Ángel Sanz Briz

Ángel Sanz-Briz (September 28, 1910 in Zaragoza – June 11, 1980 in Rome) was a Spanish professional diplomat of Francoist Spain during World War II who saved the lives of some five thousand Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution.

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After studying law, his first diplomatic posting was to Cairo. He was sent to Budapest in 1942 where he was helped by his assistants with saving the lives of 5,200 Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them fake Spanish papers; acquiring houses in Budapest at his own cost in order to provide shelter for the refugees which made the difference between life and death for those Jews. In 1944, as the Red Army approached Budapest, he followed government orders to leave for Switzerland.

After these events, Sanz Briz continued his diplomatic career: he was posted to San Francisco and Washington, D.C., Ambassador to Lima, Bern, Bayonne, Guatemala, The Hague, Brussels and China (1973, where he became the first Spanish ambassador). In 1976 he was sent to Rome as Ambassador of Spain to 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 (1973). He is also the subject of the 2011 Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest. In 1991, he was recognized by the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem of Israel, and gave his heirs the title of Righteous Among the Nations. In 1994 the Hungarian government gave him the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.