Portugal and the Holocaust
German expansion led to the passage of substantial numbers of refugees, including some Jews, through Portugal in 1939 and 1940 for the first time. Fearful of the economic and political consequences, the Salazar regime tightened the rules governing the issuance of
The Salazar regime was generally aware of the extermination of Jews in German-occupied Europe from 1942 and took some measures to repatriate Jews with Portuguese citizenship from
Background
Portugal was ruled from 1933 by an authoritarian political regime known as the
The escalation of anti-Semitic persecutions in Eastern Europe, coupled with the rapid rise of Nazism in Germany, prompted the initial migration of Ashkenazi Jews to Portugal. These refugees swiftly assimilated into both Portuguese society and the local Israeli Community. In the 1930s Portuguese Jewish citizens held a significant role by providing crucial support to Jewish refugees. Initially, they established the "Portuguese Commission for Assistance to Refugee-Jews in Portugal" (COMASSIS), under the leadership of Augusto Isaac de Esaguy and having Adolfo Benarús as Honorary Chairman.[4]
COMASSIS provided refugees with medical and psychological care, and voiced their needs with the Portuguese government and authorities regarding the issuance of residence and work permits. COMASSIS warranted renewals of doctors' and lawyers' work permits, and job contracts for professors at Portugal's universities. Additionally, COMASSIS also ran a community kitchen.[5]
In 1937 Adolfo Benarus published a book in which he applauded the lack of anti-Semitism in Portugal. The honorary president of the Jewish community of Lisbon, claimed that "happily in Portugal, modern anti-Semitism doesn't exist".[3][6]
Also in 1937, Salazar published a book entitled Como se Levanta um Estado (How to Raise a State), in which he criticised the philosophical ideals behind Nazi Germany's
With the Anschluss of 1938, Portugal experienced an increased influx of refugees, and Adolf Benarus, the then president of COMASSIS who had turned 75 had to step down as president and it was Augusto d’Esaguy, who had been the committee’s Secretary-General since its foundation in 1933, that assumed the presidency, a role he kept through 1945.[5]
In spite of this, the country's
Refugees from German-occupied Europe
Refugee policy
France and Britain declared war on Germany following the
In September 1939 Augusto Isaac d’Esaguy helped more than 600 German Jews, that got trapped in Spain on their way to Cuba and Mexico, to pass through Portugal. [5]
On 11 November 1939, the Portuguese government sent Circular 14 to its consuls in Europe outlining categories of refugees whom the
Although overtly discriminatory, Neill Lochery argues that the Circular was motivated principally by economic considerations and that similar restrictions had been adopted in other neutral countries.[16] Milgram expressed similar views, asserting that Portugal's regime did not distinguish between Jews and non-Jews but rather between wealthy and impoverished foreign Jews.[17] He considers that Jews were prevented from settling in Portugal primarily because the regime feared foreign influence in general, and particularly the arrival of communists fleeing from Germany.[17]
German invasion and occupation of France
France was invaded and occupied in May and June 1940. Acting contrary to Circular 14,
In June 1940, upon the request of Frederick May Eliot, president of the American Unitarian Association, Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha flew to Europe and set up their operations at the Metropole Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal. From this office, the Sharps dedicated their efforts to assisting Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime. They helped secure visas, arrange safe passage, offer financial support, and give legal assistance to hundreds of refugees. Both were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.[24]
The use of Portugal as an escape route became even more difficult when in June 1940 the United States further tightened its conditions for admitting refugees from German-occupied Europe. This created a problem for all those wanting to use Portugal as a transit country because it became virtually impossible to get a visa for the United States, leaving visas to Latin America as the only legal way out of Europe.[25] Jewish refugees who succeeded in arriving in Portugal enjoyed a general sense of freedom and refugees caught without the correct papers were not deported to German-occupied Europe.[26] Instead, they were held by police under house arrest until it was possible for them to leave Portugal.[27]
