Parshat Acharei Mot - Yom Hashoah  
April 29, 2000
Rabbi Hayyim Kassorla  

In May 1940, refugees flocked to southern France seeking passage to Lisbon, Portugal via Spain, in hopes of finding a ship there to take them far away from the battlefields of Europe.

But to cross the frontier, the refugees needed Portuguese entry visas, and on May 10, 1940, the date that the Germans invaded the low countries and France, the Portuguese government instructed its consul general in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, to refuse entry visas to all refugees, Jews in particular. All passage across the Spanish border came to a sudden halt and some ten thousand Jews remained stranded in Bordeaux.

One night, walking in the city, Mendes met Rabbi Haim Krieger, a refugee, as he and other Jews were preparing to spend the night in the street near the main synagogue. Mendes invited the Rabbi to the Consulate and listened to his account of the Jews’ suffering.

Hearing this, Mendes announced that he was ready to grant entry visas to anyone who asked. Rabbi Krieger recounted what followed: “I sat with him a full day, without food and sleep, and helped him stamp thousands of passports with Portuguese visas. Mendes did not eat or sleep a whole day, until late at night. And during this short time, he issued several thousand visas, until the enemy approached Bordeaux and we were forced to flee to Spain.” 

When Mendes returned to Lisbon, the Portuguese government, furious at his insubordination, dismissed him from the Foreign Ministry and canceled all his retirement benefits. When they met again in Lisbon in 1941, Mendes told Rabbi Krieger that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarded him as mentally deranged for having destroyed his career.

With a family of twelve children, Mendes’s savings quickly disappeared. The HIAS organization tried to mitigate his suffering, and two of his children were helped to relocate to the United States to start new lives.

But Mendes had no regrets. “If thousands of Jews can suffer because of one Catholic [Hitler], then surely is it permitted for one Catholic to suffer for so many Jews. I could not act otherwise. And I accept everything that has befallen me with love.”

The Jewish community of Lisbon supported him financially in the years before his death, in 1954. In 1996, he was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Amongst the Nations.

In Parshat Acharei Mot, just a few days before Yom Hashoah, we read about the Yom Kippur ritual in which two identical goats are placed side-by-side. Lots are chosen. One is marked “To G-d,” the other, “To Azazel.”

The goat marked for G-d, is sacrificed by the Kohein Gadol to expiate the sins of the people, its blood sprinkled in the Holy of Holies.

The other goat is led into the wilderness, “to cut-off land,” then thrown off a cliff, its bones smashed on the rocks below.

Identical people from the same cities in Nazi Europe, with the same educations, the same religious backgrounds, the same experiences—yet, with very different destinies. “Goral echad laHashem, vegoral echad laAzazel.” One lot marked for G-d, a rescuer who made amends for the sins of his people, destined for holiness, a person prepared to sacrifice himself and his family for the sanctification of G-d’s name.

The other lot marked for Azazel, a person who bowed before the demonic evil of the wilderness, who led his culture and his country to a cut-off land—cut off from all morality and civilized behavior. His destiny was to be smashed on the rocks, his legacy cast to four winds.

How many destinies were cast to G-d? How many rescuers? How many Schindlers? How many Mendeses?

Many worlds were saved by rescuers. A Dutch Christian rescuer called it, “the conspiracy of goodness.” “Do you think,” he said, “that I could have hidden a Jewish family without the knowledge and cooperation of the grocer, the milkman, the policeman?” If Azazel has many faces, goodness has many forms, too.

We are taught that for the sake of 36 righteous persons, the world is sustained; for the sake of ten righteous persons, Sodom and Gomorrah would not have been destroyed. Saving one life is tantamount to saving an entire world.

Goodness is a powerful mirror. Goodness challenges us in ways that evil does not. Compared to Eichmann, I am a saint. But compared to Mendes, how do I measure up? Would I have unlocked the door? Would I have taken into my home this sick man, this pregnant woman, this frightened family? Would I have kept them for days, weeks, months, years, knowing that discovery would mean imprisonment, torture and death for me and my family?

We are created in the image of G-d. Goodness is our moral mandate. Let us hope and pray for the day when all mankind will cast its destiny with G-d. “Goral echad laHashem.” One destiny with One G-d—the G-d of love and mercy. The G-d of Israel.

Rabbi Hayyim Kassorla

Rabbi Kassorla is rav of Magen David Sephardic Congregation in Rockville, Maryland