Accidental Talmudist: José Arturo Castellanos Contreras, a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat, became El Salvador’s Consul General to Switzerland in 1941. José was approached by Jewish Hungarian businessman György Mandl, who was desperate to get himself, his family and his fellow Jews out of Europe.
José created the post of “First Secretary to the Consul” for Mandl, now renamed Jorge Montello. He and his family were given papers of Salvadorian nationality. The phony job and papers saved the Mandl/Montello family from deportation to Auschwitz.
José and “Jorge” went on to prepare 13,000 fake Salvadoran citizenship papers that saved 40,000 Central European Jews.
In 2010 José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.
