Gilberto Bosques Saldívar (b. Chiautla, Puebla, 20 July 1892 – 4 July 1995) was a Mexican career diplomat and before that a combatant in the Mexican Revolution and a leftist legislator. As a consul in Nazi-occupied France, Bosques[1] took initiative to rescue tens of thousands of Jews and Spanish Republican exiles from being deported to Nazi Germany or Spain, but his heroism remained unknown to the world at large for some sixty years, until several years after his death at the age of 102 (not 103, as sometimes reported). For about two decades after World War II, Bosques served as Mexico's ambassador to several countries. Since 2003, international recognition has been accruing to him. In 1944, he described his efforts thus: "I followed the policy of my country, of material and moral support to the heroic defenders of the Spanish Republic, the stalwart paladins of the struggle against Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Petain, and Laval."[2] Saldívar has been called the "Mexican Schindler" in allusion to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist whose rescue of several hundred Jews during World War II has been chronicled by the Australian author, Thomas Kenneally, whose account (Schindler's Ark) was the basis for the film, Schindler's List. Gilberto Bosques Saldívar was born in Chiautla, a mountain village in southern portion of the state of Puebla, southwest of Mexico City. At the age of 17, he took up arms in the Mexican Revolution under the command of Aquiles Serdán, the first martyr of the Revolution. He went on to serve as a state legislator in Puebla and as a federal deputy on two occasions: 1922-1923 and again in 1934-1937. In the latter period, he belonged to a block of legislators supporting the new president, general Lázaro Cárdenas.[3] In 1938, he was the director of the government owned newspaper, El Nacional. [edit] Mexican consul in France during World War II Bosques was stationed in France from 1939-1943, coinciding with most of World War II, initially as Mexico's Consul General in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles. Once Nazi Germany had occupied France and entrusted much of the governance of the country to Vichy France, he directed consular employees to issue a visa to anybody wanting to flee to Mexico. Over time, under his auspices visas were issued to approximately 40,000 people, most of them Jews, most of the rest Spaniards. The Spaniards rescued were refugees from the Franco regime after the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, Bosques, his family, and 40 consular staff members were arrested by the Gestapo and detained in Germany for a year. He was released under an agreement between the German and Mexican governments. [edit] Post-World War II In the decades after his release from German captivity, he served as Ambassador of Mexico in Portugal, Finland, Sweden and Cuba. Gilberto Bosques Saldívar died just days short of his 103rd birthday. Many accounts of his heroism written since his death erroneously report his age at death as 103 years. Saldívar's feat in saving nearly 40,000 people from execution by the Nazis or the Franco dictatorship went unrecognized even among specialists in the history of rescuers of Jews until after 2000, and especially the year 2008. At an award ceremony held in Beverly Hills, California, on 13 November 2008, the United States organization, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) gave him the Courage to Care Award, created in 1987 to honor rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust Era.[4][5] But this was not the first major posthumous recognition given to him. He was memorialized in Vienna on 4 June, 2003 by having a street in the 22nd district named after him: the Gilberto-Bosques-Promenade.[6] More recently, in 2007 a photographic exhibition in his honor was mounted at the Jewish and Holocaust History Museum[7] in Acapulco, Guerrero.[8] In 2008 this exhibition traveled to Xalapa, Veracruz.