Aracy de Carvalho

	Aracy de Carvalho
	;
Birth:	5 December 1908; Rio Negro, Parana, Brazil
Death:	28 February 2011; Sao Paulo City, Sao Paulo State, Brazil
Age:	102 years, 85 days
Country:	BRA
	Centenarian

Aracy de Carvalho Guimaraes Rosa [Portuguese: Guimarães] (née Aracy Moebius de Carvalho; 5 December 1908 – 28 February 2011) was a Brazilian centenarian and diplomatic clerk who has been recognized with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

Biography[]

Aracy de Carvalho was born in Rio Negro, Parana, Brazil on 5 December 1908. She was the daughter of Sidonie Moebius de Carvalho, a native of Upper Saxony, Germany, and Amadeu Anselmo de Carvalho, a Portuguese-Brazilian merchant who would later own the Grande Hotel de Guaruja, the city where the family went to live when she was still a child.

In 1930, she married the German Johann Eduard Ludwig Tess, with whom she had a son Eduardo Carvalho Tess, but five years later she separated, going to live with her aunt, Lucy Luttmer, in Germany. A year later she returned to Brazil to formalize the breakup. By speaking four languages (Portuguese, English, French and German), she got an appointment at the Brazilian consulate in Hamburg, where she became head of the Passports Section.

In 1938, the Secret Circular 1.127 came into force in Brazil, restricting the entry of Jews into the country. She ignored the circular and continued preparing visas for Jews, allowing them to enter Brazil. As she dispatched with the consul general, she placed visas among the paperwork for signatures. To get visas approved, she simply failed to put the letter "J" on them, which identified who was Jewish.

In this way, she delivered many Jews from prison and the Holocaust.

Still in Germany, she married Joao Guimaraes Rosa, at the time assistant consul. The two remained in Germany until 1942, when the Brazilian government broke diplomatic relations with that country and started supporting the Second World War Allies. Her return to Brazil, however, was not smooth. She and Guimaraes Rosa spent four months in the custody of the German government, until they were exchanged for German diplomats. She and Guimaraes Rosa got married, then, in Mexico, as there was still no divorce in Brazil. The book of Guimarães Rosa "Grande Sertao: Veredas" by 1956, was dedicated to she.

She was widowed in 1967 and never remarried. In her late years, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Aracy de Carvalho died of natural causes in Sao Paulo City, Sao Paulo State, Brazil on 28 February 2011 at the age of 102 years, 85 days. She was buried in the Mausoleum of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, next to her husband, in the Cemiterio de Sao Joao Batista, in Rio de Janeiro.