5 Euros Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Gold

Aristides de Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux who, in June 1940, defied direct orders from Salazar's Estado Novo regime and issued tens of thousands of visas to refugees — most of them Jewish — fleeing the Nazi advance into France. The Portuguese government dismissed him, stripped his pension, and left him in poverty until his death in 1954. He was never officially rehabilitated by Portugal during his lifetime.

The Portuguese state issued commemoratives in his honor decades after his death, as the country reckoned with its wartime record. This gold version accompanies a silver strike in the same series.