Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] REVERSING SOCIAL MEMORY IN PORTUGAL 263
ASSEMBLY OF THE
PORTUGUESE REPUBLIC
CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS, RIGHTS, LIBERTIES AND GUARAN-
TEES COMMITTEE
Petition No. 63/XII/1. Request for reinstatement in the Army of Infantry
Captain Arthur Carlos Barros Basto, who was the target of political and
religious segregation in 1937.
1. Introductory note
Isabel Maria de Barros Teixeira Lopes da Silva Ferreira presented a
Petition to Her Excellency, President of the Assembly of the Republic
(Speaker of the House), asking for “reintegration into the Army of Infantry
Captain Arthur Carlos Barros Basto, who was the target of political and
religious segregation in 1937,” identified as Petition No. 63/XII/1.
2. The military disciplinary proceedings
Captain Arthur Carlos Barros Basto was born in Amarante, on December
18, 1887, into a Christian family but of Crypto-Jewish ancestry. His
grandfather even practiced Jewish religious rites, a fact that Arthur Barros
Basto only became aware of in early adolescence.
Carlos Arthur Barros Basto was a distinguished Portuguese military
officer, having commanded a battalion of the Portuguese Expeditionary
Corps in Flanders during the First World War. He was honored with military
decorations for bravery, including the War Cross. Previously, in 1910,
shortly after he attended the War College, Barros Basto had become famous
for his role in the reclamation of the republic and for being the soldier who
raised the flag of the rebels in the city of Porto.
Notwithstanding, his existential journey was marked by the conversion
to the religion of his ancestors, a fact that only took place after World
War I; by his efforts in rescuing the Crypto-Jews, as well as those who
considered themselves descendants of ancient Portuguese Jews forcibly
converted centuries ago; and by the freedom of religious worship and the
consequent assumption of faith and Jewish religious rituals.
Having adopted the Hebrew name of Abraham Israel Ben-Rosh, Barros
Basto began a tenacious national and international campaign to search
and convert the descendants of Portuguese Jewish Marranos, known as the
“Work of Redemption of the Marranos.” He did it with such commitment
and conviction that the English historian Cecil Roth called him the “Apostle
of the Marranos.” From 1921, in Porto, Barros Basto began a profound
revitalization of the local Jewish community, building the synagogue of