Who saved the second largest number of Jews in WW2?

1st place by a massive margin, far more than all the rest put together, was the Catholic Church under Pius XII.  Historians believe around 850,000 were saved by Catholic institutions.

2nd place will come as a surprise to most: it was General Franco's Spain.  Franco is of course a bogeyman on the secular left.  The left are sore losers and hold the cultural high ground at the moment: government, academia and the media.  Franco is a bogeyman merely because he beat them, so the following facts remain largely untold.  If it does come up, the secular left will do its best to play it down by attributing some implausible, sordid motive to Franco.  In reality, one needs to look no further than the fact that Franco's own ancestors were Marranos (Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion).

Franco's Spain saved more Jews from the concentration camps than any other country.  The consensus of historians is that Spain saved between 20,000 and 35,000 Jews by letting refugees pass through the country.  Plus another 5,000 Jews were saved by Spanish diplomats abroad.  Franco refused to hand over Spanish or foreign Jews to the Nazis and he allowed Jews and others with Portuguese visas to transit Spain.  Despite his aversion to Zionism and "Judeo"-Freemasonry, Franco clearly did not share the rabid anti-Semitic ideology of the Nazis.

Early in WW2, a contingent of Spanish doctors travelling in Poland were informed of the Nazi extermination plans by Governor-General Hans Frank, who was under the misimpression that they would share his views about the matter; when they came home, they passed the story to Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco, who informed Franco. Another piece of this jigsaw could have been Admiral Canaris, the head of German Military Intelligence. Canaris had been appalled by the Nazi's brutality he had witnessed in Poland and he had worked with Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and the two men had become friends.

In the first years of the war, the Jews were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but there were also Jews from Eastern Europe. Throughout World War II, Spanish diplomats of the Franco government extended their protection to Eastern European Jews, especially in Hungary.  Jews claiming Spanish ancestry were provided with Spanish documentation without being required to prove their case and either left for Spain or survived the war with the help of their new legal status in occupied countries.

Diplomats discussed the possibility of Spain as a route to a containment camp for Jewish refugees near Casablanca but it came to naught because of the lack of Free French and British support. Nonetheless, control of the Spanish border under France was relaxed, and thousands of Jews managed to cross into Spain (many by smugglers' routes).  Almost all of them survived the war.  The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee operated openly in Barcelona.

Shortly afterwards, Spain began giving citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania; many Ashkenazic Jews also managed to be included, as did some non-Jews. The Spanish head of mission in Budapest, Ángel Sanz Briz, saved thousands of Ashkenazim in Hungary by granting them Spanish citizenship, placing them in safe houses and teaching them minimal Spanish so they could pretend to be Sephardim, at least to someone who did not know Spanish.  Toward the war's end, Sanz Briz had to flee Budapest, leaving these Jews open to arrest and deportation.  An Italian diplomat, Giorgio Perlasca, who was himself living under Spanish protection, used forged documents to persuade the Hungarian authorities that he was the new Spanish Ambassador, and continued Spanish protection of Hungarian Jews until the Red Army arrived.

I believe, but cannot trace the source of this story, that there was an agreement with the Nazi for Spanish diplomats to issue just 200 papers.  These papers were numbered consecutively, and Briz and Perlasca got round this hurdle by issuing the numbers randomly, and simply never issuing the number 200 - and by this simple ruse were able to save thousands.

Franco's Benevolence to the Jews Continued Long After the End of WW2

In 1967, after Egypt had been pulverized in the Six Day War by Israel, Egypt turned in vengeance on its Jewish community, throwing at least 425 Jewish men into jail. Other Arab countries also began terrorizing their Jews.

The 75 year old General Franco sent instructions to his diplomats in Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to help all Jews, whether Sephardic or otherwise, and to provide Egyptian Jews with documents to leave.  Following these instructions, the Spanish ambassador in Cairo, Angel Sagaz, helped over 615 families escape over the next two years, even transferring some of their jewellery (which Egypt forbade them to take with them) out of the country in Spanish diplomatic bags.

