88 Friday, November 18, 1983 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Spaniard Visits 'Hidden Jews' of Northern Portugal (Editor's note: The fol- lowing letter, appearing here translated from the Spanish, was sent to De- troiter Ann Mandelbaum by her friend Myriam del . Rey of Madrid, Spain. Ms. del Rey is a descendant of converted Spanish Jews from Majorca who has recently reconverted to Judaism. She is an ar- chitect by profession and has spent considerable time in Israel where she has learned Hebrew. To- gether with an Israeli scholar she visited towns in northern Portugal where there are a number of communities of persons whose ances- tors were forcibly con- verted Jews in the 16th Century. They appear to have a strong claim to recognition as Jews by Israel and world Jewry.) Since my return I have been busy trying to organize the Guarda seminar about the Judeos or descendants of Portuguese converts of the 16th Century. I was there at the beginning of July with my Israeli friend who is the official organizer for the seminar. Guarda is a small Por- tuguese city close to the Spanish border at the same latitude with Salamanca. It has a perfectly preserved medieval Jewish neighbor- hood and a population with a high percentage of Mar- ranos and some Judeos. The difference between the groups is that the Judeos are strict adherents and preserve many Jewish ritu- als which are still recogniz- able; while the Marranos are.the result of mixed mar- riages, Judeos married to Marranos or Old Christians (the expulsion from the Judeo group in these cases is automatic) or Judeos that do not observe the rituals sufficiently. But the best thing was the Sabbath spent in the town near Belmonte, where the Judeos make up a group of some 300 families and the Marranos are also very numerous. We were staying at the home of a Judeo couple. All of us women lighted the candles. There was a Judeo and Jewish kidush. I was so touched that I became confused and had to repeat it again. It was something unforgettable. During the same day we were visiting various homes of Judeos and we talked with the people. In the afternoon I showed slides of Jerusalem and gave out posters. We sang in Hebrew, Ladino and Judeo-Portuguese. They prayed and danced in their own way, and ev- erything ended with the Hatikva in Hebrew, Por- tuguese and Spanish. After the seminar I would be able to inform you better, but at the moment I can mention to you several points: They keep kosher of sorts, except the separation of plates for meat and milk and the shehita ritual (ritual slaughtering) al- though they know it well, and would like to have a shohet. They celebrate Passover with matzot, Yom Kippur and Purim; they remember Sukkot (which they wish to celebrate again); Rosh Hashana, Shavuot (faith memory of it) and Hanuka (some celebrate it, others not, so people would not think they celebrate Christmas). They celebrate the Sabbath, preparing in advance the house and the food; they light the candles, do not make fire; they use electricity, and some use their cars, others, better informed, do not. They do not write and do not take photos, (they would not allow my Israeli friend to take pic- tures). They pray before dinner, in the morning and afternoon. They pray daily, twice a day (morning and night). They pray next to the door step (reminder of the mezuza), looking east and standing. They have their own ritual in Portuguese for births. The young people want to circumcize their sons. Some have gotten themselves circumcized. For weddings, they get. mar- ried in the bride's home, without going to church until the first born comes. (This gives them a bad repu- tation among the "Old Christians"), and as far as death is concerned, they wash the dead, throw all the water out from the house, and only call the priest for the funeral. They only go to church three times in their lives: First, to baptize their chil- dren. The Civil Registry is fairly new in Portugal as well as in Spain. In the past, without baptism, one did not exist officially. Second, in order to get married (otherwise the children were considered illegiti- mate) and third, to bury the dead. In Belmonte there is still no civil cemetery. Be- fore entering church they say a prayer in which they ask God's forgiveness and affirm their adherence only to Him. They know the prayers by memory, especially the women, but some have small manuscripts which help them re- member. Everything is in Portuguese, but many phrases seemed direct translations of Jewish prayers. This is one of the most important points for the seminar. There is some kind of yeshiva for children and young people, in which they are learning Hebrew on their own, with a Hebrew grammar written in English that an American Jew left them. In order to use it, some have learned English and continue to teach the others. In charge of the class is a boy 16 years of age who wants to become rabbi and make aliya. The youngest student is eight years old and already can read He- brew. They also study Judaism and Zionism from Spanish and English books which they understand perfectly. Some of these -young people want to make aliya. They begin to feel conscious of not being considered Jews by mainstream Jews, but no one in the area has the least doubt about their Jewish identity. The adults in general have a primary school edu- cation. There are no illiter- ates, not even among older women. The young people have a secondary school education but among them are some with college edu- cations. One of them is Jose Eduardo de Matos, a journalist and graduate from. Coimbra and Salamanca Universities. He is a polyglot who speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, English perfectly and some Hebrew. He is 26 years old. He has organized several trips of Judeos to Israel. The Judeos returned a lot more conscious of what they for- got in these five centuries. Jose Domingo directs a magazine in Guarda and he is a correspondent for sev- eral newspapers. The economic level of the Judeos and Marranos ranges from lower middle class to high bourgeoise, who are not very educated. They dedicate themselves to business, commerce, indus- try and some are artisans. The health situation appears to be good except for inbreeding . . . among women who also may have some kind of hormonal im- balance since