The Lisbon Genocide and October 7

As we approach the anniversary of October 7, there will no doubt be a somber mood throughout Israel.  But it will also be a day of high anxiety.  Considering jihadists enjoy sowing their reign of terror on symbolic dates, Israel’s military and intelligence services will have no time to reflect.  They will need to be at the highest level of alertness in order to prevent any attacks which would cause even more pain to the Jewish people.

Gabriel Senderowicz, president of the Jewish Community of Porto (also known as Oporto) in Portugal recently said: “To know the 1506 massacre in Lisbon is to know the 7 October 2023 massacre in Israel and the historic genocides of Jews all over Europe.  The only change has been in the weapons.”  Considering not many people are aware of the 1506 genocide, I thought it would be prudent to examine it, particularly given the comparisons drawn by Senderowicz to the terrible atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people on October 7. 

In the streets of Lisbon (Portugal) between April 19 and April 21 in the year 1506, up to 4,000 Jews were brutally murdered.  Alarmingly, it was also the weekend set aside to remember the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Some years prior to the massacre, King Manuel I signed a decree on December 5, 1496 which expelled the Jews from Portugal.  Under the edict, Jews were required to flee by October of the following year.  After resistance from the Council of the State the king ordered that those who converted to Catholicism could remain in the country, provided they were baptised by Easter of 1497.  This act was not done out of kindness.  The king was made to realise that he needed the Jews considering they were productive, well-educated and vital to the economy. 

Those who succumbed to forced conversion became known as “the New Christians”.  The reluctant converts sought assurances from the king that he would not order any inquiry into their religious practices for a period of 20 years.  Surprisingly, the king agreed and on May 30, 1497, the prohibition of inquiries into the beliefs of new converts was published.  In other words, he unofficially consented to Judaism, giving rise to a new term: crypto-Jews (hidden Jews). 

Any hope that the Jewish community had of coexisting peacefully amongst the Portuguese community would quickly come to an end.  The 1500s saw a new virulent strain of the Black Death, which impacted Jews in far less numbers than the rest of the population due to their higher level of hygiene which was borne out of ritual cleansing.  Nevertheless, the Jews were blamed for causing the disease.  A severe drought was also gripping the region and the Jews received the blame for it also. 

On April 19, 1506, at the Church of São Domingos, a crowd of churchgoers gathered to pray for an end to the plague, drought and overall misery.  During the mass, a light appeared to fix on a crucifix. Catholic adherents interpreted it as a miracle and a supernatural revelation. News spread throughout Lisbon and people from across the city rushed to the church.  But when a young Jew tried to explain that the light was just the reflection of a candle, those gathered were outraged. He was set upon and beaten, then dragged to a square, mutilated and killed.  Dominican friars from the Monastery of São Domingos encouraged the violence, urging the mob to kill the "heretics" and "extinguish the wicked race." 

Long before Hitler’s gas chambers, the people of Lisbon viciously hunted down those who they suspected of being Jewish.  Many were burned alive.  So many Jews were burned across those three days that they ran out of firewood to keep the fires burning.  Others, similar to the barbarity shown by Hamas, decapitated the Jews and paraded their severed heads throughout the city on spears.  Just like a minority of the German population under Hitler’s reign, some families in Lisbon tried to hide Jewish families fleeing the violence.  It was no use.  Assassins went door to door, eager to satisfy their bloodlust.  Of the Jews they discovered, a cruel death awaited.  They were thrown out of windows, onto the waiting spears below. 

According to the Jewish Community of Oporto today, the Lisbon massacre is not included in the school curriculum and has all but been forgotten by the Portuguese people.  They may have chosen to forget, but the Jewish people have not.  How can they, when nation after nation seeks their destruction?

Yotam Kreiman, charge d'affaires at the Israeli Embassy in Portugal recently said: "The same boiling hatred under the surface that erupted in the 1506 Lisbon massacre, is the same 3,000 years old hatred for Jews that keeps erupting, as we say in Passover: every generation an evil rises to eliminate us. This is the hatred we saw in 1939, and also in October 7, and also today in the U.S. campuses. It is nourished by blood libels and false accusations, and it is more dangerous than any assassin: because it uses the masses to lay the grounds to slaughter innocents.” 

In what must feel like a cruel twist of irony to the Jewish people, one of the people most dismissive of the October 7 attacks is current United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.  Earlier this year, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote that under the leadership of Guterres, the UN has “become an antisemitic and anti-Israeli body that shelters and emboldens terror.”  Why is this all tragically ironic?  Guterres was born in Lisbon, Portugal.