Lives in Limbo: Jewish Refugees in Portugal, 1940–1945

- I'd like to start with how I came to this topic. I've been writing about the history of German Jews for many years, so that's not new. What is new is the refugee crisis, that has had global resonance for all of us in the last several decades. Today, there are 80 million displaced people, not including Venezuelans and 26 million refugees, defined as people forced to leave their countries because of persecution, war, or violence. The daughter of German-Jewish refugees myself, I began to think about those mostly German and Austrian Jews who had struggled and managed to get out, but not to their final destination. I first wrote a book about Jewish refugees in the small settlement of Sosua in the Dominican Republic. Then I started wondering, since so many Sosuan Jews had transmigrated from Portugal, how'd they get there? What did they do there? Most importantly, how did Jews react emotionally to the sites they encountered during their frightening odysseys and their fearful weight in an oddly peaceful purgatory. An emotional history of Jewish refugees biding their time in Portugal may offer us a glimpse into their feelings then and also into feelings that many refugees on the streets of Paris, in cafes in Berlin, or under tents in Jordan share today, no matter how widely divergent their original circumstances. To begin, if I get this right. In the opening scene of"Casablanca" released in 1942 and one of the five most popular American films ever, the camera zooms in on a map of Casablanca in relation to Portugal. We learned that the refugees in Casablanca wait and wait and wait for visas to get into Lisbon. Quote, "The great embarkation point for the freedom of the Americas." At the end of the film, the heroes fly off to Lisbon. Most Jewish refugees, however, reached Lisbon in via far more torturous paths, fleeing their homelands, and then winding through the low countries, France, Spain, and Portugal, arriving destitute and forlorn. Before World War II, about one third of German Jews fled Germany. Many of those seeking asylum from the Nazis went to neighboring countries, especially France and Holland. Even after the brutality of the Austrian annexation in 1938, very few refugees from Germany or Austria thought about Portugal. They didn't even consider it because it was a very poor agricultural country under another dictatorship. After the shocking violence toward Jews during the 1938 November pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht, in which Nazis burned down close to 300 synagogues, in which over 32,000 Jewish men faced incarceration in concentration camps. German and Austrian Jews urgently tried to flee. However, immigration restrictions in foreign countries stymied many. One refugee wrote, quote,"Every door is firmly locked and bolted, and so is every heart." That same fateful year, Portugal began to issue only 30-day tourist visas to persons who could document they already had visas and ship tickets to overseas destinations. Many didn't have that, and still they came, legally or illegally. Mass flight began with the fall of France in 1940. Millions, not only Jews, fled south. Let's see if I can show you the map, you get a sense of where people are coming from. Most foreigners, especially Jews, had to get out of France where the police treated them with quote,"A combination of muddle and brutality." Sometimes resorting to mass roundups that could end in a concentration camp. Yet, leaving France proved treacherous since the French were now cooperating with Germany and refused to give exit visas. Spain's stance on refugees crossing borders grew increasingly unreliable, making it hard to imagine a crueler way of torturing human beings. Here you see a group of French refugee children who did make it across. So how did refugees get to Portugal and how did they experience their stay? My research examined the many locations which refugees confronted in their attempts to flee Europe as well as their thoughts, fears, and actions. Tonight, I focus only on three such sites. The borders refugees nervously crossed, the lines at consulates and aid organizations on which they fretfully stood and the smoky cafes they uneasily inhabited. These sites triggered emotional reactions, sometimes feelings of anguish, other times relief, and often both. Refugees, with and without proper papers, faced borders, four of them, with angst and expectations. You see, they had to cross the French border to the Spanish border and then the Spanish border to the Portuguese border. So four guard posts. Would guards let them through or turn them back? Were their numerous documents sufficient, whether legitimate or forged? At each crossing, anxiety skyrocketed, quote,"Borders meant danger, something could go wrong, perhaps one didn't have all the papers or forged papers could be challenged. German Jew Hans Sahl tensely crossed the border with his quote, "Brand new Danish passport," made by quote,"One of the best craftsmen in the field." Many refugees faced harsh scrutiny by German border patrols, and here you have a picture of that, at the French-Spanish border, including being forced to strip completely. Some refugees made the desperate decision to flee France without any papers at all avoiding all border guards. That could take between 3 and 10 hours up the Pyrenees and a few hours down to Spain. Leah Lazago, with two children and a three-month-old infant, climbed the Pyrenees on foot in 1943. Portugal demonstrated generosity at first, admitting tens of thousands of transmigrants. By July '40, Lisbon had emerged as the best way station for Jews to escape Europe for North and South America. