Have you heard of Aldolfo Kaminsky, Gilberto Bosques Saldivar or Jose Arturo Castellanos Contreras?

By Ida Margolis, GenShoah Chair

If asked who the villains of the Holocaust are, most adults could name quite a few of the perpetrators of evil. However, when asked about heroes of the Holocaust, responses are often limited to Oskar Schindler, Sir Nicholas Winton and perhaps the Bielski Brothers or Anne Frank, all wonderfully portrayed in film. Now that you may have additional time for film viewing and reading, it is an ideal time to read and learn stories of additional inspirational, courageous heroes of the Holocaust.

Among my favorite Holocaust heroes are two I wrote about earlier — Freidel Dicker-Brandies and Roddie Edmonds. There are many Holocaust hero stories that GenShoah SWFL presented programs on in the past, including Gertruda Babilinska, Chaiune Sugihara, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, and Gino Bartali. This season, we arehoping to present virtual programs about amazing heroines Hannah Senesh, Noor Inayat Khan and Irena Sendler.

This month’s focus on heroes will give a little information about Gilberto Bosques Saldivar and Aldolfo Kaminsky.

Gilberto Bosques Saldivar

Bosques was a Mexican career diplomat, who was stationed in France from 1939 to 1943 as Mexico’s Consul General. Fleeing the German occupation of Paris in May 1940, Bosques was instructed by his government to organize a consulate to represent Mexico in Vichy France. Once Nazi Germany occupied France, Bosques directed consular employees to issue a visa to anybody wanting to flee to Mexico. Under his direction, visas were issued to approximately 40,000 people, mostly Jews and Spanish Civil War refugees. In 1943, Bosques, his family and 40 consular staff members were arrested by the Gestapo and detained in Germany for a year.

Bosques’s feat in saving nearly 40,000 people from execution by the Third Reich or Francoist Spain went unrecognized until after 2000. In 2007, a photographic exhibition in his honor was mountedat the Jewish and Holocaust History Museum in Mexico City and on November 13, 2008, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) gave him the Courage to Care Award, created in 1987 to honor rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust Era. A wonderful documentary was made about Bosques in 2010, titled “Visa al Paraiso” (Visa to Paradise).

Adolfo Kaminsky

Saving lives using his skill as a forger was a young man named Adolfo Kaminsky. As a teenager, he joined the French Resistance, specializing in the forgery of identity documents. During World War II, Kaminsky forged papers that ultimately saved the lives of more than 14,000 Jews. This was not what he expected to do with his skills, but he realized that this was a way he could be a fighter for humanity. He later went on to assist Jewish immigration to the British Mandate for Palestine. He forged papers for 30 years for different activist groups, always without ever receiving payment, because he could not stand any injustice.

Kaminsky’s story is “a remarkable story of rugged survival, unique genius, great personal sacrifice, and above all, an insatiable desire to fight for what he believed to be right.” Kaminsky did not tell his story for many years, but when his daughter, Sarah, learned his story, she wrote the book, “Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger’s Life.” There is now a documentary film about him called “Forging Identity.”

José Arturo Castellanos Contreras

Perhaps you have recently read the name of José Arturo Castellanos Contreras, who, as the Consul General for El Salvador, along with Gyorgy Mandl, helped save nearly 40,000 Jews and Central Europeans from Nazi persecution by providing them political asylum and safety.

The community will have the opportunity to learn more about Colonel Castellanos and how he helped local Holocaust survivor Rob Nossen at the upcoming Holocaust Museum Virtual Luncheon Winter Fundraising event on Dec. 10. For more information, see page 14 or go to the Holocaust Museum website, hmcec.org.