Gilberto Bosques Saldívar

Who was Gilberto Bosques Saldívar?

Gilberto Bosques Saldívar was a Mexican career diplomat and before that a combatant in the Mexican Revolution and a leftist legislator. As a consul in Marseille, Vichy France, Bosques took initiative to rescue tens of thousands of Jews and Spanish Republican exiles from being deported to Nazi Germany or Spain, but his heroism remained unknown to the world at large for some sixty years, until several years after his death at the age of 102. For about two decades after World War II, Bosques served as Mexico's ambassador to several countries. Since 2003, international recognition has been accruing to him. In 1944, he described his efforts thus: "I followed the policy of my country, of material and moral support to the heroic defenders of the Spanish Republic, the stalwart paladins of the struggle against Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Petain, and Laval."

Bosques has been called the "Mexican Schindler" in allusion to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist whose rescue of several hundred Jews during World War II has been chronicled by the Australian author, Thomas Kenneally, whose account was the basis for the film, Schindler's List.