Five hundred years after the expulsion of the Jews of Portugal, the military hero who dedicated his life to regenerating Jewish life there has been posthumously honoured as a symbol of resilience.
Born into a Christian family in 1887, Captain Arthur Carlos de Barros Basto converted to Judaism before a rabbinical court in Morocco and re-established a Jewish community in 1923 in Oporto, (Porto) the second largest city in Portugal, which then numbered only eight families.
A visionary leader dedicated to bringing former ‘crypto-Jews’ back into the fold, he was instrumental in the building of the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue, founded in 1923 and completed in 1938, financially supported by a wealthy Jewish family from Hong Kong.
Basto is often called the “Portuguese Dreyfus” because, like Alfred Dreyfus in France, he was a loyal military officer who faced unjust persecution and expulsion from the army.
His actions in circumcising some of those crypto-Jews were deemed immoral, and in 1937, he was stripped of his army rank after a secret military trial, based on anonymous slander accusing him of homosexuality that masked underlying anti-Semitism.
Congregants pray at the synagogue of Porto, Portugal. (Courtesy of the Jewish Community of Porto)
Sixty four years after his death in 1961, the long-awaited tribute on Sunday 11 May saw the presentation of a certificate of recognition by Luís Andrade, president of the International Observatory of Human Rights, to Basto’s family at the headquarters of B’nai B’rith Portugal in Porto.
Andrade said: “Captain Barros Basto is more than a historical figure. He is a timeless example of how personal sacrifice, national and cultural pride, and moral conviction can shape a better, more fraternal world. His legacy inspires us all to act with integrity and vision.”
Captain Barros Basto was recognized for his extraordinary life’s work and enduring legacy as a hero of World War I, for which he was decorated for acts of bravery and survived deadly poisonous gas attacks in Flanders.
Synagogue, Porto. Pic: Joao-bizarro-fotografia.
Granddaughter Isabel lopes, now vice president of the Porto community that Captain Barros Basto founded in 1923, said: “My grandfather didn’t just deal with what’s beautiful in the world. He also had to deal with the lowest elements of society, with slanderous anonymous letters, with the police raiding his house and frightening his children. My mother often saw him crouched in his house, with his head on his knees, crying out for divine justice.”
President of B’nai B’rith Portugal, Gabriela Cantergi said: “Barros Basto represents the synthesis of the Jewish and non-Jewish world at the beginning of the 20th century. He founded an official community together with Ashkenazim, built a monumental synagogue with the support of the Sephardic diaspora, and even tried to rescue hundreds of people who lived in remote regions of Portugal to formally become Jewish, traveling great distances on foot, on horseback or by train. So many worlds within one man.”
Ceremony in Portugal honours Captain Arthur Barros Basto, the military officer who revived Jewish life in Oporto after converting to Judaism in the early 20th century.
Israel’s Ambassador to Portugal, Oren Rozenblat, also spoke in tribute. “The Mishna in Pirkei Avot says in the name of Hillel that ‘In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man’. This represents the great work of Captain Barros Basto. He strived to be a man or as we say, a mentsch, in a place where if he hadn’t realised his remarkable work, there was no one else to do it.”
The community of Oporto, (Porto) the second largest city in Portugal, now comprises more than one thousand Jews from more than 30 countries.
