Yad Vashem honors Chilean as Righteous Among the Nations
Yad Vashem on Sunday posthumously honored a Chilean diplomat who risked his career to help rescue more than 1,000 Romanian Jews during the Holocaust.
Prof. Sergio Della Pergola, a member of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous, and Irena Steinfeldt, director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, presented Dr. Christian Beals Campos, a relative of Samuel del Campo, with a medal and certificate of honor on Sunday on behalf Yad Vashem, the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
Del Campo was a foreign service diplomat for the Republic of Chile and served as chargé d’affaires at its embassy in Bucharest from 1941 to 1943. During that time, he issued various official documents, mainly to Polish Jews in the city of Czernowitz, now part of Ukraine.
In October 1941, a ghetto was established in Czernowitz, from which deportations to Transnistria began. In the absence of an official Polish presence in Romania, representation for the interests of Polish citizens was transferred to Chile, and Del Campo began to issue Chilean passports for Jews of Polish nationality.
After a brief respite, deportations of Jews from Czernowitz to Transnistria resumed in June 1942, at which time Del Campo continued to intervene with Romanian authorities in favor of “the Jews under the protection of Chile,” Yad Vashem related. Based on minutes from discussions at the Council of Ministers of Romania, Yad Vashem estimated some 1,200 Jews received Chilean passports that provided protection from the deportations.
In the spring of 1943, diplomatic relations between Chile and Romania were severed and Switzerland began to represent the interests of Chile. The documents Del Campo issued were clearly not in line with his government’s policy. When Swiss envoys asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile to clarify the policy of the ministry regarding the granting of Chilean passports, they were told “they would prefer not to grant new passports without the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile.”
Del Campo was appointed consul-general in Zurich, but the appointment was not put into effect, and Del Campo never returned to serve in Chile’s Foreign Ministry, Yad Vashem noted. He died in Paris in the 1960s.
On November 23, 2016, the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations decided to recognize Del Campo as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, non-Jews who – at risk of their own lives – saved Jews from extermination by the Nazis.
“To act righteously requires one, first and foremost, to see the reality of what is happening around you,” Steinfeldt said. “Del Campo was a foreign diplomat who lived in Romania and saw what was happening to the Jews. Instead of saying, that it is none of my business and that I am not guilty of anything, he chose to open his eyes and act, thus endangering his position. Per Anger, a Swedish diplomat who lived in Budapest in 1944, said, as the Germans were conquering Hungary, that there is nothing in the company guidebook telling us how we should behave in this situations. As such, these diplomats had to invent ways.”
Yad Vashem has recognized a number of diplomats as Righteous Among the Nations and is currently preparing a special exhibition together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to honor them. To date, Yad Vashem has recognized more than 26,500 such individuals from around the world.