In 1940 Augusto d’Esaguy together with Moisés Bensabat Amzalak played a decisive role on behalf of the Luxembourgish Jews whom the Germans deported from Luxembourg aboard the Zwangstransporte. Thanks to d’Esaguy’s intervention, two of these groups were released from detention and made their way into Portugal in late 1940.[28]
From January 1941, COMASSIS acted as a liaison for thousands of refugees who migrated from Nazi-occupied territories in sealed trains that connected Berlin with Lisbon. Trains arrived regularly with more than 50 persons each, COMASSIS provided accommodation to refugees in hotels and boarding-houses; helped them with their visas and acted with shipping companies and the Portuguese authorities on their behalf. Within the first three months of 1941, over 1,603 Jewish refugees passed through Lisbon in this way.[29]
The number of refugees who passed through Portugal during the war has been estimated to range from a few hundred thousand to one million but Jews represented only a small proportion of this number.[a] Over the course of the entire war, it is thought that 60,000 to 80,000 Jewish refugees passed through Portugal.[30]
The Holocaust
Awareness and response to the Holocaust
From 1941, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs received information from its consuls in German-occupied Europe about the escalation of the persecution of Jews. It was also kept informed of revelations about the extermination of Jews which had been published in Allied countries from 1942. The historian Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses wrote:
Salazar's analysis of the European situation [...] was based on an old-fashioned brand of realpolitik which saw states and their leaders acting out of reasonable and quantifiable considerations. The murderous racial enterprise that drove the Third Reich appears to have bypassed Salazar, despite the information that must have been accessible to him (very little of which survives, however, in his archive). The Portuguese press, meanwhile, was prevented from reporting on the Final Solution as its details became known, and Salazar never made a pronouncement on the subject. The fate of Europe's Jewish population was not seen as an issue that affected the national interest...[31]
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, German officials became interested in preventing the flight of Jews from their occupied territories in Europe so that they could instead be captured and killed. In July 1942 the Reich Security Main Office asked German diplomats in Lisbon if it was possible to "prevent emigration from Portugal" as they had interest in "the seizure of the Jews...as part of the final solution for the Jewish question in Europe."[32] In September the German consul in Lisbon advised the German Foreign Office that it was pointless to ask the Portuguese government to "extradite the Jews originating from Germany or territories occupied by Germany" and similarly it would be useless to try and accomplish the same through links between German and Portuguese security forces.[32] An advisor at the German legation in Lisbon also wrote to the Foreign Office that the Portuguese viewed the movement of Jews through its territory as a humanitarian matter and that Portuguese authorities would reject extradition requests of German Jews, as they understood German law to declare the nationality of its Jews voided if they traveled abroad.[32] The Portuguese authorities were unaware of these discussions.[27]
Repatriation of Portuguese Jews
In February 1943, the Nazi authorities issued a repatriation ultimatum (
Following the
Portuguese-German trade
Portugal exported
Post-war actions
In December 2019 Portugal joined the
See also
- International response to the Holocaust
- Spain and the Holocaust
- Turkey and the Holocaust
- Portugal during World War II
- Augusto Isaac de Esaguy
External links
- Oulman, Nicholas (2018). "Debaixo do Céu – Under the Sky". RTP. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
Notes
- ^ Neil Lochery estimates a high end number of one million.[citation needed]
References
- ^ a b Milgram 2011, p. 89.
- ^ Pimentel 2018, p. 441.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Gallagher 2020, p. 122.
- ^ Mucznik, Esther. "Lisbon Jewish Community". cilisboa.org. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
- ^ a b c Milgram 2011, p. 131.
- ^ Benarus, Adolfo – 'O Antisemitismo' – 1937 ( \Lisboa : Sociedade Nacional de Tipografia). p. 31
- ISBN 978-9899537705
- ^ Dez anos de Política Externa, Vol. 1, p. 137. Edição Imprensa Nacional 1961.
- ^ Milgram 2011, pp. 11–3.
- ^ Ninhos 2018, pp. 122–123.
- ^ Milgram 1999, p. 4.
- ^ a b c d e f Gallagher 2020, p. 126.
- ^ Altares, Guillermo (19 June 2017). "When the world shut its doors to the Jews". EL PAÍS.