A JEW CHAMPIONS CHRISTIANS’ RIGHTS

Somewhere at the back of my mind I seem to remember that the Jews have an avenue in Jerusalem, or maybe Tel Aviv, in which the trees have been planted to commemorating the lives of “Righteous Gentile.” Each tree has a plaque bearing the heading “Righteous among the nations,” with a synopsis of the life of the individual celebrated. Aside, I also believe that one tree, shortly after WWII, was planted to commemorate the life of Pope Pius XII, in recognition of the 860,000 Jews he saved from Hitler’s gas chambers - more incidentally than all the governments of the world, and charities and noble individuals, such as Schindler (just over a 1000) added together! Well if Vatican City one day has a similar avenue celebrating the lives of non-Catholics who have made outstanding contributions to the Church, I should like to pay for a tree and a plaque for one Ezra Levant. Who is Ezra Levant many readers may well ask?

Ezra Levant is a Canadian Jew who, unlike our post-Conciliar bishops who tiptoe about in these situations like timid school girls, has taken on the Canadian government’s “Human Rights” Commission head on. Levant, in spite of being a Jew, had realized, what should be self-evident to any Catholic, that the bludgeoning international “Human Rights” industry, backed as it is by militant secularists, radical feminists, Muslim activists and the homosexual collective, is little more than a front for anti-Christian bigots in general and anti-Catholic bigots in particular. This is why the ADL, another “Human Rights” scam can turn up in busloads to express their outrage when some callow spotty teenage thug daubs a swastika on a synagogue, yet are nowhere to be seen when rent-a-mob from the homosexual collective trashes a church.

Ezra, clearly no mincing shrinking violet, set out deliberately, not to politely dialogue with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, à la post-Conciliar Church, but by a mixture of wits, courage and Jewish chutzpah, to blow a bloody great hole below their water line. And in this he has succeeded spectacularly! First he published on November 20, 2008 on his blog, ezralevant.com, the following:

“Come on people, wake up! It's time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally depraved individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.”

This resulted predictable in a gay activist, probable a cat’s-paw from the homosexual collective, lodging a complaint with the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission. However, on November 17, 2008, Mr Levant received a letter from Lucie Viellette, Secretary to the Commission, stating that the complaint filed against him had been dismissed on the grounds that he had published the article in question “with the goal of furthering a public debate on freedom of expression.”

You may well ask what is so significant about all this. Well, here comes the punch line: this was a perfect scientific experiment: you see, Mr Levant had republished, word for word, the very same "hate speech" that a Protestant Minister, one Stephen Boissoin, had published six years earlier. However, the Rev. Boissoin was found by both the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Commission to be guilty of hate speech. He was found guilty of violating Section 13 of the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act. He received from the Alberta Human Rights Commission a hefty fine and a lifetime ban on preaching sermons that criticize homosexuality and a lifetime ban on private communications which are critical of homosexuality.

Mr Levant had merely re-published Boissoin’s words, attributing them to himself and then sat back and waited for the inevitable “human rights violation” complaint to be lodged against him. It was - but, unlike Rev. Biossoin, he was acquitted. Mr. Levant response: “I published the exact same words Rev. Boissoin used. I published the words in the exact same jurisdiction that Rev. Boissoin did – in Alberta. I published them in contravention of the exact same laws that Rev. Boissoin did – the Stalinist human rights acts. And a complaint was brought against me, just as it was against Rev. Boissoin. Only one thing was different. Rev. Boissoin is Christian. I'm Jewish.”

Not content to leave it there Ezra Levant re-published the infamous cartoons of Mohammed - provoking a predictable complaint from two Islamic fundamentalist. This time, the Commission, having been caught with their trousers down once, felt obliged to call Mr Levant to account. Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzVJTHIvqw8; you will enjoy an object lesson on how to deal with secular bullies. One almost feels sorry for the “human rights” lawyer as she visible wilts before Mr Levant’s verbal onslaught - almost, but not quite.