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people reached Portugal in the years 1940-41, among whom about 90% were Jewish. Most ended up in Lisbon, the capital, and a lively city of about 600,000, where the majority of Portugals, about 2,000 Jews lived. Portuguese government reluctance and the dizzying visa procedures notwithstanding, Lisbon soon became, quote,"The refugee capital of Western Europe." While tens of thousands continued their exodus by boat and some by plane to distant shores, Lisbon still housed about 8,000 refugees in December 1940 and 14,000 in June '41, the numbers kept going up and down. At that moment, the Nazis directly or indirectly controlled most of Europe, with the exception of Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. A few weeks later, 3.9 million Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union, and in November 1942, a new influx of Jewish refugees appeared as Germany invaded Vichy France. Upon successfully arriving in Portugal, refugees had positive experiences with individual Portuguese and remained forever grateful for their kindness. Some arrived with money that would last only days. Others had relatives abroad who might finance their stay, but they had no idea how long they'd be there or what it might cost, and most arrived, quote, "Flat broke." This is one of the scenes at the train station. One woman on a train heading to Lisbon and obviously starving, eyed a young girl eating bread. The Portuguese conductor, observing her glance, offered her a whole loaf of bread and gave her a place to lie down in first class. Others too report receiving fruit and soup from poor peasants and townspeople upon their arrival in border villages. Jews also noticed the lack of antisemitism in Portugal. Moreover, even when Portugal placed restrictions on immigrants, the country still welcomed Jews with capital or businesses. Most Jewish refugees saw Portugal as an interlude and simply tried to get along in the new surroundings, and the Portuguese proved hospitable to their new customers, tenants and neighbors. Unlike the generosity and friendliness of Portuguese individuals, however, the government and its dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, there he is in the middle, who ruled from 1932 until 1968, welcomed only wealthy refugees. Poor refugees had to move on, theoretically in 30 days. Salazar and his minions stressed their neutrality during the war. Yet the warring sides both eyed Portuguese tungsten for military production. Furthermore, Portugal's Azores provided a source of tension. both the Allies and the Germans hoped to use those islands located in the North Atlantic for air and naval operations. Ultimately, and quite late, Portugal tipped toward the Allies. Strategic and economic issues certainly influence Portuguese hesitations regarding refugees, but Portuguese leaders also worried about domestic issues. Some thought the small country could not absorb huge numbers of immigrants, seeing themselves as a land of emigration, not immigration, losing about 50,000 people a year due to the poor economy. Most importantly, Salazar and his cronies feared all aliens, Jewish and non-Jewish, as possible liberals and leftists who might destabilize their regime. Significantly, Salazar did not evince antisemitism, for him citizenship meant political and legal status, it wasn't racial. Portuguese Jews were simply Portuguese. He did not openly discuss Jews, nor used terms like Judeo-Bolshevik or World Jewry as other European fascists did. The police certainly harbored anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic attitudes. But even as they harassed and threatened Jews, we know a very few incidents where the police delivered them to the Germans. Individual Portuguese consuls also came to the aid of refugees. Against the desires of his government, Portugal's General Consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes wrote out at least 10,000, but some count far more, up to 30,000 visas for refugees, both Jewish and non-Jewish from every part of Europe. He issued so many visas that his government sent two officials from Lisbon to bring him home and severely punished him, but his very lucky recipients went on to Lisbon. Now once having arrived, how did they make ends meet? This is the body of my research. As mentioned, the majority of refugees came without money, as it ran out, many needed subsidies for their rent and food bills. Moreover, those relatives and friends caught in the Nazi trap, beseeched these same penniless refugees for support. Some families occupied small apartments or had cooking facilities in a room. One interviewee remembered many versions of sardine dinners, quote, "Because that was the main affordable food." Those without sufficient income or who stayed in rooms without hot plates, trekked up the Lisbon hills at noon to receive a free hot lunch from the Portuguese Jewish community and this is one of those soup kitchens, subsidized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or the JDC. Many, maybe most, Jewish refugees depended on subsidies from local and international aid organizations, especially the Jewish ones. These organizations with you know, letter names, HIAS, HICEM, JDC, World Jewish Congress, et cetera, supported refugees in a spirit of solidarity with Jews in trouble, but also in order to prevent them from burdening the state. The Quakers, Catholic Relief and the Unitarian Service Committee among others also helped non-Jews, but Jews as well. All of these aid groups also attempted to find visas and ship passage for refugees. As people on the ground felt then, and as historians have since verified, the United States State Department created a cumbersome process. In part, its leadership worried about depression-induced fear of job competition, as well as what they called fifth columnists or Trojan horses, supposed Nazi agents who might sneak into the US among the refugees. In addition, attempts to persuade the US Administration and elected representatives to welcome more refugees ran into the, quote,"Stonewall of antisemitism." Severe