- ^ Pimentel 2006, p. 87.
- ^ Pimentel 2006, p. 46-52.
- ^ Lochery 2011, p. 42-43.
- ^ a b Milgram 2011, p. 266.
- ^ Milgram 1999, pp. 123–156.
- ^ Pimentel 2018, p. 442–3.
- ^ Gallagher 2020, p. 124.
- ^ Lochery 2011, p. 49.
- ^ Lochery 2011, p. 53.
- ^ Milgram 2011, p. ?.
- ISBN 978-0-8070-1302-1.
- ISSN 1361-4916.
- ^ Leite 1998, pp. 187, 194.
- ^ a b Ninhos 2018, p. 124.
- ^ Milgram 2011, p. 135.
- ^ Gottschalk, Max. “THE REFUGEE PROBLEM.” The American Jewish Year Book, vol. 43, 1941, pp. 323–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23602387. Accessed 28 May 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Pimentel 2018.
- ^ Ribeiro de Meneses 2009, p. 223.
- ^ a b c Ninhos 2018, p. 123.
- ^ Leite 1998, p. 194.
- ^ Milgram 2011, p. 34.
- ^ Gallagher 2020, p. 125.
- ^ Milgram p. 264
- ^ Pimentel, p 343-350
- ^ a b Lochery, Niell (28 May 2014). "Portugal's Golden Mystery". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 23 April 2021.
- ^ a b "Portugal Spared Payments". The New York Times. Associated Press. 3 July 1999. p. 5.
- ^ Bandler, Aaron (4 December 2019). "Portugal Becomes 34th Member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance". Jewish Journal. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
- ^ "Portugal: Holocaust Museum in Porto has opened, the first on the Iberian peninsula". Jewish Heritage Europe. 9 February 2021. Retrieved 2 April 2021.
Bibliography
- ISBN 9781787383883.
- Leite, Joaquim da Costa (1998). "Neutrality by Agreement: Portugal and the British Alliance in World War II". American University International Law Review. 14 (1): 185–199.
- Lochery, Neill (2011). Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939–1945. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781586488796.
- Milgram, Avraham (2011). Portugal, Salazar, and the Jews. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. ISBN 9789653083875.
- Milgram, Avraham (1999). "Portugal, the Consuls, and the Jewish Refugees, 1938-1941" (PDF). XXVII. Shoah Resource Center (International School for Holocaust Studies): 123–156.
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(help) - Ninhos, Cláudia (2018). "Portugal, Salazar, and the Nazi "New Order" in Europe". A New Nationalist Europe Under Hitler : Concepts of Europe and Transnational Networks in the National Socialist Sphere of Influence, 1933–1945. Routledge. pp. 112–132. ISBN 9781315114446.
- Pimentel, Irene (2006). Judeus em Portugal Durante a II Guerra Mundial (in Portuguese). Lisbon: A Esfera do Livros. ISBN 9789896261054.
- Pimentel, Irene Flunser (2018). "Portugal and the Holocaust" (PDF). In Stuczynski, Claude B.; Feitler, Bruno (eds.). Portuguese Jews, New Christians, and 'New Jews': A Tribute to Roberto Bachmann. Leiden: Brill. pp. 441–455. ISBN 9789004364974.
- Ribeiro de Meneses, Filipe (2009). Salazar: A Political Biography (1st ed.). New York: Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-90-2.
Further reading
- Kaplan, Marion (2020). Hitler's Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-24950-7.
- Pimentel, Irene Flunser; Ninhos, Cláudia (2015). "Portugal, Jewish Refugees, and the Holocaust". Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust. 29 (2): 101–113. S2CID 154628247.
- Ribeiro de Meneses, Filipe (2015). "Salazar face à la Shoah". Revue d'Histoire de la Shoah (203): 255–276. S2CID 194638502.
- Schulze, Rainer (2012). "The Heimschaffungsaktion of 1942–43: Turkey, Spain and Portugal and their Responses to the German Offer of Repatriation of their Jewish Citizens". Holocaust Studies. 18 (2–3): 49–72. S2CID 141638704.