Porto will open a Holocaust Museum, the largest in the Iberian Peninsula
The Porto Holocaust Museum It will be the largest and most important in the Iberian Peninsula, and also one of the few Nazi horror galleries run by a Jewish community in the world. In this place, the life of the Jews who lived in the city before, during and after the tragedy will be narrated.
The first permanent space on the Holocaust on the peninsula is a project promoted by the Jewish Community of Porto (CJP/CIP), an organization made up of around 500 Jews from 30 countries . The belongings of their ancestors, victims of the Inquisition and Nazism , will be the most personal pieces of a new museum that will exhibit and tell their stories.
A COLLECTION OF FAMILY MEMORIES
Porto's Jewish families have passed on a treasured heritage for generations. Objects, photographs, documents and letters of their parents and grandparents will be exhibited as historical testimonies of great sentimental value.
A room with walls etched from floor to ceiling with the names of hundreds of Holocaust victims
The walls and the showcases will portray the most human facet of history; the experience of the Porto Jews who suffered the Shoah (“the Catastrophe”, in Hebrew).
Jonathan Lackman, member of the CJP/CIP , will share through the museum the suffering of his grandmother , rescued from the concentration camp where Anne Frank died. isabel lopez , another member of the community, will leave in these rooms the anecdote of how her grandfather invited her grandmother to lunch and dinner, a refugee who crossed the Pyrenees to settle in Porto.
The museum will house a vertical garden that symbolizes Jewish life before Nazism , followed by a reproduction of the claustrophobic dormitories of Auschwitz and one room with engraved walls , from floor to ceiling, with the names of hundreds of victims of the Holocaust . A memorial with an ever-lit flame will honor them forever.
Among all these pieces you will also find a valuable compilation of 400 files belonging to Jews who passed through the Portuguese city , in addition to two Torah scrolls that the refugees managed to save from Nazi persecution.
The museum's cinema will project real images and videos of the tragedy . In the study center and the conference room, research on the Holocaust will be promoted to preserve an indelible memory.
Entrance of the future Porto Holocaust Museum
Hugo Miguel Vaz, curator of the Porto Holocaust Museum , explains to Traveler.es that “the museum does not intend to be a mere cultural team to transmit simple basic contents, but a 'living organism' in which several agents will participate”.
CULTURE TO AVOID HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF
The goal of CJP/CIP, which also manages the Jewish Museum of Porto , is to teach students, educators and the general public the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective: a story of the Second World War carried out by refugees and victims who knew the ghettos and concentration camps.
The motivation behind the project, carried out in cooperation with the International NGO B'nai B'rith and other Holocaust museums (Hong Kong, Moscow, the United States and Europe, among others) is to prevent the horror from happening again.
The Jewish community of Porto proposes, through this space, “ fight against historical revisionism that seeks to deny the Holocaust and trivialize the role of the Jews ”, as well as “combat anti-Semitism in all its forms”, as explained on its website.
Charles Kaufman, President of B'nai B'rith , defines the new Holocaust museum as “ a testament to Jewish heritage and resilience ”, and expresses his desire that it serve as “a beacon for Portugal and the rest of Europe”.
The Porto Holocaust Museum is intended "to be a beacon for Portugal and the rest of Europe"
THE INAUGURATION, TRUNCATED BY THE CORONAVIRUS
The pandemic stopped an opening of the museum that was going to coincide with the celebration of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
The museum will open as soon as Portugal relaxes coronavirus restrictions. It will be located at 790 Rua do Campo Alegre, very close to the Kadoorie Synagogue. , a CJP/CIP place of worship that is also, curiously, the largest Jewish temple in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the largest in Europe.
Admission to the museum will be free for everyone . The community expects to receive 10,000 annual visits, the same as the synagogue had before the coronavirus.
Address: 790 Rua do Campo Alegre, Porto See map