entrance limitations and excruciatingly,(coughs) sorry, slow of application processing, reduced immigration to a crawl. And this is not unsimilar to what's happening in the USA today. Forced to engage in a paper chase. Refugees spend anxious moments on lines at the post office, at aid organizations and at consulates. The repetitive schedule of errands demanded time and attention. The Pekelis family having fled Italy, past long days engaging in the anxious rituals of refugee life, pursuing documents to secure their safety. This meant lining up at the police for permissions to stay in Portugal and at the consulates for permission to leave Portugal. In order to acquire proper papers, Carla Pekelis and her husband turned their Lisbon room into an office while Alex went out to visit consulates, police commissioners, travel agencies, in search of a million things, quote,"Travel permits, proof of citizenship, money exchange, ship passage, and so on." She pounded out letters on the typewriter addressed to friends and relatives, especially in New York, with requests that went from a simple testimonial authenticated by a notary to the all important affidavit that would place the responsibility for their future on the shoulders of whoever acted as guarantor. Refugees, seeking visitors extensions or visas, and waited on endless lines wherever they went. Erika Mann, on a short trip to Lisbon from England in the fall of 1940, had to appear at the police office for foreigners. She walked eight minutes to the end of the line and she thought that the line at the American embassy had no end at all. Carla Pekelis summed it up, while waiting, refugees faced, quote, "A jungle of consulates, police stations, government offices, bureaucratic red tape, loneliness, home sickness, and withering universal indifference." She concluded, "It would've taken the pen of a Kafka to depict the world of visas in all its surrealistic absurdity; that of Dostoevsky to render the nightmare of the petitioner's struggle for survival." In the end, the refugees had only one occupation, waiting, waiting, and waiting. These consulate lines heightened anxiety, frustration, and often dejection. Many refugees like Ann Coury's parents waited on lines for visas to go anywhere. Countless began to feel that no country wanted them.

A refugee enters a travel agency and says he'd like to go to any country in the world. The agent brings out a globe and the customer studies it carefully, finally asking, "Is that all you have to offer?" Besides lining up for consuls and police, most refugees waited at aid agencies. Daily interactions with these organizations provided relief and exasperation. The refugees themselves understood that American Jewish organizations offered a lifeline. Hans Sahl wrote that they paid their hotel or boarding house, the food ate, the doctors they needed, and quote, "The pills for anxiety and depression." Gratefulness, however, clashed with frustration similar to the resentments and mistrust that often complicate relations between social welfare organizations and their recipients. Refugees had suffered dramatic economic and social decline. Hannah Arendt saw quote, "Parables of increasing self-loss." She explained, quote, "We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we're of some use in the world." She continued, "Once we were somebodies about whom people cared and even known by landlords as paying our rent regularly." She described a frustrated middle-aged man who had appeared before countless aid committees, quote, "In order to be saved." At one aid organization, his emotions triggered an exasperated exclamation,"Nobody here knows who I am." Nobody knew who he had been or the kind of people he had come from, or the heights from which he had dropped. In despair, he realized that he could not overcome the gap between how others saw him and how he wanted to be seen. When the refugees finished their visits to consulates, aid organizations and shipping offices, they often headed to the central square, the Rossio, to sit in cafes, which became a kind of diasporic homeland. This new transnational and temporary home offered a site where one, quote, "Heard more German and French than Portuguese." Some, like the Cafe Palladium seemed filled with refugees. Lisbon cafes no longer simple sites of sociability, although that may have been a pleasant byproduct, offered indispensable locations in which to share advice and rumors. Rumors were known as the refugee telegraph, about the war and about possible visas. Conversations circled around various consulates and aid committees to which individuals could apply. This liminal world of cafe identities allowed most Jews a semblance of normalcy, a place to remember who they once were and feel recognized by others from their previous worlds, stretching a cup of coffee for hours, women and men found solace among people in the same situation, many faced the same psychic hell, worrying about family and friends left behind, mourning the loss of their homes, jobs and reputations. Fearing the process of starting all over again in a new place with a new language and new rules. By sharing angst and empathy, cafe patrons bonded, yet they were also rivals, enveloped in their own misery. They depended on one another for friendship and support, but they competed for scarce visas and insufficient space on ships. Sharing hope they needed to repress envy when someone else succeeded. When one woman received her American visa, the cafe in which he passed her days first erupted in a flurry of questions, what kind is it, a visa to immigrate or an emergency visa? Where'd you get it? Certainly not here. When do you leave? Despite their companionship, these cafes also did not provide freedom from danger, since occasionally the police would swoop down on these cafes and arrested individuals with inadequate papers. Moreover, rumors, increased