Samuel del Campo

Samuel del Campo (Linares, Chile, 23 May 1882 – Vernou-la-Celle-sur-Seine, 1 January 1972 ), was a Chilean diplomat who was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations for saving 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by issuing them Chilean passports between 1941 and 1943. He and María Edwards are the only Chileans honored as such.

Biography Special Polish refugee ID card issued at Bucharest in 1943 by Samuel del Campo. Samuel del Campo was born on 23 May 1882, in Chile. He arrived in Paris around 1907 to continue his studies and he was hired as a chemical engineer by the Chilean government to promote sodium nitrate in France. He formed a close friendship with a family in Malakoff, a town on the outskirts of Paris, and moved in with them. Yad Vashem estimates that Del Campo rescued approximately 1,200 Jews by giving them passports, despite the Chilean government's official non-interference policy. In the spring of 1943, as the tide of war went against the Axis, diplomatic relations between Romania and Chile were severed. Del Campo was subsequently appointed as consul-general in Zürich, but the appointment never came into effect and del Campo left the employ of the Chilean government. He never returned to Chile. With his “adoptive” Malakoff family, he settled in Vernou-la-Celle-sur-Seine, in Seine-et-Marne. He died there in 1972 and rests in the local cemetery, in anonymity