Leonor Silva

Agrupamento de Escolas Camilo Castelo Branco - Portugal

WORLD WAR II IN PORTUGAL

During World War II, Portugal was under a dictatorial regime known as Estado
Novo, and its president was António de Oliveira Salazar. The country officially
declared a strategically placed neutrality in 1939 and maintained it until the end
of the war, despite the former alliance kept with Great Britain, the Anglo-
Portuguese Alliance. However, how neutral can a country truly be when placed
right in the center of such a catastrophic war?

RESTRICTIONS TO THE ENTRANCE OF PEOPLE IN PORTUGAL

Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, in May, the Portuguese ambassador in

Amsterdam, Júlio Augusto Borges dos Santos, informed the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of what was going on in Germany and the characteristics of those who
wanted to leave the country and enter Portugal. He said that Israelis from
Germany were mostly people without established nationality, but of Polish,
Latvian or Russian origin, and their entry into Portugal was harmful because
they were individuals who advocated too advanced ideas and sought to enter
Western Europe in order to carry out their propaganda there among the working
classes. By associating the Jews with the communist and socialist ideology
(contrary to the Portuguese government’s), the diplomat proposed to limit their
entry into Portuguese territory by requiring them to present documents proving
their profession, their moral and economic abilities and a high value cheque.
Soon after, consuls were only supposed to authorize visas for the foreigners
who submitted a document stating that they had been authorized to work in
Portugal.

On November 11, 1939, the Portuguese government sent its diplomatic offices
“circular 14”, a document that ordered the suspension of visas for refugees,
explicitly including Jews, Russians, stateless people and others persecuted by
the Nazi regime, until they were approved by the PVDE. Then, diplomats could
grant visas.

On June 15, 1940, the day after the German occupation of Paris, Portuguese
diplomats were given a new directive: 30 day transit visas could only be granted
to refugees with tickets and visas to entry a destination country. Portugal could
be a transit country but never a definite destination.

As a result of the actions of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who disrespected this

directive, since December 16, 1940, all Portuguese transit visas had to be
exclusively granted by the PVDE.

PVDE AND THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES

Following the trend set by several other fascist countries, António de Oliveira
Salazar created a secret police organization in August 1933. The PVDE
depended on the Ministry of Interior and was in charge of two main services:
preventing and repressing crimes of a political and social nature (Section of
Political and Social Defense), and checking the entry and exit of foreigners,
detaining undesirable individuals, combating espionage and collaborating with
law enforcement agencies in other countries (International Section).

During World War II, the PVDE had strategic intelligence activity and
experienced its most intense period of activity.

Neutral Lisbon became the European center of espionage and one of the
favourite exile destinations. Allied and German secret services were very active
there, and the Estoril Coast became a key place for their action. German spies
attempted to buy information on trans-Atlantic shipping to help their submarines
fight the Battle of the Atlantic. People from the Allied countries were recruited as
German agents in Lisbon and Allied agents agents worked as double agents to
provide the Germans with wrong information.

But neutrality was relative as the Portuguese political police often closed their
eyes when it came to intercepting important people from Hitler's government
who should be prevented from moving to America, as long as no one intervened
in Portuguese internal policies. Some PVDE members even received training in
Germany, as a result of an agreement that PVDE had made with the German
intelligence services. In their commitment to the German services, the
Portuguese police had agreed to keep under surveillance the Jews from that
country residing in Portugal.

In 1940, the British embassy in Lisbon formally complained about the PVDE,
stating that there was no doubt that the organization was in the hands of the
Germans and that a lot of discrimination was shown against the British. The
Portuguese ambassador in London, Armindo Monteiro, argued that while some
minor officials were pro-German, the commander of the PVDE had no pro-
German tendencies. But the question of the difficulties that British subjects were
reporting in obtaining visas to travel to Lisbon remained. So, eventually, the
British changed tactics: more British agents arrived in Lisbon and helped
develop a more detailed understanding of the organization and where the
political sympathies of each of its senior offices laid. Believing that many PVDE
officers were on the German payroll, instead of making complaints, they
decided to offer counter inducements to PVDE officers, to match or better the
Germans’.
Image 1: Logo of the Image 2: Portuguese visa granted by the
International Section PVDE to Albert Nussbaum, Director of
Transmigration for the American Joint
Distribution Committee, an organization
dedicated to help and rescue Jews

PORTUGUESE PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Out of the many people who passed by concentration camps, it is not possible
that none were Portuguese. Many Portuguese people who were immigrants in
other European countries were not defended by the Portuguese government
and were imprisoned in concentration camps. Forgotten by their country and
their families, some died there. Now, decades after the end of the war, their
stories are finally known.

