Eduardo Propper de Callejón

Propper de Callejón was First Secretary of the Spanish Embassy in Paris when France surrendered to Nazi Germany on 20 June 1940. To prevent the Wehrmacht from plundering the art collection that his wife's family kept at the Château de Royaumont, he declared the castle to be his main residence so that it would be treated in the same privileged way as the accommodation of any other diplomat. Among the art works thus saved are a triptych of Van Eyck (one of Adolf Hitler's favourite painters).

In July 1940, he issued from the Spanish Consulate in Bordeaux, in co-operation with Portuguese Consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes, more than 30,000 transit visas to Jews so that they could cross Spain to reach Portugal. When Spanish Foreign Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer learnt that Propper de Callejón was issuing visas without prior authorization, he had him transferred to the Consulate of Larache in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco. Afterwards, he would be posted to Rabat; Zurich; Washington, DC; Ottawa; and Oslo.

Propper de Callejón's father, Maximilian "Max" Propper, was a Bohemian Jew, and his mother, Juana de Callejón, was a Spanish Catholic. They raised him as well as his brothers in the Catholic faith. His wife, Baroness Hélène Fould-Springer, was a socialite and painter. She was from a notable Jewish Franco-Austrian banking family, the daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer (a French banker descended from the Ephrussi family and the Fould dynasty) and Marie Cecile von Springer (whose father was Austrian-born industrialist Baron Gustav von Springer and whose mother was from the de Königswarter family). She converted to Catholicism after the war.{{cite news |url=http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywood_jew/article/helena_bonham_carter_jewish_mother_20080730/ |title=Helena Bonham Carter: Jewish mother? |first=Naomi |last=Pfefferman |date=30 July 2008 |newspaper=The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160902213608/http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywood_jew/article/helena_bonham_carter_jewish_mother_20080730 |archive-date=2 September 2016}} Her sister was the prominent Paris art patron and philanthropist Liliane de Rothschild (Baroness Élie de Rothschild, 1916–2003) of the prominent Rothschild family (who had also married within the von Springer family in the 19th century).

He never gained public recognition for his heroic acts before his death in 1972 in London after an operation.{{cite news |title= Eduardo Propper y Callejón|work=The Times |page=14 |date=29 January 1972 }}

In 2007, he was officially recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance authority in Israel.{{cite news |url=http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11&SecId=11&AId=57933&ATypeId=1 |title=How Helena's grandfather was finally recognised as a true hero |date=8 February 2008 |first=Jenni |last=Frazer |newspaper=The Jewish Chronicle |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080210025449/http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11&SecId=11&AId=57933&ATypeId=1 |archive-date=10 February 2008}} That was accomplished by the testimony of Austrian Archduke Otto von Habsburg, who had disclosed his knowledge of Propper de Callejón's actions at the Nazi occupation of France during an interview with Felix Pfeifle for the film Felix Austria (2012).

• Francoist Spain and the Holocaust

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• {{cite web |url=http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/news/3302.htm |title=Eduardo Propper de Callejón Honored by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation |first=Stephanie |last=Surach |website=IRWF}}
• {{cite web |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/propper-de-callejon.html |title=Eduardo Propper de Callejón

|website=Yad Vashem}}

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Category:1895 births

Category:1972 deaths

Category:Spanish diplomats

Category:Spanish people of Jewish descent

Category:Spanish people of Czech descent

Category:Spanish Roman Catholics

Category:Spanish Righteous Among the Nations

Category:Catholic Righteous Among the Nations

Category:Fould family

Category:Spanish expatriates in France