Citizenship: Homage to the Jews killed 500 years ago in Lisbon

[english version]

Today the slaughter (pogrom) of Jews that took place in Lisbon in 1506 is remembered, slaughter which killed some four thousand Jews in the city of Lisbon. In homage to the victims, journalist Nuno Guerreiro Josué, in his site ruadajudiaria, proposed to symbolically remember the victims of the 19, 20 and 21 of April of 1506, today April,19, 2006, at 19:00, at S. Domingos sq. off Rossio, by burning 4,000 candles. The Jewish Community of Lisbon adhered to the initiative proposed by the blog. In this occasion the prayers of kadish and izkor will be said. The community does not appeal, however, that the Jews light candles, since the celebration of the Jewish Easter is finishing, during which people should prevent anything that may imply energy and work.

These events were related at the time by some historians such as Damião de Góis and Samuel Usque that left detailed stories of the bloody riots. Everything will have started in the Baixa of Lisboa (downtown), on 19 of April of 1506, a sunday, in the Church of S. Domingos, when somebody cried out to have seen the face of Christ to illuminate itself in the altar (although other versions exist). People in prayer claimed that to be a miracle. Apparently however a new Christian, (Jew converted by force) tried to explain that the light that came from the cross was only being illuminated by a sun ray. Those must have been his last words. Dragging the “heretic” to the street, the infuriated people will have beaten him up and his brother to death and dragged the bodies to Rossio, where they’d be burnt - where three decades later the Inquisition would be installed. These would only be the first ones of some 2 to 4 thousand Jews brutally murdered - Portuguese Jewish men, women and children. Initiated by the Dominican monks, the people who gathered marched to the Judiaria (Jewish neighbourhood), crying out "death to the Jews" and "heretics die". The majority of the killed would be dragged through the streets and burnt (some still living) in the S. Domingos sq. These events took place at a time of crisis in Portugal and in Lisbon, with the plague killing hundreds every day, with the famine and the drought. The royal court hat therefore been moved to Abrantes and King D. Manuel was not in Lisbon at the time. It will have taken him three days to control the riots and finish the slaughters, sending the troops to Lisbon to control the city. D. Manuel thought he would be able to keep the Jews in Portugal, by compelling them to become Christians by force - the so-called “new Christian". But this attempt to keep the Jews did not work and later they would be allowed to leave the country and the inquisition would come to Portugal.

The scenes of violence of those days, 500 years ago, are part of the Portuguese history, of that History that the Portuguese have decided to “forget”. This episode, as other unfortunate ones, is not part of the school books with which History is taught. Some other tragedies and unhappy moments are usually painted in a “light" version, such as the Inquisition, colonialism and slavery, which allows keeping the myth of the Portuguese as tolerant people. But History and memory do not forget (fortunately) and unlike some, I think that we and the future generations can and must learn with our History. We have also the duty, towards our ancestors, to remember History and to ensure that it does not fall in oblivion. So that certain episodes do not repeat ever again.

As Elie Wiesel wrote, quoted in http://ruadajudiaria.com, "I have as much fear of oblivion as of hatred or death (...). It is by remembering our common beginning that I come close to my fellow creatures, to all the human beings. It is for refusing to forget that their future is as important as mine. What would happen to the future of Humanity without memory?" – [Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize, in the preface to the book "From the Kingdom of Memory", Summit Books, New York, 1990].

The Publico newspaper is here also to be mentioned, having published in the last days some articles on this subject, thus contributing to remembering this tragedy. In the recent days the Christian world has celebrated Easter, religious celebrations were made, televisions and newspapers reported, published articles and transmitted films on a man who died two thousand years ago. To be correct, it would only be fair to remember those 4,000 people who were brutally and stupidly murdered five hundred years ago, in the name of that other man.