nervousness. One, her family heard quote, "Partly in jest, partly in earnest that Germany would take Spain in a day and capture Portugal by telephone." From Pearl Harbor until World War's end, refugees remained in limbo, confronting more lines at consulates and police stations. Visas ran out, many faced quasi-incarceration in small villages, locations that the Portuguese government called fixed residences. They were like internment camps, but they were lovely little fishing villages north of Lisbon, but people couldn't leave. And in order to get your visas or your ship tickets, you had to get to Lisbon. So you needed to go to the police and ask the police for special permission to get away for three or four hours and then come back. So they weren't concentration camps or internment camps. They were fixed residences, that's what the Spanish called theirs, and that's what the Portuguese called theirs. One social worker observed that the refugees lived, quote,"In a hiatus, rather like a patient with an unknown disease, who waits anxiously for an unknowable diagnosis." Arthur Koestler put it more dramatically, as he always did."They were all escaping from the past and striving for some safe shore of the future; the present in which they lived was a no-man's-land between the two." These refugees, much like so many today, had become what Hannah Arendt called the new kind of human being. The kind that are put in concentration camps by their enemies and in internment camps by their friends. Those refugees lucky enough to jump the myriad hurdles between their country of origin and the Portuguese coastline had suffered enormous physical and mental anguish. En route to Portugal and penniless, many searched for food, shelter, and visas. They crossed terrifying borders, lined up at exasperating consulates for increasingly unattainable visas, and at aid organizations for support that most of these formerly middle class people had never required and never expected to need. And they sat in cafes, "Those meeting places of refugees from all over the world." Exchanging rumors, vying for visas and consoling each other. Ambivalently and ambiguously, Portugal, a poor country whose dictatorial government feared foreigners and leftists offered a relatively safe haven to refugees. Its wealthier inhabitants and its very poor inhabitants extended solace and support and left strong positive impressions with the Jewish sojourners. Lisbon emerged as a symbol of temporality and transition, and Portugal ultimately saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews who managed to get there. Despite vast contrasts in time, place, religion, ethnicity and regimes, refugee groups shared similarities, especially feelings about being forced from home and from loved ones while waiting for the world to react. Then and now, no one flees home unless they have to. Warsan Shire, the first Young Poet Laureate for London in 2013, put it this way,"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. No one puts their children on a boat unless the water is safer than land." During World War II, Jews and more recently Middle Easterners, Africans, Central/South Americans have fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. Even if each refugee crisis is historically specific. Studying refugees feelings helps transform statistics into people. As the US Supreme Court stated in 1977, quote,"Individuals who testified about their personal experiences brought the cold numbers to life." Paying careful attention to the words of refugees in Portugal may help us to understand Jewish heartbreak and perseverance in the 1940s, and also to listen compassionately to refugees stories in our own times. Now, this is where my formal talk stops, but I want to tell a story that I want to add. Which is a story of a young woman who wound up in Portugal and who gave, as an older woman, gave her interview to the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California. And it's just so moving, and I think it's so embodies the kind of feelings people had at the time. Since many of the Jewish refugees were children then, and over half of today's refugees are children. This is the story of Annette Szer."Without the required papers or money, some refugees walked through Spain. In 1942, it took 11-year-old Annette Szer and her parents three months to walk through Spain. One cold night as they tried to sleep in yet another barn, warmed by the breath of cows, she realized it was December and began to cry. She declared, 'It must be Hanukkah and we have no menorah, which is the traditional candelabra for Hanukkah.' This moment turned into a lasting memory, when her father responded,'What do you mean, we don't have a menorah? We have the most beautiful menorah in the world.' He opened the barn door a crack, and he said, 'Pick out the shiniest star. That will be the shamas.' That's the candle that lit the other candles.'Now find the other candles.' So I found four on each side and we lit a menorah in the sky." This may have been the one bright spot in all of her wanderings. 50 years after her odyssey, when she was doing this interview, she admitted,"I felt I was on borrowed time since I was 10." Thank you.(attendees clapping)- [Attendee] Did many of the immigrants stay in Portugal after the war? Were they welcome and could they make a life there?- Actually, very few stayed, most wanted to go on to friends and relatives in South and North America, but dozens did stay and married and have children there and grandchildren there. There's a very nice film, if you can get it on the internet "Under Strange Skies," and it's by the director is Blaufuks, B-L-A-U-F-U-K-S. And he's one of the grandchildren of one of these German-Jewish refugees. And he speaks about how they integrated and how they stayed pretty German as well, you know, like his grandma had card games and coffee and apple cake at four o'clock every afternoon. And so there were a lot of kind of what he would see as German customs. But then there's another very nice book by Marion Berghahn called"Continental Britons," and that's about German Jews who came to Britain and who, if you look at their, if they came out early enough, if they didn't have to just flee with the clothes on their back, they had the rugs and they have some of the furniture and they have many of the habits that they brought with them from Central Europe.