One of them is Luiz Ferreira, born in Braga in 1902 and imprisoned in

Buchenwald concentration camp as a political prisoner (because he was a
communist), number 69369. His name also appears in a list of eight Portuguese
survivors of the Buchenwald camp made by the Allies after their release. And in
2014, in Joane, Vila Nova de Famalicão, we could still meet Amélia Martins,
Luiz's favorite niece, aged 62, and a collection of her uncle's memories. When
he died, it was Amélia that he entrusted with the responsibility of fulfilling his
wishes, and she was the one who kept his books related to World War II.

Image 3: Luiz Ferreira

Image 4: A note Luiz Ferreira left to his niece,

explaining the conditions in which he lived
Image 5: Luiz Ferreira integrated the death marches
in the final stage of the war. This note refers to that
experience

Image 6: When he was already retired, he visited

Buchenwald
Emílio Pereira was another Portuguese man with a very interesting story.
According to the Nazi medical records, Emilio had malaria in 1923; in 1943, he
had an accident that fractured his skull and left a deep scar on his head, a
fractured left arm and bruises on his pelvis; he was operated on the liver; he
suffered three to four epilepsy attacks per month; and was amblyopic. How he
managed to stay alive and was not immediately killed, with this medical record,
is an absolute mystery, but the truth is that the Portuguese man appears on
Buchenwald's list of Portuguese survivors.

Image 7: Emilio Pereira's prisoner record

Another example of Portuguese people forced to endure the cruelty of the life in
concentration camps were Maria (known in France as Mariette) and Francisco
Barbosa. The Barbosa siblings, arrived in France as children, accompanied by
an older sister, Rosa, and by their parents, João Barbosa and Diolinda de
Magalhães. The Barbosa couple's three children were born in Vilar das Almas,
Ponte de Lima, where the family lived before settling in the Lyon region, in
France.
Maria, born on February 23, 1922, was only 17 years old when the war broke
out, but in 1944, the 22-year-old Portuguese girl, who then resided in Saint-
Fons, was already involved in the fight against Nazism. François, the man she
married in 1964, remembers: “I don't know [if she was politicized]. Certainly a
little. In 1944, she lived with a man maritally and he was involved politically”,
remembers François Vallon.

Image 8: Maria Barbosa's deportation card

The Portuguese woman was arrested on January 10, 1944, during an operation
developed by the French Militia with the cooperation of the Gestapo. That
Monday night, Maria was in a house known as Pommerol, rented by Edmond
Partouche, a member of the French Resistance, connected to the resistant
communist network Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Français (FTPF). According to
the article, Maria joined another network, named after the first Lyon resistor
sentenced to the guillotine by the Vichy regime in 1943, Émile Bertrand. René
Fernandez, an 18-year-old who was going to meet with the group, noticed the
movement of the Militia on the street where his friends were and he even tried
to warn them, but ended up being murdered.
Inside the house were Maria Barbosa, Antoine Garcia and Daniel Agnes.
Antoine is wounded in the arm and manages to escape, but Maria and Daniel
are arrested. “My wife always said that the person who was arrested with her
was there by chance. He was a friend of people who belonged to the
Resistance, he knew them, he wanted to see them, but he ended up being
detained ”, reports François Vallon.

Image 9: Maria was deported to Ravensbrück on

january 31, 1944

For the young Portuguese woman, it was the beginning of a journey of suffering
that, over the years, she was always reluctant to remember, as her husband
says: “She avoided speaking and, when she saw the documentaries on
television, she always said: 'They are far from the truth.'. Even in Ravensbrück,
but especially in Bergen-Belsen. This was a camp that had existed for a long
time, but at the end of the war they tried to put everyone there and it was more
of a place where you died. She explained things to me... that [the prisoners]
were forced to transport the corpses and that sometimes their hands or arms
remained in the prisoner’s hands, because of the high state of decomposition.”

At this time, Bergen-Belsen was transformed into a real death camp, with
prisoners abandoned to their fate. Initially built to be a prisoner-of-war camp,
Bergen-Belsen received thousands of prisoners from other camps in the last
months of the conflict. The Germans gave up trying to deal with the lack of food
and the epidemics and stopped entering the camp, that became a land where
the living coexisted with the dead fallen on the ground and where, as in other
camps, there are reports of cannibalism among the hungry prisoners. The
condition of most detainees was so deplorable that the arrival of the British on
April 15, and the emergency measures implemented in the following weeks
were not enough to prevent more than 13,000 people from dying after their
release. Maria, however, survived. Her name appears on a list of "French
returnees" made by the prisoners themselves, with the indication that she was
removed from the camp on 17 May, "by truck". She would arrive at the Hotel
Lutetia, in Paris - which since the liberation of the city has functioned as a
repatriation center for prisoners of war and concentration camps and displaced
people - on 24 May.

