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Porto’s Jewish community unveils memorial to 842 local victims of Portuguese Inquisition
PORTO, Portugal (JTA) — In this city on Portugal’s northwestern coast, a small Jewish community has dedicated years to identifying its predecessors who were killed or expelled in the Portuguese Inquisition of 1536 to 1821.
Drawing on newly digitized records, the community was able to identify 842 people, ranging from 10 to 110 years old, who were victims of the Inquisition locally. On Sunday, it inaugurated a memorial engraved with their names.
The memorial, dedicated during a special event called the European Day of Jewish Culture, measures 13 feet wide by 6.5 feet high and is installed on an exterior wall of Porto’s Jewish Museum.
The museum is one of several institutions that have flourished in recent years as Porto, which is home to roughly 1,000 Jews today, has benefited from a swell of interest among tourists and descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from the region who for the last eight years have been allowed to apply for citizenship.
But while the citizenship law has given rise to new investments in contemporary Jewish communities, Portugal still has a dearth of education about the Inquisition, according to Hugo Vaz, the curator of Porto’s Jewish Museum and Holocaust Museum. Although references have begun to make appearances in the curricular manuals for Portuguese schools, many students are asked to learn little about the Jewish population that was all but stamped out of their country over three centuries.
“I am 35 years old, and when I learned about the Inquisition in school, I learned that the Inquisition was the hunting of witches,” Vaz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I learned that in less than five minutes.”
Comparatively, Holocaust education has improved. Portugal was officially neutral in World War II and became a passageway for many Jewish refugees, making that episode of its history more favorable than the “black page” of the Inquisition, said Vaz.
Next to each name on the memorial is the date of the victim’s auto-da-fé, a public ceremony in which people were sentenced by the Inquisition. Some were sentenced to death and burned alive on that date, others imprisoned and tortured, others expelled and others forced to wear the “sambenito” — a humiliating outfit that featured crosses or painted devils and flames, as well as a conical hat — for the rest of their lives. The elaborate ceremonies usually took place in Portugal’s largest squares.
Grand procession to the auto-da-fe of people sentenced by the Inquisition of Lisbon in the 18th century. (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Most of the victims were accused of practicing Judaism by their neighbors, such as business rivals or former housekeepers, said Vaz. Historians believe it is possible that many victims, especially by the late 17th century, were assimilated Catholics who did not keep Jewish traditions at all.
Porto’s memorial wall was facilitated by the community’s digitization of records from the National Archives in Lisbon, said Michael Rothwell, director of the Jewish Museum and Holocaust Museum.
“Over the last number of years, there has been a big effort to put all those records online,” Rothwell told JTA. “Our community is supporting the restoration of all the case files that are rotting away. The ones that were in good condition have been scanned and put online, so we were able to do research online to find the Jews in the Inquisition who were from Porto.”
The community has hired historians to study the cases of all 842 people on the memorial and plans to publish a book on their stories next year.
Vaz hopes that learning more about these victims, such as a 10-year-old child accused together with their family, will encourage deeper education about the centuries-long period of persecution.
“A 10-year-old child doesn’t have consciousness of what religion means,” he said. “For me it’s unbelievable thinking about a nation persecuting everyone, including the kids, for practicing something they actually were not very well aware of.”
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The post Porto’s Jewish community unveils memorial to 842 local victims of Portuguese Inquisition appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Former Columbia University President Appointed as UK Economic Adviser
Columbia University administrators and faculty, led by President Minouche Shafik, testified before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, 2024. Photo: Jack Gruber/Reuters Connect
i24 News – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named Minouche Shafik, former president of Columbia University, as his chief economic adviser at Downing Street, a move aimed at stabilizing the country’s fragile economy and averting a potential budget crisis.
Shafik, an economist of Egyptian origin with dual British and American nationality, has held senior roles at the Bank of England, the IMF, and the World Bank.
She later led the London School of Economics and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2020.
