Marranos, Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Refugees from Nazi Europe in early 20th century Portugal: Together and Apart

This lecture examines the complex Jewish reality in Portugal in the first half of the 20th century, a reality that was unique compared to all other Jewish communities in Europe at the time. This complexity was due to developments that had taken place in Portugal and abroad. Alongside the old Sephardic community that emerged in Portugal with the dissolution of the Inquisition, the early 20th century witnessed the emergence of two new differentiated groups: the Marranos who began to return to Judaism and the Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. These two groups changed the physiognomy of the Portuguese Jewish community. The increasing Nazi persecutions and the outburst of World War brought to Portugal thousands of Jewish refugees who tried to emigrate to countries overseas. The new Jewish refugees, as opposed to the aforementioned groups, added an additional albeit temporary facet to Jewish existence in Portugal. The lecture will discuss the characteristics of each of these groups and the complex relationships that each community maintained with the others. By focusing on the unique characteristics of Jewish life in Portugal in the first half of the 20th century and on the diversity that each group presented in social, cultural, economic and politic terms, the lecture will shed light on a topic that has not yet received the attention it deserves in Jewish historiography.