A Forgotten Tragedy: The Unremembered Pogrom of Lisbon

In the month of Nisan, exactly 518 years ago on the 27th of Nisan, Christians in Portugal celebrated Easter, which occurred shortly after the true Passover.

Nine years earlier, the Jews of Portugal were forcibly converted to Christianity. Many complied only outwardly, continuing to secretly observe Jewish traditions.

On that day, an uneducated crowd of Christians was awe-struck by what seemed to them a miraculous light shining on the figure of the crucified in one of the monasteries. Townspeople rushed to witness the "miracle." One of the "new Christians," a former Jew, remarked that it was likely just a reflection of a candle across the room, and if the candle were extinguished, the phenomenon would end.

The Christian mob reacted violently, tormenting the man to death and then proceeded to massacre all the Jews in the city. Over three days, more than two thousand Jews were killed, and their properties looted. Huge bonfires were set up around the city to incinerate the Jews, encouraged by local Catholic priests who promised forgiveness for all sins committed in the past hundred days to anyone participating in the slaughter. Among the participants were also sailors and foreign merchants docked at the port at the time.

At that time, the Inquisition had not yet been established to dominate civilian life, and King Manuel I ruled Portugal. The king ordered the murderers to be punished, with 500 of them executed. The monastery where the inciting priests were based was closed for eight years, but the foreign merchants and sailors escaped to the sea and went unpunished.

Within a few years, the Inquisition was established, taking issue with the king's response, and the event was erased from the public memory, never documented in history books, as if it had never happened. The illustrious Jewish community of Portugal barely survived as a community, making the event largely unknown in general historical literature.

Recently, the Jewish community in Portugal produced a documentary on the event, drawn from extensive research conducted at the University of Lisbon. Gabriel Sandrovitch, president of the Jewish community in Porto, stated, "To know the massacre of 1506 in Lisbon is to understand the events of October 7, 2023, in Israel, and the historical massacres against the Jewish people across Europe," emphasizing that the sole difference between them is the weaponry used.