Remembering World War II Refugees in Contemporary Portugal

A Translational Perspective on Transcultural Memory

Verena Lindemann Lino

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110733556
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book takes an innovative approach to the study of memories of transit and exile in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 in artistic media. Informed by contemporary debates within memory and translation studies, it develops a translational perspective on transcultural memory and explores its ethical implications. This study provides an in-depth analysis of Daniel Blaufuks's inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos, Domingos Amaral's novel Enquanto Salazar Dormia and João Canijo's documentary Fantasia Lusitana. It examines the heterocultural networks of signification that these artistic media mobilize to implicate the presence of World War II refugees in Portugal in contemporary negotiations of communality. By approaching memory through a translational lens on culture, this book also offers new perspectives on remediation, memory transfer and the ethical dimensions of remembrance in the context of transcultural memory and migration.

1 Introduction

Yes, where could she go this young Dutch woman, – where could the Czech opposite her go, – anyone in this room, – anyone here in this metropolis of the persecuted?

Erika Mann “Waiting for the Lifeboat” (n.d.)¹

Erika Mann’s short report “Waiting for the Lifeboat” (n.d.) is one of the most compelling accounts of the refugee situation in Portugal and particularly Lisbon during World War II. Travelling through Portugal on her way back to the United States from London where she had worked for BBC’s German broadcast, she was in quite a privileged situation when compared to the mass of refugees that had been stranded in the small country. However, “Waiting for the Lifeboat” speaks nonetheless of an atmosphere of “helpless fear” (n.d., 2) that characterised Europe’s “only free and neutral port” that had suddenly become “the meeting and waiting place for all those, who [were] fleeing from Hitler” (n.d., 1). In fact, due to its geographical location and its ‘neutrality’ during the war, Portugal was an important place of (temporary) refuge for thousands fleeing Nazi persecution, occupation and war in Europe. While after the outbreak of war the number of those seeking refuge increased as emigrants from Germany and Austria were joined in their plight by refugees from the countries invaded by Nazi Germany, escaping became ever more challenging. With the advance of war, access to European embarkation ports with ships to the Americas got increasingly difficult, and even the eastern gateway via land over Siberia to Shanghai ceased to be a viable option after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In the period between the summer of 1939 and November 1942, the Iberian Peninsula therefore gained more and more significance as the exit route from Europe. Particularly after the fall of France in June 1940 and the implementation of severe restrictions to emigration and transit through Spain by the Franco regime, ‘neutral’ Portugal proved to be the last hope for those Central Europeans that had initially fled to French territory (Spitzer 1998, 66), as well as citizens of occupied countries and other foreigners whose French places of residence had suddenly become enemy territory.

While, for a long time, Portugal’s role as country of asylum during the war was a rather neglected topic in international as well as Portuguese academic and non-academic discourses, interest in its position regarding the war and particularly the refugees has increased significantly since the late 1980s. In view of the vast amount of studies, in 2014 Ansgar Schaefer even goes so far as to claim that “the chapter of the presence of thousands of war refugees in Portugal can be considered profoundly studied and documented, despite the existence of certain aspects that will never be known satisfactorily” (2014, 12 [translation mine]).² Although I do not share Schaefer’s conclusion regarding the need for further academic inquiry, his observation still illustrates the dimension of a memory boom, which may cause a certain discomfort. While the historian refers exclusively to the abundance of existing historical research, the popularity of the topic is not limited to this domain. Indeed, particularly since the mid-2000s the war-period in Portugal has experienced a surge of interest manifested in numerous exhibitions, journalistic articles, reports, documentaries and fictional works. In Lisbon, even special guided tours for tourists are now offered focusing on life in the Portuguese capital during World War II.

Rather than making a contribution to the historical account of the exodus from Europe or the World War II period in Portugal, the present study is concerned with the situation in present-day Portugal and particularly the negotiation of the refugee presence between 1933 and 1945 in the arts. How do contemporary artistic media remember the presence of World War II refugees in Portugal? In which contexts and for what ends? How do these mediatised memories relate to different mnemonic communities and different archives? As these questions illustrate, this study situates itself within memory studies and the analysis of the imaginary of Portugal as country of transit and exile in different present-day artistic media. However, the main aim is not to provide an as complete as possible overview of existing representations and practices of recalling (temporary) asylum in art, literature and cinema. Instead, the present study links the analysis of practices of representing and remembering the refugee presence in Portugal to a theoretical reflection about memory. The study is therefore characterised by a particular perspective on memory and conceives of the different contemporary negotiations of the refugee presence in Portugal as a resource in the context of the theorisation of memory itself.

1.1 Portugal and the memory of the refugee presence during the 1930s and World War II

The refugee presence in Portugal refers to the period between Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the end of World War II in 1945. However, the majority of fugitives arrived in the months following the Franco-German armistice in the summer of 1940 when Portugal indeed became the central gateway for all emigration from Europe (cf. Schaefer 2014). Until today, the exact number of refugees that found temporary or permanent asylum in Portugal continues to be an object of debate. Patrick von zur Mühlen speaks of more than 80,000 refugees and estimates that over 90% were Jewish, with German Jews making up the majority (1992, 150–154). Reviewing archival material from different institutions and existing historiographical studies, Pimentel and Ninhos set the number of “’verdadeiros’ refugiados” [true refugees] at between 60,000 and 80,000 and defend that most of them arrived via land from Spain (2013, 866–868). However, one encounters heterogeneous estimates ranging from 13,000 to 200,000 in different sources (zur Mühlen 1992, 150–154; Milgram 2010, 148–152). In fact, several scholars have highlighted the complexity of determining exactly how many fleeing from Nazi persecution and war entered Portugal. As Pimentel and Ninhos (2013, 866) but also Schaefer (2014, 16) emphasise, this is in part a consequence of the difficulty in defining who is designated with the term ‘refugee’ and how to distinguish this group of people from other foreigners present in the country. Ansgar Schaefer stresses that in the 1930s and 1940s the designations ‘refugiado’ [refugee], ‘emigrado’ [emigrated] and ‘emigrante’ [emigrant] co-existed in official Portuguese documents as well as the national press (2014, 16), and that official statistics about foreigners present in Portugal did usually register the nationality but not the legal status or political affiliation (2014, 83). Moreover, articles reporting on those fleeing the war in Europe seem to have used the term ‘refugiado’ [refugee] as well as ‘estrangeiro’ [foreigner] and ‘fugitivo’ [fugitive] to refer to all those arriving at the country in consequence of the war without distinguishing between Jews from German and occupied territory, or British and American citizens coming from France.³

