Heroes remembered for helping Jews escape deportation
El Salvador isn't,typically remembered as a savior of Jews escaping the Nazi death machine. But that Central American nation's ambassador to the United States, Rene Leon, is hoping "to solve the collective historical gap."
He and other Salvadoran officials have begun publicizing the work of Col. Jose Arturo Castellanos and George MandelMantello, who produced and distributed Salvadoran citizenship papers to more than 25,000 European Jews from 1942 to 1945, allowing them to escape deportation to Nazi camps.
With these certificates, Leon said, "thousands of Jewish people were granted a new nationality from a tiny country they did not know ...