Western Washington University’s Sebastian Mendes will present “There is a Black Mirror in My Heart: An Oral History and the Legacy of a Holocaust Rescuer,” the first installment this academic year in WWU’s Turning Points faculty lecture series, at 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, in Communications Facility room 110 on the WWU campus.

The event is free and open to the public.

Mendes’ presentation will focus the actions of his grandfather, Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who in June 1940, was in the unique position to aid thousands of desperate Jewish refugees pouring into Bordeaux, France, with German troops poised to capture the city at any time. In an extremely concentrated period of only a few days, his actions resulted in the largest single rescue act of the entire Holocaust; as a result, Mendes was severely punished by his own government and never recognized or vindicated in his own lifetime....