Ángel Sanz Briz

Who was Ángel Sanz Briz?

Ángel Sanz-Briz was a Spanish professional diplomat of the Francoist Spain during World War II who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution.

After studying law, his first diplomatic posting was to Cairo. He was sent to Budapest in 1942 where he was helped by Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian veteran of the Spanish Civil War, with saving the lives of 5,200 Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them fake Spanish papers; as Spain was neutral in the war, this made the difference between life and death for those Jews. In 1944, as the Red Army approached Budapest, he was ordered to leave for Switzerland. After that time Perlasca continued his labor with fake documents.

After these events, Sanz Briz continued his diplomatic career: he was posted to San Francisco and Washington DC, Lima, Bern, Bayonne, Guatemala, The Hague, Brussels and China. In 1976 he was sent to Rome as Ambassador of Spain before the Holy See, where he died on June 11, 1980.

Sanz Briz himself tells how he was able to save the lives of so many Jews, in Federico Ysart's book Los judíos en España. He is also the subject of the 2011 Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest.