He was El Salvador's equivalent of Oskar Schindler, a man who was given a chance to do something about the Holocaust - and took it.
Now, six decades after José Castellanos helped to save Jews by granting bogus nationality certificates, the story of the central American nation's consul general to Switzerland during the second world war has been rediscovered.
José and "Jorge" went on to prepare 13,000 fake Salvadoran citizenship papers that saved 40,000 Central European Jews.
The so-called "freedom papers" afforded protection against deportation to Nazi extermination camps and gave meaning to the name El Salvador, which means The Saviour.
In 2010 José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.
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