Ariel S. Cardoso papers

Ariel S. Cardoso (1918‐2013) was born Sigfrido Cardoso in Florence, Italy to Jewish parents who later moved to Rome. Following the German invasion of Italy in late 1943, the family was protected by their Christian neighbors in Rome who did not report them to the Nazis. Cardoso occasionally wore a Rome municipal military armband to conceal his identity. After Rome’s liberation, he worked for the British Eighth Army, received military training at a small kibbutz near Brindisi, and immigrated to Palestine. He joined the Jewish Brigade and served with the Palestine Regiment and Royal Army Service Corps in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. After the war, as part of the 178 Transport Company of the Jewish Brigade, he helped smuggle Jewish refugees into Palestine. Back in Palestine, he served as an ambulance driver and medical aide during Israel's War of Independence. He started working at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in 1952 and met his future wife, Mary Randall. When Mary was transferred to Rome in 1955, he followed her and worked at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The couple was married in 1960, Cardoso became a U.S. citizen the following year, and the couple worked in the Foreign Service in Nigeria, Zanzibar, Indonesia, Lesotho, Gambia, Hungary, and German Democratic Republic before settling in Washington, DC.