- [Attendee] Thank you. What I wanted to ask you was the attitude of the Roman Catholic church. Now it seems, from what you've said and what I've heard, it seems to vary from country to country, and also the Protestant churches.'Cause in Germany we had Dietrich Bonhoeffer as you know, who opposed this kind of treatment. But in the Catholic churches, one gets the impression that there was a lot of prejudice in France. And I'm not, I mean, I don't know much about Portugal.- It's a very good question and it's a very wide ranging question. Yeah, in Germany, the Catholic church pretty much supported the government and there was a Concordat and they supported the Nazi regime, Catholics didn't necessarily, there are some very interesting cases where, especially in Bavaria, Catholic parents were furious when the Nazis took down crosses from the school rooms and they would come back at night and put the crosses up and the Nazis would come back the next day and take them down again. And this went on for a while and finally the Nazis gave up. So there's some of those situations where some resistance actually succeeded. But Portugal is a very interesting case. So Salazar had actually written some essays about how stupid racism was. There was no such thing. He was a very educated, he had a PhD in economics. So he is a very highly educated dictator and he was able to, you know, he was dismayed by the way the Nazis were talking about race. And so I think that had tremendous influence on the Catholic church as well, because the Catholic church and Salazar were hand in hand. And so the Catholic church was, if anything, quite humanitarian. That doesn't mean that they didn't preach some really awful things about Jews because there were cases where refugees had these lovely helpers, you know, who helped them with everything. When they found out they were Jewish, they were afraid that they were going to be ostracized from their church. So there was plenty of, you know, anti-Judaism, I would say not so much antisemitism. On the other hand, the refugees were really welcomed very warmly. It was a very, very poor country and yet even poor people offered food, fruit, things like that. And remember, Central Europeans hadn't seen fruit in a long time. They got there in 1940-41, they hadn't seen oranges, bananas, well, forever. And orange was something that in the 19th century you would share around the table because it was so exotic. So there was a sense that Portugal was really a very hospitable country. And the other thing I have to say is that Salazar was a loner. He was a scholar, he was a loner. He never really had a family. He had a best friend who had a PhD in economics, and that was Moises Amzalak. Amzalak was the head of the Jewish community for 50 years. So I think there's a personal element there too, which is a man whose best friend was the head of the Jewish community. And some of these Portuguese Jews were fascists, I mean, they mean they supported Salazar. So, you know, the middle class supported him to some extent and he supported them. So I think that that's a very important point to make, which is that Salazar really had nothing against Jews. He didn't like being surrounded by refugees in the sense that it's a poor country and they better take care of themselves. And that's where the American Jewish organizations jumped in and did an enormous amount of social work, enormous. In fact, I mentioned the Quakers and the Unitarians, but very often the JDC also supported the Quakers and the Unitarians when they were supporting Jews in Intermarriages or Jews who had converted to Christianity, because the joint JDC was not allowed to help non-Jews, since it was all Jewish money going to help Jews so that JDC would give money to the Unitarians or the Quakers so that they could help those non-Jewish Jews. So basically I think that that, I hope that answers you a little bit. The Catholic church was really quite silent on anything having to do with antisemitism.- I'm interested in the idea that this was a country which was welcoming and warm in all sorts of ways, but you gave a very strong sense of also a place of transit, though the people, you know, you've got bad guys behind you and you heading somewhere else.- Right, they're not staying, if they were staying there might have been a big difference. We don't know.- And did you come across explanations of how they were feeling about that sense of transit? Because it feels as though you've arrived somewhere, to some extent, from your descriptions. Your put in a little town where it's a bit more safe and comfortable. The idea that you might just settle down, and take the risk that you could.- Yeah, number one, they were being pushed out every day, every visa was for 30 days. So there was never a sense, I'm going to settle here. After the war, there might have been an opportunity, but then they were looking for their families and their families, those lucky enough to have crossed the ocean, you know, they wanted to follow them. And some even went back to look for family in Central and Eastern Europe and of course didn't find them. And then they had to think of where they're going to go. And then some of them went to Palestine. So Palestine was an option, but most of the ones who were in Lisbon wanted to go across the Atlantic.- And how is this perceived in modern Portugal, this period of history?