Portugal was officially neutral during World War II and the period of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe. The country had been ruled by an authoritarian political regime led by António de Oliveira Salazar but had not been significantly influenced by racial antisemitism and was considered more sympathetic to the Allies than was neighbouring Francoist Spain.
German expansion led to the passage of substantial numbers of refugees, including some Jews, through Portugal in 1939 and 1940 for the first time. Fearful of the economic and political consequences, the Salazar regime tightened the rules governing the issuance of transit visas to Jews by its consuls in November 1939. The issuing of visas in contravention of regulations was widespread at Portuguese consulates all over Europe,[1] including by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, who issued substantial numbers of transit visas at his own initiative amid the Fall of France in May and June 1940. Large numbers of refugees, including some 60,000 to 80,000 Jews, continued to pass through Portugal on route for the United States and Latin America throughout the war although their numbers fell significantly from 1941. Lisbon was permitted to accommodate a number of foreign Jewish relief organisations.
The Salazar regime was generally aware of the extermination of Jews in German-occupied Europe from 1942 and took some measures to repatriate Jews with Portuguese citizenship from Vichy France and Axis-occupied Greece. An initiative to intercede on behalf of the Sephardic Jews in the German-occupied Netherlands at the initiative of Moisés Bensabat Amzalak was nonetheless unsuccessful. Portugal continued to trade with Nazi Germany throughout the conflict and may have received gold looted in the Holocaust in exchange. In the final years of the war, the regime provided tacit support for a number of small-scale rescue operations including the issuance of 1,000 protective passports to Hungarian Jews by the diplomat Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho in late 1944.
^Milgram 2011, p. 89.
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