Porto Shoah museum opens
500 guests were welcomed - 25 at a time - as staff hope it will educate about the city which many Jews fled to in order to escape the Holocaust
A new Holocaust museum in the Portuguese city of Oporto has opened its doors, marking the first such initiative in the Iberian Peninsula.
Welcoming the first 500 guests, 25 at a time, museum staff say they hope the institution will serve to educate tourists and locals alike in the historic city where Jewish refugees from Belgium, France, and Luxembourg fled in
1940-41.
Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt said the new museum would “add to the respect and admiration many have for the Jewish people and impart the lessons that all must heed”.
Funding for the museum was largely met by a Portuguese Sephardic family from South-East Asia, who had also suffered in a Japanese concentration camp during the war.
Museum staff said they hope to portray the lives of Jews before the Nazi conquest of Europe, focusing specifically on the lives of Oporto Jewish refugees.
The building includes a model Auschwitz bunker, study centre, cinema, corridors displaying a complete narrative, conference room, and photographs and screens presenting footage of the Nazis perpetrating genocide.
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