Israel’s Holocaust center Yad Vashem on Sunday posthumously honored a Chilean diplomat who risked his career to help rescue over a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust.

Prof. Sergio Della Pergola, member of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous, and Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, presented Dr. Christian Beals Campos, a relative of Samuel del Campo, with the medal and certificate of honor on behalf of Yad Vashem, the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

During October 1941, a ghetto was established in the city of Czernowitz, and deportations to Transnistria began. In the absence of an official Polish representation in Romania, the representation of the interests of Polish citizens in Romania was transferred to Chile, and Del Campo began to issue Chilean passports for Jews of Polish nationality.

After the deportations from Czernowitz to Transnistria resumed in June 1942, Del Campo continued to intervene with the Romanian authorities on behalf of "the Jews under the protection of Chile," Yad Vashem said. Based on recorded minutes from discussions in the Council of Ministers of Romania, Yad Vashem estimated that approximately 1,200 Jews received Chilean passports providing them with protection against deportation.

In the spring of 1943, diplomatic relations between Chile and Romania were severed, and Switzerland began to represent the interests of Chile. The documents del Campo issued were clearly not in line with the Chilean government’s policy; when Swiss envoys asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile to clarify the policy of the Ministry regarding the granting of Chilean passports, they were told that "they would prefer not to grant new passports without the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile."

Del Campo was appointed Consul-General in Zurich, but the appointment never came into effect, and Del Campo never returned to serve in Chile's Foreign Ministry, Yad Vashem noted. He died in Paris in the 1960s.