For Maria, however, the war had not been left behind. Her family did not receive
her with open arms and she ended up being welcomed by strangers. “She told
me something that marked her when she saw her parents again. Her father
made an unpleasant reflection. He said: 'You let yourself be caught', as if it
were a game”, says François Vallon. Maria then discovered that her brother
Francisco had also been deported and that, unlike her, he had not returned.
Without knowing the reason for her brother's detention, despite suspecting that
he had somehow become involved with the Resistance after her own detention,
perhaps in an attempt to find out what had happened to her, Maria would
continue to seek answers about Francisco throughout her life. “They spoke very
little and François [Francisco] was quickly forgotten by the other members of the
family. She said to me: 'I too, had I not returned, would have been quickly
forgotten' ”, recalls François Vallon.
It was only in 2008 that the ITS brought them the data that allowed them to
trace the route of Francisco Barbosa da Costa, born on February 12, 1924,
about two years after Maria. François received the communication and kept it to
himself. “[Mariette] was already very weak. The letter is from January 2008 and
my wife died in June. I didn't want her to know”, explains the widower now.
Maria would never know that her brother had been at Bergen-Belsen at the
same time that she had been there and that he had died in the camp.

Image 10: ITS document about Francisco Barbosa.

TREATMENT IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

During World War II, dozens of Portuguese people who lived in France were
arrested, placed in internment camps and later deported to concentration
camps in Germany or Poland. Some were eventually transferred to other
camps, in Austria or France.
Image 11: The camps in which Portuguese people were
interned

For those who were not immediately selected for the gas chambers, life
expectancy was just a few months, as they were beaten and starved into
uselessness.
The deterrent effect of the concentration camps was based on the promise of
savage brutality. This promise was fulfilled, to an extent which defies
description. Once in the custody of the SS guards, the victim was beaten,
tortured, starved, and often murdered through the so-called "extermination
through work" program, or through mass execution gas chambers and furnaces
of the camps. The reports of official government investigations furnish additional
evidence of conditions within the concentration camps.
The camps’ primary objectives were putting to work the mass slave labor and
eliminating human lives by the methods employed in handling the prisoners.
Hunger and starvation, sadism, housing facilities, inadequate clothing, medical
neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing, hand hanging, forced suicides,
shooting, all played a major role in obtaining their objective. Epidemics of
typhus and spotted fever were permitted to run rampant as a means of
eliminating prisoners. Life meant nothing. Killing became a common thing, so
common that a quick death was welcomed by the unfortunate ones.
The brutal conditions in all concentration camps followed the same general
pattern. The widespread incidence of these conditions makes it clear that they
were not the result of sporadic excesses on the part of individual jailers, but
were the result of policies deliberately imposed from above.

There are two exhibits which illustrate the contempt in which the Nazis held
human values. The first are the frames showing sections of human skin, taken
from human bodies in Buchenwald Concentration Camp and preserved as
ornaments. This was offered by the prosecution as a physical exhibit. In 1939,
all prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the dispensary.
After the tattooed prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and
most artistic specimens were kept in the dispensary, and then killed by
injections, for the desired pieces to be detached from their bodies and treated
by the pathological department. The finished products were turned over to SS
Standartenfuehrer Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades and
other ornamental household articles.

Image 12: Ilse Koch Image 13: Ilse Koch’s human skin
lampshade.
One more example of this pathological phase of Nazi culture, another Nazi
trophy, is a human head with the skull bone removed, shrunken, stuffed, and
preserved. This was offered by the prosecution as a physical exhibit.

Image 14: Shrunken heads of concentration camp

prisoners.

THE DEATH MARCHES FROM FLOSSENBURG

The official report concerning the concentration camp Flossenberg, prefaced by

the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, dated 21
June 1945, and supported by attached affidavits and testimony, contains this:
"On 20 April 1945, approximately 1,000 prisoners were assembled to make a
forced march in the direction of Concentration Camp Dachau. The evacuation of
these prisoners was caused by the impending capture of the camp by the Allies.
These 1,000 prisoners were lined up in three groups and started on this march.
Only those prisoners who could walk were taken and before leaving
Flossenburg, many were executed, as also were those who collapsed in rank
awaiting the movement to start the trek. No provision was made for the feeding
of these prisoners or sleeping on this trip. They marched in long columns
guarded by SS Guards.” Thousands were killed on the way and the paths which
they took were littered with the dead.

