{"id":101109,"date":"2023-01-06T17:05:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T15:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=101109"},"modified":"2023-01-06T10:48:35","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T08:48:35","slug":"12-05-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=101109","title":{"rendered":"Congressman-elect George Santos lied about grandparents fleeing anti-Jewish persecution during WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Congressman-elect George Santos lied about grandparents fleeing anti-Jewish persecution during WWII<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Andrew Silverstein<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Genealogy websites show his mother\u2019s parents were born in Brazil, not Ukraine or Belgium, as his campaign website stated<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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A photo of Leonard Antoine Horta Devolder and his family in Brazil. Courtesy of Gea Sierdsma via Geneanet<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Congressman-elect George Santos\u2019 emotional narrative of having Jewish grandparents who fled Europe during World War II appears to be untrue, like much of the rest of his campaign biography, according to genealogy websites reviewed by the\u00a0Forward<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Santos, a Long Island Republican, has said that his father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish, and that both faiths \u201care mine.\u201d The\u00a0very first line of the \u201cAbout George\u201d page<\/a>\u00a0on his campaign website states: \u201cGeorge\u2019s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the website myheritage.com lists Santos\u2019 maternal grandparents as having both been born in Brazil before the Nazis rose to power \u2014 his grandfather,\u00a0Paulo Horta Devolder<\/a>, in 1918, and his grandmother,\u00a0Rosalina Caruso Horta Devolder<\/a>, in Rio, in 1927. An\u00a0online obituary<\/a>\u00a0for Santos\u2019 mother, Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder, who died in 2016, says she was born in Niter\u00f3i, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, on Dec.\u00a022, 1962, to Paul and Rosalina Devolder.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"A Christian image from the Facebook page of George Santos\u2019 late mother, Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder.\u00a0Courtesy of Facebook<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Fatima\u2019s own\u00a0Facebook page<\/a>, which has photos of her with Santos and tags his page, has no mentions of the words \u201cJew\u201d or \u201cJewish,\u201d nor the terms Yom Kippur, Shabbat or Israel in English or Portuguese. But four of the seven pages she \u201cliked\u201d were for Catholic groups, and another was for a Brazilian priest and singer.<\/span><\/p>\n

She regularly shared posts with Catholic themes and images of Jesus, including one eight months before her death from a Brazilian Christian group, Tarde com Maria (Afternoons with Maria), that says in Portuguese: \u201cThe cross of Christ for some is a symbol of defeat, for us it is a symbol of salvation.\u201d Another adapts a quote from Genesis, \u201cThere\u2019s an angel today, delivering from all evil.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A chorus of constituents and government watchdogs have called for Santos to step aside or for Congress to refuse to seat him in January since a blockbuster\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/i>investigation<\/a>\u00a0on Monday reporting that much of his storybook biography appears to have been made up.\u00a0The Times\u00a0<\/i>said that neither Baruch College, which Santos said he was graduated from in 2010, nor Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, where Santos said he had worked, had any record of him.<\/span>
\n\"\"A Christian image from the Facebook page of George Santos\u2019 late mother, Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder. Courtesy of Facebook<\/em><\/p>\n

Even the animal rescue group he said he founded does not appear to exist.<\/span><\/p>\n

A lawyer for Santos dismissed the report as a \u201cshotgun blast of attacks\u201d and \u201cdefamatory allegations.\u201d He then repeated a common misattribution to Winston Churchill of a line that originated in an 1845 essay by Victor Hugo: \u201cYou have enemies? Good. It means that you\u2019ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.\u201d<\/span>
\n\"\"Congressman-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Nevada. Photo by Wade Vandervort\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Santos\u2019 campaign did not respond to the\u00a0Forward<\/i>\u2019s email inquiries on Tuesday regarding the false statements about his grandparents\u2019 birthplaces and backgrounds. On Monday, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Santos did not return emails sent to multiple addresses or messages sent through a number of social media platforms, and that his sister and lawyer also did not reply to email messages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Matt Brooks, head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the RJC \u201cis aware of the claims being made against Congressman-elect George Santos, and we have reached out to his office directly to ascertain whether they are true. These allegations, if true, are deeply troubling. Given their seriousness, the Congressman-elect owes the public an explanation, and we look forward to hearing it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Santos, who is 34, made history in November as the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, beating the Democrat, Robert Zimmerman, by 8 percentage points. His district, which spans much of Nassau County and some of Queens, is about 20% Jewish.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat he would actually lie about the Holocaust to try to promote himself, it\u2019s not offensive \u2014 it\u2019s sick and obscene,\u201d Zimmerman said Wednesday after revelations about Santos\u2019 heritage were published. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the most vile things you can do, to actually use one of the world\u2019s greatest tragedies, the death of 6 million, as a political stunt.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Zimmerman said he hopes the U.S. Department of Justice, the House Ethics Committee and other forces will intervene to keep Santos from serving in Congress, but he declined to say whether he himself would run again if there were a special election to fill the seat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Santos joined a Republican Jewish Coalition candle-lighting ceremony on Long Island Sunday night alongside outgoing Rep. Lee Zeldin, and last month was a featured speaker at the RJC\u2019s convention in Las Vegas,\u00a0billed as one of two freshmen Jewish Republicans<\/a>. (The other is Ohio\u2019s Max Miller.) He campaigned heavily among Orthodox Jews, and after a Chabad event on Nov. 3,\u00a0tweeted<\/a>, \u201cIt was an honor to address fellow members of the Jewish community in #NY03.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview with Jewish Insider<\/a>, Santos described himself as a non-observant Jew, and said his four visits to Israel were \u201cthe most exciting experiences\u201d of his life. He talked about spending Shabbat and going to synagogue with Persian Jews in Great Neck, and said he would treat all constituents fairly regardless of their backgrounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nGeorge Santos\u2019 portrait is one of the \u201cliked\u201d images on the Facebook page of his late mother, Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder. Courtesy of Facebook<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhether my mother\u2019s Jewish background beliefs, which are mine, or my father\u2019s Roman Catholic beliefs, which are also mine, are represented or not,\u201d he said, \u201cI want to represent everyone else that practices every other religion to make sure everybody feels like they have a partner in me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But it appears Santos is not Jewish \u2014 and lied about his family fleeing persecution during the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither of his maternal grandparents\u00a0appear in Brazilian immigration cards in the 1930s or 1940s, or in the databases of Yad Vashem or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which list European Jewish refugees.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet Santos has repeatedly and publicly proclaimed to be descended from survivors,\u00a0responding to a critic on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0back in 2020: \u201cYou pulled the Nazi card on the grandson of Holocaust refugees.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosalina\u2019s parents, Vicente Caruso and Alzira Sant\u2019anna Caruso, were both born in Brazil, according to myheritage.com, as was Paulo\u2019s mother,\u00a0Maria Vict\u00f3ria Alexandra Horta Da Fonseca<\/a>. But Paulo\u2019s father \u2014 George Santos\u2019 great-grandfather \u2014\u00a0Leonard Antoine (Ludovicus Thomas) Horta Devolder<\/a>, was an engineer born in Belgium, in 1863. A 1954 article in the Rio newspaper\u00a0Correio da Manha<\/i>\u00a0(Morning Mail) states that Leonard Antione immigrated to Brazil in 1884 and later founded a school in the city of Petr\u00f3polis. Leonard and his wife, Maria, are also listed in 1928\u00a0church records<\/a>\u00a0of the marriage of their daughter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Santos may be named after him: His full name is George Anthony Devolder Santos.<\/span><\/p>\n

A second family tree on the French genealogy\u00a0website Geneanet<\/a>, created by Gea Sierdsma,\u00a0a\u00a0distant Dutch relative of Santos, corroborates Paulo\u2019s parentage and birthplace. This tree includes several photographs of Leonard the engineer, and the group shot at the top of this article. Sierdsma, who researched the family\u2019s lineage in archives in Antwerp, confirmed by email that the family does not have Ukrainian or Jewish roots.<\/span><\/p>\n

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