A Fascist and Liar Who Saved Jews

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Born on January 31, 1910, in Como, Italy, to a working-class family, Giorgio Perlasca saved more Jews than Oscar Schindler did. Exposed to Fascism in his formative years, he liked its’ promise of a minimum wage, equality for women, and an end to Roman Catholic hegemony, among other issues. He fought for Italy in East Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and in the Spanish Civil War. Because of his service to Spain, the authorities there gave Perlasca a guarantee of safe conduct status at all Spanish embassies worldwide.

Perlasca got disillusioned with Fascism mainly because of Mussolini's alliance with Nazism and adoption of the Italian Racial Laws in 1938. He decided then that Italy was not the same country for which he had fought so hard.

In the early part of the war, after appointed to the Italian government and given diplomatic status, Perlasca was sent to Eastern Europe to procure meat for the Italian army fighting on the Russian front.
On September 8, 1943, the Italian government surrendered to the Allies. Mussolini, however, declared the northern half of Italy the Italian Social Republic, an ally of Germany. Italians had to choose between Mussolini and his new republic in the north and King Victor Emmanuel III and his pro-Allied government in the south.
Then in Hungary working for an Italian importing firm, Perlasca sided with the king, refusing to return to an Italy run by Nazis. According to him, “I was neither a fascist nor an anti-fascist, but I was anti-Nazi.” He was arrested and sent to a prison for diplomats. After a few months, he received a medical pass. Instead of going to a hospital, however, Perlasca went to the Spanish Embassy. Taking advantage of his status as a veteran of Spain’s war, he requested and received political asylum. A free man, he called himself “Jorge.” Of course, Spain was neutral in WW II.
Though Perlasca could have left Hungary, he applied for a job with the Spanish envoy in Budapest, Ángel Sanz-Briz. Briz belonged to a network of diplomats who issued visas to Jews so they could leave Hungary. The system provided “protection cards,” which placed Jews under the guardianship of neutral countries. They helped Jews find refuge in protected houses under the control of foreign embassies that had sovereignty, basically. Perlasca conducted Jews to safe houses throughout Budapest and handled attendant paperwork.
But in November 1944, the Soviet Army marched toward Hungary. Briz and other diplomats were ordered out of Budapest for their own safety. Briz left Perlasca a note saying that he could get a visa to Switzerland through the Spanish embassy in Vienna. But Perlasca refused to leave, saying later on, “At first, I didn’t know what to do, but then I began to feel like a fish in water. I continued giving out protective passes and looked after the Jews in the ‘safe houses’ flying the Spanish flag. As the proverb says, Opportunity makes the thief.” With Briz gone, Perlasca claimed he was the new Spanish Chargé d’Affair, though Spain knew nothing about it.
Perlasca continued to use his business contacts to keep thousands of Jews fed, moving them to safe locations, and smuggling those he could out of Hungary. In December 1944, he grabbed two boys from a freight train, arousing the ire of Otto Adolf Eichmann, who was tasked with transporting Jews to the death camps. Eichmann in turn ordered the Jewish ghetto, which housed thousands of people, blown up. Perlasca demanded an audience with the Hungarian interior minister and threatened legal and economic sanctions against Hungarians living in Spain. The minister overruled Eichmann’s orders.
Between November 1944 and January 1945, Perlasca worked with Raoul Wallenberg from Sweden; Friedrich Born, from the International Red Cross; and Angelo Rotta, from the Vatican, to save Jews. When the war ended in 1945, Perlasca returned to Italy. Estimates of the number of Jews he saved range from 3,500 to 5,200.
On April 5, 1945, Dr. Hugo Dukesz, one of the Jews saved by Perlasca, wrote,
“On this occasion we want to express the affection and gratitude of the several thousand Jews who survived, thanks to your protection. There are not enough words to praise the tenderness with which you fed us and with which you cared for the old and the sick among us….”
After the war, Perlasca returned to Italy. A tall, quiet man, he told no one, not even his wife, about his actions. He claimed he was no hero, saying that all he did “was tell a lot of lies.” But those he saved never forgot him. In 1987, Israel made him an honorary citizen, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum there honored him. Perlasca, whose achievements had gone largely unnoticed, told The Jerusalem Post that he had been motivated by neither religion nor politics. “I couldn't ignore it,” he said. “I did what I had to do. I was lucky. I had friends among the Jews who were being killed by the Nazis. That gave me courage.” In 1990, he received the Medal of Remembrance of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Italy, Hungary, and Spain also honored him.
Perlasca died of a heart attack at age 82 in August 1992.