- It's being played up a lot lately. So there's going to be a museum in Lisbon shortly, and there is already a very nice museum in Vilar Formoso, which is on the border between Spain and Portugal, which is where the trains left the immigrants. So that trains that went across Spain. So you could get there by many ways. You get to Portugal by plane if you were wealthy enough. And then that stopped with the war and then you could go by train, which is the way most people went. And then you went by foot for those who had no papers and that's many, many people. But if you went by train, you usually got off at Vilar Formoso and that was a tiny little nothing village. It still is a tiny little village and very lovely with a nice museum about refugees. So I haven't seen the new museum in Lisbon yet. I think there may have just been a groundbreaking, I'm not even sure there's a building yet. So I think they're very proud and they should be proud. They were very hospitable.- [Attendee] Thank you so much for this really interesting and also heavy talk. I was really intrigued by the cafes and by the question of sort of how the experience of going to the cafes might have been different during this period as refugees than what these individuals might have experienced before, before this war-time situation. I was thinking particularly about who gets to go to the cafes, whether there's any sort of gender dynamic that might be different than what might have existed in say, a literary cafe pre-war.- They didn't plant her, but I'm always thinking about gender. So it's a great question. First of all, everyone went to cafes because a cup of coffee was cheap and you could sit there for hours. So it wasn't like the wealthy could go. And everyone went there and not only that, I've read reports where former enemies, let's say the Social Democrat from one city and the Conservative from another city would sit together, nobody cared anymore because it was all over really. And so people who had even known of each other and didn't care for each other would sit together in these cafes, trading information and rumors. Women, European women, Northern European women, French women went to the cafes. Portuguese women never went to those cafes without a male escort. So these, in terms of gender, Portuguese were a little put off by Northern European women. They wore short sleeve, it was hot, it was also summer, June, July, they wore short-sleeve sleeves. A good middle-class Portuguese woman wore long sleeves with gloves and with a hat. And these and Northern Europeans, as you probably know, as you've probably seen on many southern shores, love the sun. And they would sit there without hats and with, you know, open jackets and whatever and would be enjoying them and crossing their legs. And so their legs were bare rather than long skirts. And so there would, at first there was a lot of, Portuguese took offence at that. And then after a while it became sort of normal and a lot of young Portuguese women would go. Portuguese women would also cut their hair short a la, what it was called, a la refugiadas, like the refugees, because they were supposed to have long, you know, beautiful hair, whatever. And so I think according to some Portuguese novelists who wrote about this, it actually created a loosening up of that urban Portuguese culture, including smoking.'Cause Northern European women also smoked and southern women didn't. So all of that seemed to have created a kind of loosening of the previous restrictions. Also, in terms of gender, as long as I'm on a roll. In terms of gender, when I wrote a book about Jewish life in Nazi Germany and the gender roles changed quite dramatically. Women took on much greater roles than men because Jewish men would be possibly hurt or beaten up or arrested, whereas Jewish women, at least at the beginning, could represent the family and so there was a real role exchange. But as refugees, everything kind of equalized because now men and women were standing in line. One person is standing on the US line, one person standing on the Brazil line, one person and you know, they took turns so that everyone was on a line and then everyone had to make a decision, you know, and they would consult with each other. He wasn't the boss anymore at that point. Nobody had a job. Actually, if there was any difference, it was generational,'cause some of the younger people got jobs, you know, under the table jobs. But like you could become, a young woman could become a nanny in some place and earn some money and her parents couldn't earn anything, you weren't allowed to work, that was one of the rules of the refugees.'Cause if you were going to compete with other Portuguese workers, then forget it, that's not going to happen. So they would work. And the other thing is a lot of young people also worked for the Americans and because they brought German and they brought Polish and they brought French, and of course Americans don't know foreign languages. And so they worked in those offices. The Joint hired a good number of young people. And so I went through a lot of social worker documents from the Quakers and from the Joint Distribution Committee, et cetera. There were often clashes in the family between the young who wanted to go out after work and meet Portuguese friends, they made friends, and the elders who said,"No, you shouldn't do that." And you know, they don't want their daughter dating some strange Portuguese man. And so there was a lot of tension, the social workers talk about that. So there are different gender dynamics happening as refugees.- [Attendee] Wasn't there a clandestine community of Jewish people who went undercover?- Who were in Portugal?- [Attendee] I think? Yes. Or am I getting it muddled up with something else?- Do you mean who were hiding from the police? Yes.- [Attendee] No, that they naturally sort of-- Oh, oh, oh, you're talking about the sort of, hidden Jews?