Dear Colleagues, While on vacation in Portugal, we visited the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue in Porto. A very special experience. The synagogue is physically beautiful and has a fascinating history-especially the history of Captain Barros Basto. They provided below, a brief history of the synagogue (including website and contact info). They have produced a small 93 page catalog. ( The Oporto synagogue A sinagoga do Porto : from the old Jewish quarter to Barros Basto. LCCN 2015455685).
They have asked our help in trying to locate WWII refugees who passed through Porto. They hope to add to their list of names and gather additional information. If you know of anyone, please have them contact the synagogue directly. Thanks and Happy New Year. Gail From: Tourism CIP <tour...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org<mailto:tour...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org>> Subject: Brief description of the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue's History -Website: www.comunidade-israelita-porto.org<http://www.comunidade-israelita-porto.org/> The Comunidade Israelita do Porto (Jewish Community of Porto) includes Jews of 16 diverse origins and it is linked with Jews in Golders Green, London, who form its religious committee and are members of the Board of Directors. The Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue is the headquarters of the Community and the Oporto Rabbinate, recognized by the Rabbanut Harashit of Israel. The Community was founded in 1923 by Captain Barros Basto and 20 Jewish merchants coming from Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Russia. Its Synagogue was constructed between 1929 and 1938, in great part thanks to a very generous donation in 1933 from Sir Horace and Lord Lawrence Kadoorie to honor their mother Laura Kadoorie, who was descendant of Portuguese Sephardic Jews expelled from Portugal due to the Inquisition. It became the home of “The Rescue Work”, a project to bring the Marranos (crypto-Jews) back to conventional Judaism. The Yeshivá Rosh-Pinah opened and books were edited to re-teach Judaism, and small communities were founded in the interior part of the country in order to re-familiarize the Marranos with the Hebrew culture they knew so little about but were so eager to take back. The plan failed and the Captain sees himself involved in a scandal of false and preposterous accusations that are going to unable him to continue with the project and cause the Marranos to flee from Porto. The Synagogue is inaugurated ten months before Kristallnacht, being the last official Synagogue in Europe to be inaugurated before II World War, but the Captain can no longer work with the crypto-Jews. He then decides to work with the Jewish refugees arriving in Portugal, since it was a “neutral” country. Captain Barros Basto is going to help around 400 people to run away from Nazism by arranging documents and tickets to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and for this he is going to be punished: he dies in 1961 in undignified conditions, being persecuted by the PVDE/PIDE (Portuguese secret police) until the day of his funeral. He remained an optimist until the end: “One day someone will do me Justice”, he said just before dying. Captain Barros Basto was morally rehabilitated 50 years after his death, at the request to the Portuguese Parliament of his granddaughter, Isabel Ferreira Lopes, supported by a team of British and Portuguese jurists. In 2012 the Portuguese Parliament unanimously declared that «Barros Basto was separated from the Army due to a generic climate of animosity towards him, motivated by the fact that he was Jewish». In 2013 the Portuguese Army confessed that Captain Barros Basto is a “Colonel” since 22.11.1945. Today the Community is growing and its Synagogue is seeing a new era of livelihood. The Museum and Archive were founded and re-opened to the public in June 2015, to protect the precious heritage left behind (The David de Sola Pool Library, the Refugee Archive, various religious paraphernalia) and to make sure the Captain’s History is passed on. The Library is mostly composed of books used by the students of the yeshiva that worked here between 1929 and 1935, and remains in its original room and cabinets. The Refugee Archive was found three years ago and is the most important tool to try and locate the Captain’s survivors. Contact information: Sinagoga Kadoorie Mekor Haim Rua de Guerra Junqueiro, 340 4150-386 Porto, PORTUGAL Tlf: +351 911768596<tel:%2B351%20911768596> E-mail: tour...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org<mailto:tour...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org> i...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org<mailto:i...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org> Website: www.comunidade-israelita-porto.org<http://www.comunidade-israelita-porto.org/> Blog: www.jewishcommunityofoporto.blogspot.org<http://www.jewishcommunityofoporto.blogspot.org/> Jewish Community of Porto / Department of Tourism Site: http://comunidade-israelita-porto.org Phones: (+351) 911 768 589<tel:%28%2B351%29%20911%20768%20589> / (+351) 911 768 596<tel:%28%2B351%29%20911%20768%20596> E-mail: tour...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org<mailto:tour...@comunidade-israelita-porto.org> Facebook: facebook.com/tourism.synagogue.porto<http://facebook.com/tourism.synagogue.porto> Blog: http://jewishcommunityofoporto.blogspot.pt/
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