The Holocaust Museum of Porto, Portugal, hosted a thousand students from local schools on Monday, along with various dignitaries who included Israeli Ambassador to Portugal Oren Rozenblat, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Rozenblat drew a parallel between the massacre on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent rise in antisemitism, and the atrocities of the Holocaust, during remarks at the event.
“Since the October 7th massacre antisemitism has raised its ugly face, but we will fight it,” Rozenblat pledged.
“The number of Jews murdered that day was the highest since the Holocaust, but now there is a difference — now we can fight back and we will, until all our hostages return.”
Rozenblat emphasized the importance of education 80 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“We have a duty to educate,” he said. “The Jewish Community of Porto, which created this museum, is doing invaluable work to teach about the Holocaust.”
The Porto Holocaust Museum, filled with artifacts brought with refugees who arrived in the city in the 1940s, is the only museum of its kind in Europe operated by a Jewish community. Its leaders, many of whom lost family members during the Holocaust, remain committed to preserving the memory of the unique tragedy.
Michael Rothwell, the museum’s director, shared his personal connection to the history of the Holocaust, noting that he and many of the museum’s leaders grew up without grandparents and with traumatized parents.
“Some were shot after digging their own graves; others were gassed and burned in Auschwitz. Some survived only through unimaginable suffering,” Rothwell explained.
The museum director noted that the roots of the Holocaust go back centuries; Jews were long defamed as usurers, child murderers, and traitors, he pointed out.
“The Nazis exploited these age-old prejudices in order to implement the Final Solution,” he said.
The Porto Holocaust Museum is deeply involved in educating new generations about the Holocaust’s roots in earlier genocides against the Jewish people and anti-Semitic violence.
In 2024, the museum presented a film on the 1506 Lisbon massacre, where over 3,000 Jews were brutally murdered. A follow-up film, scheduled for release in May, will address the infamous 1493 abduction of 2,000 Spanish Jewish children, in collaboration with the Hispanic Jewish Foundation.
Gabriel Senderowicz, president of the Jewish Community of Porto and a descendant of Polish Jews who managed to flee to Brazil, expressed frustration with empty promises of “Never Again.”
“We want to see real action that acknowledges the Holocaust’s connection to centuries of genocides against Jews,” he said.