- [Attendee] Yes, yes.- Okay. So this goes back to the 15th century and you know, when Spain and Portugal forced conversion and yes, there were numbers of Jews who kind of, I wouldn't call it underground really, but who secretly practiced their religion. We don't know how many, we have no idea. But there are some, even today, who claim they are the, you know, the children, great, great, great, great-grandchildren of those Jews who had been persecuted. So yes, but there's no number that I can give you and it's not really connected to the refugee crisis. They already existed beforehand. Yeah.- [Attendee] With the visas drying up, was there attempts on forged passports from across Atlantic nations? And if there were, was there like any success stories?- You know, it's interesting that you ask that because I've never come across that, but I can't believe it didn't exist. But it would be much harder to cross the Atlantic with a forged passport and come to Ellis Island or to Jersey City and get away with it. But that would be such an interesting story if there was. But there were many forged passports in France, Varian Fry, who was an American in Southern France, who was also helping to save well-known writers, painters, authors, Jewish and non-Jewish. He had a whole slew of forgers working for him. And more generally, you know, like Hans Sahl talks about his Danish forger, which I found amazing, because I didn't know they were forging all the way up in Denmark for somebody going from France to, you know, through Spain and into Portugal. So that was a big issue. And I like to actually underline the illegality because today, you know, at least in the United States, I can't speak about England, but in the United States, they're people who are without the right papers are often called illegals. Well, that's the only way people get their lives saved is being an illegal half the time. So I mean, I see that as perfectly, okay, you wanted to save your life and that of your children, go, go for it, you know, get yourself an illegal passport or climb the Pyrenees, if you can do that. But it's often used as a, you know, kind of a derogatory thing, but they're trying to save their lives. Most of us would probably try to do the same thing if it were possible. So that's all I can say. I can't say about the American part.- [Attendee] I'm just trying to get a sense of, as the Jews were moving towards Portugal, was that that they were just going and going and going until they couldn't go any further or going and going until they felt a little bit safer. Were any of these aid groups in operation in Spain at that time? I'm just trying, maybe you made it clear at the start, because there's also this thing about, you know, was it just word of mouth that was coming that this, you know, to come to Portugal? Or was it just a sense of them going as far as they could go without getting across the Atlantic and then the next step would be to get across the Atlantic, if that makes sense?- In Portugal, we're both neutral countries. It was very important to get out of Nazi-occupied, Nazi-controlled Europe, so sure those would've been two logical places. Portugal is also very close to the, it's on the Atlantic, so it's the easiest place from which to leave. But first they went to Marseille until that became difficult, almost impossible. So it's not like they, if they could have stayed safely in southern France, many of them might have, but those who, well those who had visas, especially to get to the US, they had to get to Portugal after the Nazis come into France. Prior to that they could leave from Genoa, they could leave from Marseille, you know, there were other ports, but Lisbon was the port of last resort, so that's where they had to go. Did they have anything in mind? I don't think they had in mind that they were going to settle in Portugal. And once they got there, they were told they had 30 days. After 1938, late 1938, they only had 30-day visas-- [Attendee] After Sosua, you spoke about last time, about you had to travel across Spain, like to get to Portugal, could you just give me that sense of, you know, did they have that in their sights, or did they just have to keep going'cause they weren't safe and they were trying to get-- Okay, so I would answer that by saying Franco was very adverse to having Jewish refugees, very, and he didn't want any, he got some, in fact, people say that, you know, that nobody was allowed in, because Franco wouldn't let them in. But in fact, Jews did come across and the Joint Distribution Committee actually had a few select representatives in Madrid. So it's not like they didn't know, the Spanish government didn't know about it, but they didn't want them. So there was no way in which this family walking on foot across Spain could have said, "Gee, this is nice here, I'd like to stay here." And they had very little money. And the vision of sleeping near cows, because they have warm breath really stayed with me because who would, I wouldn't think of that. I mean, of course I grew up in New York City, why would I think of that? But you know what I'm saying, it's just like an amazing thing. And it also shows the lack of money. They don't have money to spend in a warm shelter at night. And so that was, you know, just moving westward made sense. They couldn't go eastward, the war was east, they couldn't stand still because they would be arrested. So what choice do you have? You know, there're two neutral nations and one doesn't want you and the other's willing to put up with you, but as you said, they're willing to put up with you because you're in transit, they're not assuming you're going to stay.- Thank you. Fascinating talk, thank you so much. My understanding from family anecdotes and elsewhere is that in London cafe culture, in the war, the Austrian Jews and German Jews for instance, kept pretty much separate from one another and in some cases had pretty sort of low opinions of one another. Was there any indication that that was the case in Lisbon as well? That people coming from different parts of Europe remained separate?