Groups of from 5 to 50 were taken out and forced to dig pits and then were
shot. Many graves were not even covered. As the already starved and
weakened prisoners fell from exhaustion, a group of SS guards bringing up the
rear would kill them with a shot in the back of the head. All who fell out of line
were immediately executed this way. Death was also caused by beatings or
bashings in the skulls. "The prisoners marched from Friday till Monday during
which time they received only 100 grams of bread. They marched in the rain
and slept in the fields in the mud and water. Many died from exhaustion. On the
23rd day of April 1945, between the towns of Cham and Roding, they were
liberated by the American troops."

Image 15: Dachau, Germany, 1945, concentration camp

inmates on a death march.
JEWISH PEOPLE SEEKING REFUGE IN PORTUGAL AND USING IT TO
ESCAPE THE CONTINENT

There were also many Jewish people seeking refuge in Portugal, specially after
the Nazi invaded France. It is estimated that in the beginning of 1941, 6000 to
10000 refugees lived in the country and between June 1940 and may 1941,
around 40000 people passed through the country. This happened not only
because Portugal held a neutral position, but also because of its strategic
geographical location, as Lisbon became the only port on the continent with
regular connections to America and Africa.

Many of them entered the country with the help of Aristides de Sousa Mendes,
a portuguese consul working in Bordeaux. From 17 to 19 June, 1940, Consul
Aristides worked hard, with the help of his children, in issuing visas. Knowing
that the Portuguese consulates of Bayonne and Hendaye had obeyed “circular
14” and suspended the issuing of visas, he went to these cities to reverse the
situation. It is not known exactly how many visas were issued by Aristides de
Sousa Mendes, the numbers range from a few thousands to around thirty
thousands. On June 20, 1940, he received a telegram from Salazar ordering his
appearance in Lisbon to justify his disobedience.

Others entered the country clandestinely. While most of the refugees who
entered Portugal used it as a transit country to escape the continent, at the
height of the conflict and persecution of the Jews, the government ordered all
the foreigners who had clandestinely entered Portugal to be interned in specific
areas such as Caldas da Rainha, Ericeira, Figueira da Foz e Cúria. Only the
PVDE could allow people to go outside these specific zones.
Image 16: Jewish children welcomed in Portugal in the
Third Reich years.

There are many stories about these people trying to enter Portugal.

In the book “O comboio do Luxemburgo”, Irene Flunser Pimentel and Margarida

Magalhães Ramalho recall the events of 1940, when a group of Jewish
refugees from Luxembourg accompanied by Gestapo agents was not allowed to
enter Portugal during World War II. After the first two trains entered the country,
a third one encountered diplomatic difficulties and tensions involving the PVDE,
the Government and the international community, related to Portugal's neutrality
status and the lack of documentation of many of the refugees. After being stuck
inside the train for ten days, the Portuguese government eventually denied
them entry. Back in France, they were on the train for several days before the
Germans decided to intern them in Mouserolles, near Bayonne, in a former
internment camp for Spanish Republicans during the Civil War. Released
months later, many were able to travel to other places. Others ended up staying
in Vichy's France, where few have survived the concentration camps.
Image 17: Family passport of Renée Lilienbaum Galler
and her children, Michele and Henri, who were inside
the train. (Vilar Formoso Fronteira da Paz Museum,
courtesy of Henri Galler)

Image 18: Vilar Formoso train station. The photograph

was taken by Joseph Galler from inside the train in
which they were locked in november 1940. (Vilar
Formoso Fronteira da Paz Museum)
Image 19: Pearl Greif's death
certificate. She was a passenger
of this train, who died in Vilar
Formoso in november 1940
(Almeida Civil Registry)

CONCLUSION

We tend to think that because Portugal was a neutral state in World War II, it
was not a part of it, which is not true. The country had a different approach to
the conflict over time, depending on the outcome of the war. Initially, there was
a noticeable proximity to the Germans and, since 1942, to the Allies, when
Portugal realized that they were likely to win the war. But our well-placed
neutrality was only possible because it was valuable to both groups of
countries.
WEBGRAPHY

observador.pt › especiais › os-refugiados-judeus-que-p...

pt.wikipedia.org › wiki › Polícia_Internacional_e_de_D...

books.google.pt › books - Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-45;
Handbook of European Intelligence Cultures

www.publico.pt › revista2 › portugueses-nos-campos-d…

fcit.usf.edu › document › DOCCA10

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