Samuel del Campo: Chilean Diplomat Who Saved 1,200 Jews in WWII

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Samuel del Campo: Chilean Diplomat…

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Samuel del Campo (1882 – 1960) was a Chilean diplomat during the Second World War. From 1941 until Chile joined the Allies in 1943, he worked in Bucharest, Romania, and is credited with saving 1,200 Romanian and Polish Jews by issuing them Chilean passports. He has been honored by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, as well as by the Jewish community in Romania.

Quote: “The story and actions of Samuel del Campo in Romania as the Republic of Chile’s chargé d’affaires represent a light of human dignity in a moment of history in which everything was surrounded by darkness,” said Silviu Vexler, president of the Federation of the Jewish Communities of Romania and a member of the Romanian parliament, in a speech.

Sources: Wikipedia (introduction), The Jerusalem Post (introduction and quotation)

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Quotable

“[T]he foundations for extremism usually are held in check by various restraints. Societies are not liberal, moderate, progressive, and free because almost all their citizens – let alone their politicians — are liberal, moderate, progressive or committed to the freedoms of others.

“But societies consistently avoid extremism when the infrastructures of freedom are strong: when key institutions and norms encourage a more decent, rights-respective, lawful politics; when powerful social movements and independent media hold leaders to account, expose rather than reinforce political fantasies, and champion the rights of the vulnerable; and when information is produced and scrutinized by scholars, civil servants, and non-governmental organizations devoid of either government repression or vested interests.

“Yet no infrastructure is rigidly immovable, and once key components are eroded and weakened, once sections of the political and cultural elite attempt to mobilize the foundations of extremism, the system of restraints can swiftly collapse.

“While genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is historically exceptional, its central lesson is that the broader danger of extreme atrocities is not. In the words of the great historian Ian Kershaw, the Holocaust ‘lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity… It showed what we are capable of.’ Only by rejecting false narratives of conflict and polarization, and maintaining systems of rights and freedoms for all, can we hope to prevent that capability from once more becoming a reality.”

— Jonathan Leader Maynard in his incisive article “Could It Happen Here?: The Holocaust and Atrocities in the 21st Century” To read the entire article, click here.