r/HistoryMemes • u/Emergency-Weird-1988 • Feb 24 '25

Sometimes help can come from the strangest of places and a great man can come from anywhere

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 24 '25

A whole bunch of Context: Colonel José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was a Salvadoran military officer and diplomat who served as Consul General in Geneva, Switzerland, during World War II.

During his period of service as Salvadoran Consul in Switzerland, Colonel Castellanos was contacted by György Mandl, a Jewish businessman of Transylvanian origin, who told him about the difficult situation in which his family and many others found themselves because of Nazi persecution.

After listening to Mandl, Colonel Castellanos proceeded to grant him the position of First Secretary of the Salvadoran Consulate in Switzerland and provide him and his family with Salvadoran nationality papers, his intervention being crucial in preventing the family from being transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

After this, both Colonel Castellanos and Mandl (who now had the Italianized surname of Mantello) worked together and proceeded to secretly issue up to 40,000 false Salvadoran nationality certificates to thousands of Jews throughout Europe. It is estimated that this aid mainly benefited Jews from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania, allowing them to escape the Nazi persecution that their people were facing.

After the war ended, Colonel Castellanos sought to remain discreet about his work to save thousands of lives, considering that it was "nothing out of the ordinary." An anecdote about this, is that his own daughter, Frieda Castellanos Garcia, only found out about what her father had done during his period as consul in Switzerland through the media when she was 22 years old.

Despite his discretion, the work of Colonel Castellanos has not gone unnoticed by history (and I am very glad that is the case) with many commemorations, even if posthumous, for his work. For example, in 1995, the then President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, praised the work of Colonel Castellanos, as well as other members of the Salvadoran diplomatic corps during World War II for their work in saving thousands from the Nazi regime. Also in 1999, Guadalupe Díaz de Razeghi, granddaughter of Colonel Castellanos, attended the inauguration of El Salvador Street in Givat Masua, in honor of her grandfather's work, and in 2010 the Yad Vashem (the official memorial for the victims of the Holocaust) awarded him the title of "Righteous Among the Nations."

To finish, I just want to say that, as a Salvadoran myself, I have never felt a singular "patriotism" for the nation in which I was born and in which I have lived all my life, not because I hate it, not at all, but because I would like it to be much better than it already is, and it's people like Colonel Castellanos who remind me that we can and should be better people, work for others and always do things right and that is also why I wanted to share this with others, to remember that despite being a people with a complicated history and perhaps not many good things, when a single Salvadoran sets his mind to it, he can do a lot of good, because as I said in the title of this post, a great man can come from anywhere.

By the way, I don't know if that has changed (I hope it has) but it is a crime that no one ever taught us about this great man when I was taking classes in school.

Oh, and for those who have no idea where El Salvador is, it's in Central America, you can google it. We have good beaches for surfing (or so they say, I don't know much about that) and pupusas, which are delicious.

Edit. u/Ano_Czlowieczek_Taki only after re-reading the context that I myself wrote for this post I realized that some of the Jews helped were from Poland, so clearly we already have bases of the first contacts between both nations, something that will be very useful to us when we carry out the integration of both into one lol

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u/Ano_Czlowieczek_Taki Feb 24 '25

🇵🇱❤️🇸🇻

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u/EPZO Feb 24 '25

Question for you, friend. Is there a prominent Jewish community in El Salvador? Does it focus on a specific town or are they spread across the whole country?

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 25 '25

That's a good question. Honestly? No, there isn't one large comunity, there is one, but it's rather small. As for the reasons why... well, there is a few:

  • Not that many helped Jewish actually made it to El Salvador, but it seems that was never "the plan" the reason why giving them the papers recognizing them as salvadoreans was important is because it allowed them to gain the protection of the International Red Cross, which guaranteed the rights of citizens of neutral countries during the war, as well as seeking the protection of other institutions and countries through their diplomatic corps, not so much for them to actually go to El Salvador, but it was an action that did help save thousands of lives.