- Well, not so much Austrians and Germans, but I'm sure that existed. Look, every ethnic group has its own prejudices about every other ethnic group. But in the cafes it was very, very mixed. And I can just speak from my own research and personal knowledge that in the New York area, German Jews and Austrian Jews just mixed all the time. The Austrians were known as having much better food and better cake. So, you know, German Jews went to Austrian cafes, so that makes sense. The book I did on the Dominican Republic, there were Austrian cafes that were set up immediately. It's like you couldn't live without a cafe and it's cafe and a banana plantation and they didn't have apple cake or you know, apple strudel, but they used plantains. So they were very innovative and the Austrians were always known as having the better cuisine. But I wouldn't be surprised to know that there were some prejudices against them. And I mean, Jews are such a mixed group of people. You have ultra secular, you have ultra-orthodox, you have, you know, from different countries. It really doesn't seem likely that they'd all be just one big happy family. You know, that just not the way the world is. And it's not just Jews, right? Other groups have the same issues.- [Attendee] Hi, hello. Thank you. You started your talk framing it in terms of refugees and then linked it with the situation in South America now and obviously large immigration from the South to the North America. Well, we have the same issue here today. And for example, my personal view is that the situation of Jews in the 1930s was remarkably different. The majority of refugee today that we experienced, and I've just been doing some research in Ireland because they have a major issue with mass migration from Georgia, from Albania, from Algeria, from Nigeria, none of which are countries that will be persecuted in. And as a grandchild myself, of somebody who came here as an economic migrant. Do you differentiate between, I know it's going off this subject, but do you differentiate between economic migrants and other migrants who are being, because the Jews were really facing persecution. We can't believe the amount of persecution they were facing, but most of the migrants now, we're not, the economic migrants. And I wonder, have you got a thought about that, really?- I said at the beginning that there was something like 80 million displaced people today of whom 26 million are seen as refugees, as defined as people forced to leave their homes as a result of persecution, war, or violence. Now, if I think of the Syrian refugees, their lives were in terrific danger. And the migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, El Salvador, that's very complicated. Some of their lives are in real danger because of the gang warfares that are going on and others are economic migrants. So I would say that we do, if Uyghurs started to migrate, which they can't because they're stuck, I would consider those real refugees too. So it depends on, you know, on the group, and we were talking before we all assembled that in Africa today, there are millions of migrants who are migrating within Africa. They don't even, you know, Europe and America think we're the only places people are going, but we're not, so to that extent. And their lives aren't in danger, but their health and subsistence is in danger. What do you do? I mean, when Warsan Shire says,"Nobody puts their child on a boat, unless the water is safer than land." That doesn't mean the child would necessarily be murdered, but it'll dive of starvation. So I don't know the answer. You know, it's an an important question and something we all have to think about. And I don't have a pat answer for that. Sorry.- [Attendee] You say the visa was valid for 30 days. What happens if they didn't get out within 30 days?- That happened to a lot of people. So let's say you had your visa and you missed your boat, that happened a lot, because you couldn't get across as fast. You'd gotten your visa in Berlin, let's say, then you schlup up across Europe and then you finally get there and the boat's gone. You had to apply for a visa again and it could take forever. It took one woman five years. So it didn't happen automatically because the State Department was purposely slowing down the process. So that's what happened. And then you were stuck there and then you couldn't get a job because you were a refugee and then you had to go to the Joint Distribution Committee to get a dollar a week. I forgot, I think it was about a dollar a week sustenance plus the free lunches. So I had seen many, many letters saying,"I need a new sweater for winter, I'm cold." And they're in a fixed residence, a little bit in the north of Portugal,"And this is my third time asking for a sweater." So it was really, and these are people who were trying desperately to get their visas, but the visa had run out. And then they had to go to the police and extend their stay in Portugal, because if they didn't, the police threatened to put them in jail and people did get put in jail, but mostly they got taken out again by the Joint Distribution Committee, but it wasn't easy. You had to both, as I said earlier, you had to have permission to stay in and permission to leave at the same time.- [Moderator] Sounds-- Thank you.- Sounds awfully like our current home office, doesn't it?(all laugh)- It's been-- Luckily I don't know about that.- An absolutely magnificent lecture. And I like on behalf of Gresham College, I'm sure of the museum too, to thank you enormously Professor Kaplan, for your lecture tonight and I'm sure everybody will join me in giving you another round-- Thank you all for these good questions.(attendees clapping)