Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] REVERSING SOCIAL MEMORY IN PORTUGAL 267
his official function and decorum of his uniform,” for which Barros Basto
was condemned.
Although it is explicitly recognized that such a practice derives from a
religious ritual, the explanatory circumstances were not strong enough to
remove it from subjective immorality in which the decision of the Supreme
Council of Military Justice forcefully and deviously places it. Thus, one
cannot fail to understand that the proof of the practice of that religious precept,
as such, was taken and considered as an act capable of affecting the
morality of a Portuguese officer, as well as the “prestige” and “the decorum
of his uniform.”
Arthur Barros Basto was “separated from the Army” due to a general
atmosphere of animosity against him motivated by the fact of his being
Jewish, not covering it up, and instead exhibiting an energetic proselytism,
converting Portuguese Jewish Marranos and their descendants. In a era
colored by antisemitic sentiment, in which the most base theories about
superior and inferior races festered across Europe, Portugal was not totally
immune to these ideas, as no other European country of that time was. The
sentence that victimized Arthur Barros Basto is the most lamentable and
clear proof of that.
b) The opinion/decision of 1975
The 1975 decision is legally untenable and morally chilling. It contradicts
the evidentiary material acquired in military disciplinary proceedings
n. 6/1937, which sentenced Barros Basto. It extrapolates freely, invents
facts, draws conclusions that are not justified, and reaches a second posthumous
condemnation directed at Arthur Barros Basto without any factual or
legal foundation.The significance of that decision, and, concomitantly, the
opinion that supports it, constitute a legal opinion that is likely to cause the
greatest perplexities.
First, it reduces the claim of the widow of Arthur Barros Basto, from
March 7, 1975, to a mere “request for benefits resulting from reintegration,
concerning a deceased military.” It ignores and avoids all the logic of the
argument made to President Costa Gomes—above all, the clarity of the
expression “moral rehabilitation,” which the widow used twice in that document,
always immediately subsequent to the term “reintegration.”
Part of the premise was apparently disregarded by the author of the
opinion/decision that the claim of the widow of Barros Basto was motivated
by purely financial reasons in a futile thirst for “benefits”; in addition, he
distanced himself from any consideration of the moral redress deserved by a
deceased military officer who had been discredited during the twenty-four
years that passed between the sentence that dictated the separation from the
Portuguese Army and his death in 1961, as well as the indispensability of