Abdol Hossein Sardari — The Iranian SchindlerAt the outset of World War II Abdol Hussein Sarda

Abdol Hossein Sardari — The Iranian SchindlerAt the outset of World War II Abdol Hussein Sardari was a minor bureaucrat working in the Iranian Consular Office in Paris. After the Germans invaded and occupied France in 1940 the ambassador of the office was recalled with most of his staff and relocated to Vichy France, leaving a small skeleton crew to manage diplomatic affairs in occupied Paris. Full diplomatic power was given to Sardari, regardless of the fact that he was inexperienced for the post.in 1942 Nazi SS and Gestapo troops began the process of rounding up and deporting Jews in France to concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe. At the time many Iranian citizens were living in France, as the country was a popular destination for vacation and higher learning for many Iranians, among whom were many Iranian Jews. Originally, Iranian passports listed the person’s religion. One of Sardari’s first acts was to reissue new passports that did not list religion. From then on he worked tirelessly to protect Iranian Jews from persecution. When Nazi officials began harassing and persecuting suspected Iranian Jews, Sardari came up with a clever piece of bullshittery that beat the Nazi at their own race theory game. Under Nazi race theory, Iranians were considered Aryans and thus not subject to the Nuremberg Laws. Sardari explained that persecuted Iranian Jews were not really Jews, but an ancient Iranian sect called the “Djuguten” who were followers of the Prophet Moses. They were really Iranian Aryans who could be easily confused for Jews. The Nazi’s sought clarification from official race theorists and scholars, but a ruling on the validity of Sardari’s claims was never made and thus Nazi officials let it slide.Eventually Iranian Jews began asking Sardari if he could help Jewish friends and colleagues who were not Iranian. Sardari began issuing Iranian passports to non-Iranian Jews in order to evacuate them from the country. Doing so was an act that went far beyond his diplomatic authority, however the Iranian government approved all of the passports issued by Sardari without question.  Sardari issued around 1,000 such passports. Each passport could cover an entire family, thus the lives Sardari saved could number in the thousands.After World War II, Sardari faced hard luck and misfortune. During the Iranian Revolution his property was seized, his pension was suspended, and he was forced to flee the country. He died penniless and in exile in Nottingham, England in 1981. -- source link
Tumblr Blog : peashooter85.tumblr.com

More pics about