Portugal refuses to compensate heirs of Jewish soldier

I24 NEWS – Officer discharged in 1937 for being Jewish was eventually rehabilitated, but unlike others, not compensated

Portugal is refusing to compensate the descendants of a decorated military officer who was dishonorably discharged from the army nearly 80 years ago just because he was a Jew.

Barros Basto fought in World War I but was discharged in 1937, at the rank of captain, for participating in circumcision ceremonies of his students. He died in 1961, before his name was cleared.

In 1974, hundreds of soldiers who had been dishonorably discharged from the army under previous regimes were reinstated and received financial compensation, many of them posthumously. The only one not reinstated was Barros Basto, the only Jew.

In February 2012, following a campaign mounted by the Jewish community in the northern city of Porto to have him reinstated into the army as a colonel, Portugal’s parliament unanimously passed a resolution exonerating Barros Basto.

The resolution noted that Barros Basto had been “separated from the army due to a generic climate of animosity toward him, motivated by the fact that he was Jewish, not hiding it, and, on the contrary, showing an energetic proselytism converting Portuguese Marrano Jews (who were forced to convert to Christianity in the 15th century) and their descendants.”

According to a report in Thursday’s Haaretz, like the relatives of others who had been reinstated, Barros Basto’s heirs were also supposed to receive compensation from the defense ministry for the wages that were withheld from him after his dishonorable discharge. Several members of the Portuguese parliament drafted a special law that would have forced the Defense Ministry to reinstate him.

But the new law stipulated that the army was not required to pay compensation to the Barros Basto family.

In a letter sent to parliament before the scheduled vote, the leaders of the Jewish community deemed the new law unacceptable. “To violate the general law of the land, applicable to all cases of reintegration, with a special law that excludes a Jew and his family, is something deplorable and scandalous,” they wrote.

The legislation was subsequently withdrawn and Isabel Lopes, the granddaughter of Barros Basto, told the daily Haaretz that the Defense Ministry has not responded to repeated requests by the family to discuss the matter.

The Portuguese Defense Ministry did not respond to a request by Haaretz to comment on the affair.