About Sousa Mendes Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches, GCC, OL (July 19, 1885–April 3, 1954; Portuguese pronunciation: ) was a Portuguese diplomat who ignored and defied the orders of his own government for the safety of war refugees fleeing from invading German military forces in the early years of World War II. Between the June 16 and June 23, 1940, he frantically issued Portuguese visas free of charge, to over 30,000 refugees seeking to escape the Nazi terror, 12,000 of whom were Jews.Aristides de Sousa Mendes was born in Cabanas de Viriato, in Carregal do Sal, in the district of Viseu, Beira region, Portugal, on July 9, 1885. His family had aristocratic origins, since his mother Maria Angelina Ribeiro de Abranches de Abreu Castelo-Branco was a maternal granddaughter of the 2nd Viscount of Midões. His father, José de Sousa Mendes, had been a Judge on the Supreme Court, and Sousa Mendes' twin brother César would become Foreign Minister in 1932–33 under the António de Oliveira Salazar regime. Sousa Mendes studied law at the University of Coimbra, together with his twin, and both obtained their law degrees in 1908. In 1908, he married his childhood sweetheart, Maria Angelina Ribeiro de Abranches (born August 20, 1888); they eventually had 14 children, born in the various countries where he served. Shortly after his marriage, he began the diplomatic career that would take him and his family around the world. In his early career, he served in Zanzibar, Kenya, Brazil, and the United States before being assigned to Antwerp, Belgium in 1931. In Belgium he met the Nobel Prize winners Maurice Maeterlinck and Albert Einstein. After almost ten years of dedicated service in Belgium, Sousa Mendes was assigned to the consulate of Bordeaux in France.