all of them have a lot of hair. As I was saying, a mixed marriage inevitably pro- duces the expulsion from the Judeo group, even when it takes place with a Mar- rano. The Israeli rabbinate is now considering the ques- tion of whether the Judeos are Jews. They sent a rabbi who re- turned saying that they were Jews but they have not yet made a decision. But there is no doubt of their Jewishness among the "Old Christians" with whom they live in a state of constant tension. Much worse is the atti- tude taken by local Communists who have made serious accusa- tions against the Judeos due to their Zionism. Nor do the anti-Semitic Nazis of Lisbon doubt the identity of these Judeos. They have covered with swastikas the homes of Judeos and Marranos in the region. These people live not only in Guarda and Belmonte, but also in the northern parts of Portugal — Tras os Montes, Beira Alta, Beira Baisca, etc. Christians Must Do More in Response to the Holocaust By REV. FRANKLIN LITTELL National Institute on the Holocaust PHILADELPHIA — Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Memo- rial in Jerusalem, has sev- eral important components. There is the educational building, with library, arc- hives, classrooms and staff offices. There is the museum, with photographs and other displays. There is the art building, with rotat- ing exhibits and also a fine assembly hall. There is the impressive sanctuary, with its eternal light and iden- tification of major death camps in black marble. In the open there are the Pillar of Remembrance, the relief memorial to Janusz Korczak and the children, and — recently begun — the Valley of the Lost Corn- munities. Last summer Dr. Arad, the director (and as a youth the legendary "Tolka"), told me with excitement of the arrival of one of the Danish longboats in which Jews had been rowed to Sweden during the famous rescue action. The boat is to be suitably and permenently displayed at Yad Vashem. In a great arc which sweeps around the build- ings are the trees of the Avenue des Justes — the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles — each marked with a plaque carrying the name of one of the Hasidei Umot HaOlam — one who saved the life of one or more Jews. There are now nearly 3,000 trees. Verifying nominees is very important, for there are now real advantages to be exploited if any un- scrupulous person were to perpetuate a successful fraud. For example, a Polish citizen so cited by Yad Vas- hem is entitled to a 25 per- cent increase in wages and/or pension. The process of verification, which is done with utmost care, is 4 k' presently supervised by Dr. Mordechai Paldiel, the first gradute of our major in Holocaust studies at Tem- ple University. That the Jewish commu- nity should now be remem- bering those who put their lives on the line as rescuers is singularly appropriate. It is important, especially for Jewish children, to know that in those terrible years not all the gentiles in Chris- tendom were either per- petrators or passive spec- tators. But the role of gentiles who remember, perhaps especially the role of profes- sing Christians, is different from that of Jews. Most gen- tiles, even church leaders, have not confronted the Holocaust and its lessons for the present day. If the denominational publishing houses, by and large, are surveyed, the weekly menu of mate- rials for sermons and Sunday schools give no sign of awareness of the tyrs, like the Jesuit Father Delp and the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, are entitled to admiration by Jews and Christians alike. But for most church leaders and most of the baptized, the years of the Nazi Empire were not years of persecu- tion: they were years of apostasy, apostasy of a mass unknown in Christian his- tory for at least 2,000 years. REV. LITTELL event. Most of them con- vey timeless truths, pro- positional or abstract, which fit 1783 or 1883 just as well as 1893. In other circles, which are at least aware that some- thing terrible indeed hap- pened, a more subtle form of triumphalism obstructs re- pentence and change. A series of books of trium- phalist spirit is being pub- lished now on a church press in Germany, sallying forth under the Losung — It is true the Jews suffered but we Christians suffered too. This lie is only slightly less repelling than the lie of the so-called historical re- visionists, who carry on their well-financed effort to deny the Holocaust al- together. True, a few genuine mar- If Christianity is to re- cover its integrity, and to blow its trumpet again with a clear note, Chris- tians must repent of their betrayal of the faith and turn to works worthy of repentence. The painful truth is that Delp and Bonhoeffer, and most of the other faithful witnesses against Nazi wic- kedness, walked their last years in constant danger of their lives, receiving preci- ous little encouragement even from church leaders, and none from large popula- tions whose baptism as in- fants was but a forgotten formality. All the more blessed, then, to be reminded that there were some places where a community of Christians was faithful to the one they called "Lord." The Kreisau circle of resis- ters, most of them martyred at the end, was such a fel- lowship. The French village of Le Chambon, most of whom survived, was such a community of rescuers. Led by their pastor Andre Trocme and his valiant wife Magda, they are credited with saving 5,000 Jewish lives, right under the noses of the Nazis and their enthusiastic Vichy col- laborateurs. A year ago last January an elderly woman, Helene Klein, received the Berlin city citation for helping to save Jews during the Holocaust. When asked by a newspaper man why she did it, she answered simply: ". . out of self-respect." There you have it, the most profound theological truth of all: true religion lies not primarily in ideol- ogy or dogma, but in doing the Truth. Telling the story of the Hasidei Umot HaOlam is a fine action for a Jew, and memorializing them at Yad Vashem is a fine action of the Jewish people. The ac- tion for Christians is to mourn that there were not more of the righteous in Christendom, that apostasy was widespread instead, and to work before the night falls again that our pulpits and Sunday schools instill amity instead of hostility, courage instead of time- serving cowardice.