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Historic Figures Who Set Out to Save Jews From the Holocaust

Khalid Elhassan December 15, 2020 32 min

Hanns Albin Rauter - World War II — A Dutch Resistance cell during WWII. For God and Country

34. The Diplomat Who Strove to Save Jews Had a Royal Upbringing

Abdol Hossein Sardari, second from left, in Paris. History Press

Abdol Hossein Sardari (1914 – 1981) was a member of Iran’s Qajar dynasty, which had reigned since the late eighteenth century. In 1925, the Qajars were overthrown, and Sardari’s family was forced to flee Iran, abandoning their properties and much of their wealth. They settled in Europe, where Sardari was raised.

Instead of a royal’s life of luxury, waited on hand and foot, he ended up having to earn his keep and make his own way in life. Sardari studied law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and graduated with a law degree in 1936. In 1937, he was hired as an Iranian diplomat at the Paris embassy. That was where he was when the Germans launched the blitzkrieg that crushed France in 1940.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.