Indeed, a certain terminological imprecision has persisted to this day. While the designation ‘refugiado’ [refugee] has clearly prevailed over the alternative labels, a specification of who exactly is meant with this term is either missing or simply varies between different authors. Pimentel and Ninhos (2013, 868), for instance, present their estimation of the number of “‘verdadeiros’ refugiados” without explaining how they define this category. Ansgar Schaefer, on the other hand, clarifies that his study deals exclusively with “the group of people that, under the violent pressure of the Nazi regime, chose to leave Germany and the territories annexed in 1938” (2014, 16 [translation mine]).⁴ And whereas Avraham Milgram’s (1999, 2010) research is concerned with Jewish fugitives, Ronald Weber’s category of refugee also includes “British citizens resisting repatriation” due to the peaceful and sunny charm of “Lisbon and its seaside communities” (2011, 127). In other words, although most readers today probably think only of victims of Nazi persecution, in the case of asylum and particularly transit through Portugal between 1933 and 1945 the term refugee actually refers to a heterogeneous group with not only different nationalities, but also quite distinct legal statuses and conditions of temporary or permanent residence.

Furthermore, transit through Portugal does not refer only to those affected by the political and racial ideology of the Nazis or the advance of German troops in Europe. Historians agree that, as Ronald Weber writes, “Lisbon in World War II was a way into Europe as well as a way out […]. As an open city, Lisbon allowed figures from both sides – correspondents, diplomats, military brass, secret agents, smugglers, exchanged internees, ordinary citizens – to come and go, as it did newspapers, magazines, films, mail and cables” (2011, 2). Portugal’s role as a gateway for refugees is therefore entangled in the history of its politics of neutrality and Estado Novo’s relationship to both belligerents, particularly Germany and Great Britain. As Mário Matos and Orlando Grossegesse point out, “at the peak of the European fascism(s) the young Estado Novo maintained intense relationships with the Western democracies as well as the countries whose governments had a Nazi-Fascist inclination” (2011, 7 [translation mine]).⁵ Bound to the British by deep economic entanglements and the century-old Anglo-Portuguese alliance, Salazar’s Estado Novo was an authoritarian dictatorship with resemblances and affinities to the Italian and German regimes. While it was significantly distinguishable from Nazism for the importance attributed to corporatism by the constitution of 1933 as well as the essential role of Catholicism and the absence of Anti-Semitism in Salazarist ideology, the first decades of the regime in the 1930s and 1940s were nonetheless characterised by a process in which the dictator “built institutions and embraced social policies that were ‘fascistic’, if not strictly fascist” (Sapega 2008, 2).⁶

It is important to note that the debate about the characterisation of the regime as well as its politics during World War II continues. Authors differ not only as to how they classify the Portuguese dictatorship, particularly when compared to other fascist and totalitarian movements that emerged in Europe in the interwar period, but also with respect to certain emphases regarding the Portuguese attitude towards the belligerents and the refugees. Bearing this in mind, studies generally agree that the main aim of Estado Novo’s attitude towards the refugees was to prevent Portugal from becoming a country of permanent residence (cf. zur Mühlen 1992; Pimentel 2006; Milgram 2010; Schaefer 2014). Moreover, historiographical consensus exists regarding increasing efforts from the early 1930s onwards of the Estado Novo and particularly the secret police Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado (PVDE) [Police of Vigilance and State Defense] to limit the entry of “pessoas indesejadas” [undesired persons] (Chalante 2011). As Avraham Milgram emphasises,

[f]rom 1935, the PVDE, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, insisted that a clear and rigid policy should dictate the granting of visas, especially where Poles, Russians, Jews, and individuals without a recognized nationality were concerned. Later, this tendency would increase, due to the influence of pro-Germanic and antisemitic figures such as Captain Paulo Cumano of the Fiscalization Service and Borders of the International Section of the PVDE.

(1999, 8)

Generally speaking, historians distinguish four different periods or stages of immigration and transit in Portugal (cf. Schaefer 2014; Pimentel 2006). Despite the existence of restrictive measures, until 1938 entry and settlement in Portugal were still relatively unbureaucratic. While the country did not attract many Jewish immigrants in the 1930s due to its political and economic structures, the few that arrived at the time were still able to obtain resident permits and even to work under the condition that they established their own businesses.⁷ However, after the annexation of Austria in...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A translational perspective on the memory of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945
• 3 An affiliative (post)memory of the ‘condition of exile’: postmnemonic archival critique and the ethics of memory in Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos
• 4 Lisbon as centre for transit and espionage: nostalgia, rich exiles and the figure of the female refugee in Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia
• 5 Thresholds of national memory: the Estado Novo and the ‘refugee other’ in João Canijo’s Fantasia Lusitana
• 6 Conclusion: heterocultural archives of implication of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945
• Index of Names
• Index of Terms