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December 5: Kicked Out of Portugal
lawrencebush
December 5, 2010
On this day in 1496, the Jews (and Muslims) of Portugal were ordered to convert to Catholicism or leave the country within eleven months. Some sixty thousand of these Jews were refugees from the great expulsion from Spain four years earlier. While the majority were forcibly turned into “New Christians,” those who left became ancestors of the first Jewish settlers in New Amsterdam (New York), who emigrated from Recife, Brazil in 1654.
“What sense can we make of the persecutions and violations done against innocent people? . . . against the horrors, fanaticism, of intolerance and of inhumanity there is only one possible answer; to affirm the critical spirit, the freedom of thought, respect for human rights, the spirit of tolerance. . . . In the name of Portugal I ask the forgiveness of the Jews for the persecutions of which they were victims in our country.” —President Mario Soares of Portugal, December 6, 1996
