Books show popular support for Israel and the Jews.
Through the Israeli embassy in Portugal, the Holocaust Museum of Oporto, Portugal will give visitor’s guestbooks to Yad Vashem.
Gabriela Cantergi, of the Jewish community of Oporto, explains that “two reasons led the Museum to donate the commentary books to Yad Vashem:
“the first is that there are many people who say they will defend Jews throughout their lives; the second is that there is great popular support for Israel.”
Opened to the public in April 2021, the Holocaust Museum in Oporto, Portugal has already welcomed a total of 22,000 people, mostly young people.
In the first month it was the most visited museum in Portugal. 70% of visitors are young people, for whom the museum is free.
“Of 22,000 people, and books with thousands of comments from the visitors, there isn’t a single criticism of Israel and, on the contrary, there is a lot of praise for the small state,
which leads us to conclude that a large part of European politics and media (criticizing Israel for decades) have not achieved the desired results”, add Cantergi.
In a video that shows many comments from visitors, it is possible to read messages such as:
– A people who survived the Holocaust obviously turned Israel into a world power.
– A great nation has grown, after being nearly decimated by enemies in 1948.
– Let not a single day go past that we do not remember Israel.
Archives concerning refugees who passed through the city of Oporto (official documents, testimonies, letters and hundreds of individual files) and two Sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls) offered to the synagogue in Oporto
by refugees are on display at the Museum, where visitors can visit a reproduction of the Auschwitz dormitories, as well as a memorial room with names of victims, a flame memorial, cinema, conference room,
study center, and corridors that portray Jewish life before the Holocaust, Nazism, Nazi expansion in Europe, the Ghettos, refugees, concentration, labour and extermination camps,
the Final Solution, the Death Marches, Liberation, the Jewish population in the post-war period, the Foundation of the State of Israel, Succeeding or dying of hunger, and The Righteous among the Nations.
Under the auspices of members of the Oporto Jewish community whose parents, grandparents and relatives were victims of the Holocaust, the Oporto Holocaust Museum has cooperation partnerships with
Holocaust museums in Washington, Moscow, Hong Kong, and Europe. The Jewish Community of Oporto includes about 500 Jews originally from more than thirty countries.
Artículos Relacionados: