Portuguese Consul General. Aristides' parents were José de Sousa Mendes, a former Supreme Court Judge, and Maria Angelina Ribeiro de Abranches de Abreu Castelo-Branco, a granddaughter of a Viscount of Portugal. His twin brother César was also a Foreign Minister for Portugal under Salazar. Both brothers had graduated from Coimbra University. Sousa Mendes disobeyed Salazar's orders that every visa needed approval from Lisbon, in order to rescue 15,000 families from Hitler during June of 1940. Once the route was open, Spain was obliged to honor the visas, and it is possible that we will never know the true extent of people saved by his issuance of visas without charge in a time of extreme peril. The dictator Salazar never forgave Aristides for his disobedience of orders regarding visas and admission of refugees into Portugal from the war. Sousa Mendes was fired in July 1940 from the diplomatic corps, without a pension, deprived of his license to practice law within Portugal, deprived even of his driving license. Salazar forbade anyone to help him, and he was left with no means of earning a living, eventually selling his home. He and his wife died without an obituary being published for them. Such was the fear of the ban. Although not well known during his lifetime, due to the ban placed upon him by Salazar, yet after his death his children worked to rehabilitate the image of their father, after immigrating to the United States and other countries to escape discrimination and blacklisting within Portugal. Israel's Yad Vashem Museum declared him a Righteous Gentile in 1966. In 1987, the Portuguese Parliament granted him a medal - Order of Liberty. In 1988, the government of Portugal restored his diplomatic status, paid his pension to his heirs, and granted him another medal, the Cross of Merit. His former childhood home, Villa Passal, was declared a national historical monument, and a local school was named after him. He was then proclaimed a national hero, and other events were arranged to celebrate his memory. Aristides was born in material wealth, but he died in abject poverty.