Samuel del Campo

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Samuel del Campo (23 May 1882 – 1 January 1972) was a Chilean diplomat who saved about 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by issuing Chilean passports between 1941 and 1943. He was born in Linares, Chile, and moved to Paris around 1907 to study. He worked as a chemical engineer for the Chilean government, promoting sodium nitrate in France, and formed a close friendship with a family in Malakoff.

Del Campo later became a diplomat and from 1941 served as Chile’s chargé d’affaires in Bucharest, Romania. With Poland having no official embassy in Romania, Chile represented Polish citizens there. He began issuing Chilean passports to Polish Jews to help them avoid deportation and repeatedly urged the Romanian government to protect those with his documents. Romanian records describe him as a nuisance to the government at the highest level. Yad Vashem credits him with rescuing about 1,200 Jews.

In spring 1943, Romania and Chile severed diplomatic relations. Del Campo was appointed consul-general in Zürich, but the post never took effect and he left the Chilean service, never returning to Chile. He lived with a Malakoff family and settled in Vernou-la-Celle-sur-Seine, France, where he died in 1972.

He is one of only two Chileans honored as Righteous Among the Nations, the other being María Edwards. He received the recognition posthumously from Yad Vashem on November 23, 2016. In 2021, the Chilean embassy in Bucharest unveiled a plaque in his memory in front of the Great Synagogue of Bucharest.