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José Arturo Castellanos Contreras (San Vicente, El Salvador, December 23, 1893 — San Salvador, June 18, 1977) was a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador’s Consul General for Geneva during WWII, and in conjunction with a Jewish-Hungarian businessman named György Mandl (George Mandel), helped save up to 40,000 Central European Jews from Nazi persecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality.

Mandel-Mantello proposed to Castellanos that they issue Salvadoran documents to help save Jews.

In 1942, Castellanos became the Salvadoran General Consul in Geneva and appointed Mandel-Mantello the consulate’s “First Secretary,” a ficticious title that does not exist in the Salvadoran diplomatic hierarchy.