The 'Spanish Schindler' saved 5,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Now Spain wants to find their descendants

Ángel Sanz Briz, one of the Righteous Among the Nations. 

"In an unprecedented effort to find their relatives and raise awareness about their stories, Spanish authorities are releasing a list of the Hungarian Jews protected from the Nazis by a diplomat nicknamed the “Spanish Schindler.”

Ángel Sanz Briz was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial and museum, in 1966 for using an ingenious legal maneuver to save more than 5,200 Jews from being deported to Auschwitz in 1944.

But even though his efforts saved five times as many Jews as those of Oskar Schindler, his story is far less well known — in part because the staunchly anti-Israel Franco regime, which ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975, barred him from accepting Yad Vashem’s honor. [the hero died in Rome, Italy 1980] ..."

The 'Spanish Schindler' saved 5,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Now Spain wants to find their descendants. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Using an expired Spanish law that extended citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, Spanish diplomat Ángel Sanz-Briz saved 5,200 Hungarian Jews in Budapest from being deported to Auschwitz in 1944.