Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

260 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:259
forced to maintain his civilian life and religious practice forever shaped by
military rules completely hostile to the most basic Jewish precepts), under
penalty of being retried and reconvicted!
At that time, the Army Discipline Board was guided by a doctrine that
was axiomatically antisemitic: the doctrine of the Catholic Church, inspired
by the ancient councils—for example, Canon LIX of the Fourth Council of
Toledo (633), which established that the “abominable circumcision” is an
insult to the body. Such teachings are improper in Judaism and cannot have
the grace of Hashem.
Unfortunately, Captain Barros Basto was hit hard emotionally and
never completely recovered from his public humiliation. He always maintained
hope, however. On his deathbed, in 1961, he predicted, “One day I
will be vindicated!”
As the years and decades rolled by, the impetus to rehabilitate the good
name of Barros Basto and reinstate him in the Army become compelling. It
was necessary to do this and bring justice not only to the captain but also to
all Jewish people, and because one cannot neglect or ignore all the evil that
surrounds us.
In August 2011, Isabel Ferreira Lopes, the granddaughter of Barros
Basto, met with a team of British and Portuguese jurists, all men of religious
and civil laws. Lopes is a very strong Jewish woman, a woman who
never gave up trying to bring justice to her grandfather. (Lopes tells, in the
December 2011 issue of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, of her
determination to fight for her grandfather’s honorable memory; this essay
relates how it was restored.)
When the sentence of 1937 was brought to the attention of the president
of the Portuguese Bar Association, Antonio Marinho Pinto, he did not
know about that sentence and was shocked by what he read. Upon reading
it, he announced: “This ruling is a disgrace the Parliament needs to correct.
All of us should feel as Sephardim Jews until justice is done for Captain
Barros Basto!”
At the end of October, with the support of noted religious leaders,
Isabel Lopes sent a request to Parliament invoking the Dinim Law, which
flows from the ancient tradition of the Covenant of Noah, and requiring the
intervention of the Parliamentary Commission for Constitutional Affairs,
Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees. This request was signed by Rui da Silva
Leal, a leading Portuguese attorney.
Specifically, the request claimed the grave violation of human rights
and the intolerable violation of the core of fundamental rights materially
protected by the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, because the facts
that the Army Discipline Board considered proven in 1937 and that led to a