Her tenure in the United States was more turbulent. Shafik stepped down as president of Columbia University in 2024 after just a year in office, amid fierce criticism over her handling of pro-Palestinian protests following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
US officials accused her of failing to confront antisemitism on campus, while students and faculty condemned her decision to call in police to dismantle protest encampments.
Since returning to Britain, Shafik has played an active role in policy and cultural institutions. She advised Foreign Secretary David Lammy on international aid reform, has chaired the Victoria & Albert Museum since January, and led the “Economy 2030” inquiry for the Resolution Foundation, where she argued for reforms to the UK’s system of wealth taxation.
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Israel Mulls West Bank Annexation in Response to Moves to Recognize Palestine
The Jordan Valley. Photo: Юкатан via Wikimedia Commons.
Israel is considering annexation in the West Bank as a possible response to France and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state, according to three Israeli officials and the idea will be discussed further on Sunday, another official said.
Extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank – de facto annexation of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war – was on the agenda for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet meeting late on Sunday that is expected to focus on the Gaza war, a member of the small circle of ministers said.
It is unclear where precisely any such measure would be applied and when, whether only in Israeli settlements or some of them, or in specific areas of the West Bank like the Jordan Valley and whether any concrete steps, which would likely entail a lengthy legislative process, would follow discussions.
Any step toward annexation in the West Bank would likely draw widespread condemnation from the Palestinians, who seek the territory for a future state, as well as Arab and Western countries. It is unclear where US President Donald Trump stands on the matter. The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar did not respond to a request for comment on whether Saar had discussed the move with his US counterpart Marco Rubio during his visit to Washington last week.
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the prime minister supports annexation and if so, where.
A past pledge by Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley was scrapped in 2020 in favor of normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the Abraham Accords brokered by Trump in his first term in office.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States said on Friday it would not allow Abbas to travel to New York for the United Nations gathering of world leaders, where several US allies are set to recognize Palestine as a state.
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Israel Pounds Gaza City Suburbs, Netanyahu to Convene Security Cabinet
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet was set on Sunday to discuss a plan to seize the city.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighborhoods of Gaza City, said the territory had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday and on Sunday, forcing families to seek shelter in the western parts of the city.
The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks, and on Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a “dangerous combat zone.”
“They are crawling into the heart of the city where hundreds of thousands are sheltering, from the east, north, and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave,” said Rezik Salah, a father of two, from Sheikh Radwan.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu’s security cabinet will convene on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, which he has described as Hamas’ last bastion.
A full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks. Israel says it wants to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in.
HAMAS SPOKESPERSON TARGETED
Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israeli forces had targeted Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Abu Ubaida was killed. Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.
Gaza health authorities said 15 people, including five children, were killed in the attack on a residential building in the heart of Gaza City.
Abu Ubaida, also known as Hozayfa Al-Khalout, is a well-known figure to Palestinians and Israelis alike, close to Hamas’ top military leaders and in charge of delivering the group’s messages, often via video, for around two decades, delivering statements while wearing a red keffiyeh that concealed his face.
The US targeted him with sanctions in April 2024, accusing him of leading the “cyber influence department” of al-Qassam Brigades.
In his last statement on Friday, he warned that the planned Israeli offensive on Gaza City would endanger the hostages.
On Saturday, Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric said an evacuation from the city would provoke a massive population displacement that no other area in the enclave is equipped to absorb, with shortages of food, shelter and medical supplies.
“People who have relatives in the south left to stay with them. Others, including myself, didn’t find a space as Deir Al-Balah and Mawasi are overcrowded,” said Ghada, a mother of five from the city’s Sabra neighborhood.
Around half of the enclave’s more than 2 million people are presently in Gaza City. Several thousand were estimated to have left the city for central and southern areas of the enclave.
Israel’s military has warned its political leaders that the offensive is endangering hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Protests in Israel calling for an end to the war and the release of the hostages have intensified in the past few weeks.