Some 10,000 Salvadoran citizenship papers were in the hands of threatened Hungarian Jews--but how valid were they? Swiss government recognition of the irregular Salvadoran documents was essential in order for the Swiss officials in Budapest to protect their holders. Encouraged by U.S. President Roosevelt, the new foreign minister Avila in San Salvador and consul Castellanos in Geneva did what they could to back Mantello’s campaign. In Switzerland, however, highly-placed reactionaries and anti-Semites worked hard to obstruct the rescue efforts including the Salvadoran citizenship papers, while at the same time the press and church campaign exerted great pressure on the Swiss government to act humanely. Finally the documents were recognized, so that Swiss protection was afforded to Budapest’s "Salvadoran citizens." In the end, the Salvadoran certificates proved to be the most effective of all the protective papers held by Budapest Jews.

and

During this critical period many of the neutral diplomats in Budapest, led by Swiss Consul Carl Lutz and Swedish emissary Raul Wallenburg, performed tireless and heroic service. They succeeded in saving tens of thousands of lives, and the Salvadoran citizenship papers, supplied as rapidly as possible by Mantello and his team and now backed by the Swiss government, were an essential tool in their work, together with documents from other nations such as Sweden. Lutz wrote Mantello a long letter on October 28, saying that Naturally, under the present chaotic conditions attacks do occur, but it must be said that the San Salvador [sic] certificates have already saved thousands of lives.... ... you can take satisfaction in the fact that ... it was your management of the San Salvadoran interests which has enabled us to create a humanitarian work that will bring you the thanks of thousands of rescued people. It must be clearly established that San Salvador is the only state to overcome any hesitancy and to undertake an active rescue operation

  • Although there is a number of people of jewish descendent here most of them don't seem to practice jewish religion and have lost most of their connection to that jewish heritage.
  • A good number of the Jewish that were living in San Salvador, capital of El Salvador (between 300 to 400) left the country (mostly for the United States, but also other countries) at the outbreak of the Salvadoran civil war in 1979.

Edit. (add) Btw It's worth noting that the assistance provided by the Colonel and the rest of the Salvadoran diplomatic corps (including Mantello) was on their own initiative, they didn't had the backing of the Salvadoran central government for their operations.

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u/EPZO Feb 24 '25

Thanks for the response! I see, that makes sense. The papers were more to get them out than bring them over to El Salvador.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

Yes, exactly. And no problem, I'm actually very happy of being able to discuss the topic.

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u/Ragnarok_Stravius Feb 24 '25

That is one big pocket to fit 40000 documents.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

His pocket was as big as his conscience, which is it to say, a lot.

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u/Fantastic-Corner-605 Feb 24 '25

Must be the pockets they use in GTA.

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u/Kickedbyagiraffe Feb 24 '25

Minecraft Steve

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u/Ragnarok_Stravius Feb 24 '25

An inventory has a 4 by 9 grid, that's 36 spaces.

I think paper can be stacked into piles of 64 items.

So, that's 2304 items.

If you use shulkers, that's 2304 times per shulker, and you can have 36 shulkers in your inventory.

At maximum, you'd have 82 thousand and 944 items of documents.

40000 documents would be 48.2% of capacity.

I think that would fill 17 shulkers and then 1/3 of an 18th Shulker.

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u/oversized_toaster Feb 25 '25

Shulker boxes, like most storage items, only have three rows, not four. So a shulker box could only hold 1728 pieces of paper.

This would require roughly 23.148 Shulker boxes. 23 shuker boxes hold 39,744 pieces of paper so you would need exactly 23 full shulkers + four stacks.

Also, the player inventory has 37 slots, not 36 because it also has the off hand.

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u/CrimsonDemon0 Feb 24 '25

There is always that one crazy person who will go insane lenghts just to do a good deed. I love them all

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

Yeah, those kind of people are worth everything.

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u/GustavoistSoldier Feb 24 '25

José Castellanos Contreras was goated

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 24 '25

He definitely was.

Btw I didn't mention it in context because it wasn't related to the topic of the post, but before being a consul and diplomat for the Salvadoran government, he had a successful 25-year military career, even becoming the Second Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republic.

