Cohen said that when a diplomat receives this distinction, the ceremony must take place in the foreign ministry of the country of origin, and for this reason the event will be organized in El Salvador in the coming months.
“We are going to close a historic circle because the Jews and the entire state of Israel are not going to forget Castellanos. “It is important that the young generation of El Salvador knows that he was a hero who saved many people,” Cohen stressed.
“For us, it is wonderful news,” said, in tears, Ivonne Castellanos, daughter of the diplomat after whom one of the rooms in the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry was named.
Claudio Can, honorary president of the Israelite Community of El Salvador, said that it dignifies the incredible feat that Castellanos did. “He risked his own life to save more than 40,000 Jews. We as a community feel extremely proud. He is a Salvadoran who has raised the name of the country, he is an example worth imitating. We finally succeeded,” Can stressed.
“The case of the colonel is so great that we see it with great pride. We believe that it is important that the case be known internationally,” Can said.
Colonel José Arturo Castellanos Contreras, Consul General of El Salvador in Geneva from 1942 to 1945, with the help of George Mandel-Mantello, a Romanian Jew whom he appointed to the fictitious position of his first secretary, carried out a huge operation to issue passports and certificates of Salvadoran nationality to hundreds of families detained in many European Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
The certificates of Salvadoran nationality were granted clandestinely, since the Government of the time, which was unaware of their existence, ordered Castellanos Contreras not to grant visas and required that these and other consular documents be approved directly by the president.
The Jews of Slovakia, Hungary and Romania were the most benefited by the extension of these saving documents.
The award to Castellanos Contreras, who was born in the town of San Vicente and died in San Salvador in 1977, will later be presented to his family and consists of a medal, a diploma and the inscription of his name on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
The distinction of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ is an official title awarded in the name of the State of Israel and the people to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. The title is awarded by a special commission headed by a judge of the Supreme Court of Justice in accordance with a set of well-defined criteria and regulations.
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Source: Actualidad
