22 Facts About Giorgio Perlasca

Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian businessman and former Fascist who, with the collaboration of official diplomats, posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved 5,218 Jews from deportation to Nazi extermination camps in eastern Europe.

In 1989, Perlasca was designated by Israel as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Giorgio Perlasca was born in Como and grew up in Masera, province of Padua, Italy.

Giorgio Perlasca grew disillusioned with fascism, in particular due to Benito Mussolini's alliance with Nazism and adoption of Italian racial laws that came into force in 1938.

Giorgio Perlasca was later appointed as an official delegate of the Italian government with diplomatic status and sent to Eastern Europe with the mission of buying meat for the Italian army fighting on the Russian front.

Giorgio Perlasca took advantage of his status as a veteran of the Spanish war, adopted the first name of "Jorge" and, since Spain was neutral in the war, he became a free man.

Giorgio Perlasca worked with the Spanish Charge d'Affaires, Angel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states to smuggle Jews out of Hungary.

Giorgio Perlasca helped Jews find refuge in protected houses under the control of various embassies, which had extraterritorial conventions that gave them an equivalent to sovereignty.

Giorgio Perlasca immediately made the false announcement that Sanz Briz was due to return from a short leave, and that he had been appointed as charge d'affaires for the meantime.

Giorgio Perlasca continued issuing safe conduct passes as initiated by Spanish government, on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that granted citizenship to Jews of Sephardic origin.

In December 1944, Giorgio Perlasca rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene.

Over 45 days, from 1 December 1944 to 16 January 1945, Giorgio Perlasca helped save more than 5,000 Jews.

Giorgio Perlasca asked for a direct hearing with the Hungarian interior minister, Gabor Vajna, and threatened him with legal and economic measures against the "3,000 Hungarian citizens" declared by Perlasca as residents of Spain, unless Vajna withdrew the plan.

Back home, Giorgio Perlasca drew up a detailed memorandum of the events, dated 13 October 1945, and sent it to the Spanish foreign minister in Madrid and to the Italian government, keeping a copy for himself.

Giorgio Perlasca wrote to Sanz Briz, the ambassador who had replaced in Budapest, who laconically replied warning Perlasca out not to expect recognition for his work.

Giorgio Perlasca didn't tell his story publicly or even to his family, but rather turned to those he considered might be the only appropriate recipients.

Back home, Giorgio Perlasca was asked to pay with his own money an expensive car which he had rented during the rescue of the Jews and had been destroyed in the Russian siege of Budapest; Giorgio Perlasca later struggled to make ends meet.

Giorgio Perlasca never yearned for fame or explicitly hid his story, he simply told it to those he thought might be the appropriate recipient, and then lived his life.

Only in 1980 did Giorgio Perlasca's family learned of the memorandum he drafted, after Giorgio Perlasca had a stroke, when he decided to talk about it to his closest relatives, but he continued to keep it private once he recovered.

In 1989, Giorgio Perlasca was awarded by the Hungarian parliament in plenary session with the highst national honor.

In October 1991, he was awarded the title Grand Ufficiale of the Italian Republic; the Senate approved the grant of a life pension for notable Italian senior citizens in financial difficulty, but Giorgio Perlasca declined the grant.

Giorgio Perlasca died of a heart attack in Padua on 15 August 1992.