The man not only had a conscience and a good heart but was also good at what he did, I'm glad he was able to do something for those in need.

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u/kelajimadokunme Feb 24 '25

There was a Turkish ambassador who did exactly the same thing.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

Do you know his name? I'd like to know more about him. And as the title says, great men can come from anywhere.

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u/kelajimadokunme Feb 24 '25

The Turkish ambassador who helped Jews escape Nazi Germany by providing them with Turkish passports was Behiç Erkin. He was Turkey’s ambassador to France during World War II and played a significant role in saving Turkish Jews, as well as other Jews, by issuing them Turkish passports or documents that allowed them to escape deportation to concentration camps.

Another notable Turkish diplomat who saved Jews during the Holocaust was Selahattin Ülkümen, the Turkish consul-general in Rhodes. He intervened to save several Jewish families by arguing that they were Turkish citizens, even when they were not. For his actions, he was later recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

Thank you for sharing this! very interesting, and you are right it's a very similar story, and it's always nice to know that there are good people everywhere in the world, even if sometimes it seems that there are not (they are few, but they are really worthy)

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u/Lanceparasolu Feb 24 '25

There's probably a lot more of these acts even in a smaller scale that will never see the light of day

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

Sadly you are right, but for the same reason it's always good to remember those we do know about and celebrate the good deeds and be grateful for the good people out there.

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u/No-Professional-1461 Feb 24 '25

So the jews when to El Salvador, and the Germans went to Argentina... Hmmm...

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 24 '25

Now I wonder where the Japanese went lol

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u/No-Professional-1461 Feb 24 '25

Wherever the wind carried them /j

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u/RefrigeratorContent2 Feb 25 '25

Argentina received 24k jews between 1933 and 1943, with a further 20k entering illegally.

Edit: sauce

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u/No-Professional-1461 Feb 25 '25

They were in pursuit.

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u/AnimatorKris Feb 25 '25

Only about 100 jews live in El Salvador currently

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u/NoBahDee Feb 25 '25

Thanks for sharing! I’m going to share this with my wife. Soy estadounidense y mi esposa también, pero mis suegros son salvadoreños. Mi suegra hace las mejores pupusas revueltas.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 25 '25

I'm really glad you liked it y espero que le guste a tus suegros también, sin duda es una historia muy interesante sobre la cual aprender, sobre todo si eres salvadoreño.

Y ah, las pupusas... hay pocas cosas en esta vida tan ricas como las pupusas, yo de hecho acabo de comerme algunas jajaja así que me alegro que hayas podido probar tal exquisitez gracias a tu suegra, ¡un saludo!

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u/oversized_toaster Feb 25 '25

El Salvador really living up to its name with this one.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 25 '25

You can't begin to imagine how much I laughed after reading your comment lol

Honestly I hadn't thought about it like that, but yes, you're right.

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u/dudinax Feb 25 '25

"A great man can come from anywhere"

? there are many awesome Salvadorans. My favorite quote is from Oscar Romero, a high-level priest in El Salvador when government death squads were running rampant.

Eventually they killed some nuns and priests. When he learned of this, Romero said "Good. If we were not being shot, we would not be Salvadorans." Not long after he also was murdered.

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u/Emergency-Weird-1988 Feb 25 '25

there are many awesome Salvadorans

Yes, there are, but there is also a lot of prejudice, hence why is a good thing to talk about the awesome ones and not just focus on the negative, and as I said in the context comment, I'm a salvadoran myself, so believe me when I tell you that with that I didn't mean to say that nothing good has ever come from El Salvador or something like that, quite the contrary.

My favorite quote is from Oscar Romero, a high-level priest

Our salvadoran Saint, a great man indeed, how would I not know about him?

One of my favorite quotes from him is this one: "I beg you, I plead you, I order you in the name of God, stop the repression!"

Not long after he also was murdered.

"If they kill me I will be resurrect in the Salvadoran people"

Always remembered, never forgotten.