‘Portuguese Dreyfus’ case heads to European court

Isabel Barros Lopes, the granddaughter of Portuguese army captain Arthur Carlos Barros Basto, who was stripped of his rank and pension in 1937 due to antisemitism, has filed a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights, the Oporto Jewish community announced on Thursday.

Capt. Basto (1887-1961), a decorated Portuguese army officer who fought in World War I, was drummed out of the military in 1937 for facilitating circumcision among converts and Marranos, or crypto-Jews, an act considered immoral by the Christian authorities at the time.

To the community, he is known as the “Portuguese Dreyfus,” referring to the famous case of French Capt. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who spent years in prison on false charges of treason when he was, in fact, targeted for being a Jew.

Lopes, Barros Basto’s granddaughter, who lived with her grandfather until she was seven years old, watched for decades as her mother and grandmother tried to obtain his posthumous reinstatement into the army.

Since 2011, she has led those efforts. But despite obtaining two favorable decisions—a recommendation from parliament to reinstate Barros Basto in 2012, and a proposal from the army to reinstate him as a colonel in 2013—the government continues to delay a decision.

She filed a new request under a 2018 law permitting the reinstatement of deceased military personnel. The response she received was astonishing. A special commission composed of representatives from the social security system and various military branches said Barros Basto must make the request in person.

Barros Basto died in 1961.

The state’s impossible demand was the final straw, leading Lopes to seek redress from the European Court of Human Rights.

“We have given the Portuguese authorities ample opportunities to do the right thing, so now we must take our official plea to the European Court of Human Rights,” said Lopes.

Lopes is asking the court to exhort Portugal to reinstate her grandfather and to apologize to the family for allowing the case to drag on.

The complaint argues that Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights has been violated, which guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial decided within a reasonable period of time.

Lopes is the vice president of the Jewish Community of Oporto, founded by her grandfather.

The community just published a book, “The Portuguese Dreyfus Case: A scandal from 1937 heard in the European Court of Human Rights in 2024.” In 2019, it produced a feature film, “Sefarad,” which tells the captain’s story.

Barros Basto, often incorrectly described as a Marrano, was actually a Catholic who became Jewish in 1920 following a 13-year conversion process. He energized the small community of Oporto, made up of Ashkenazim from Central and Eastern Europe. Barros Basto and his family were the only Sephardic Jews.

Under his guidance, the community set up a school and a newspaper, and started a fund for the construction of what would become the largest synagogue in the Iberian Peninsula. He also dreamed of establishing a chief rabbinate of Portugal.

As leader of the community, Barros Basto became aware of the existence of Marranos, Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in the Middle Ages but continued to practice some form of Judaism in secret. Many in truth could not be considered crypto-Jews by the 20th century and were strongly attached to Christianity. Nevertheless, Barros Basto became fascinated with the subject.

“All alone, the captain tracked down clusters of populations hitherto unknown or even registered in any form. He went looking for Marranos in the farthest corners of Portugal, setting up official communities, establishing synagogues in the villages, translating into Portuguese many texts of Jewish liturgy and literature,” according to Two Millennia of the Jewish Community of Oporto, a book put out by the community.

“The Jewish community of Oporto became a ‘proselytizing station,’ causing astonishment in and indeed the protest of Portuguese churches,” according to the book.

The captain was not particularly careful about following the letter of Jewish religious law and acted with perhaps too much openness when letting in new members to the community. Barros Basto once explained, “I have organized the community in Oporto with the Jewish elements I was able to find without taking care to make a selection. It was like building a barracks and I accepted all those who would be soldiers.”

However, 1934 would mark the start of the captain’s downfall, when an anonymous letter sent to the police accused him of being a violent homosexual. The police quickly concluded that the charges were false and a matter of internal intrigue within the community. However, in 1936, another false charge was brought, a follow-up to the first, accusing him of pederasty. This time “agents of the state” seized the opportunity to bring down the captain.

“In the 1930s, as Barros Basto was the only Portuguese in the community and the Ashkenazim did not know how to deal with Portuguese organizations, the destruction of Barros Basto, financially and morally, meant the death of the organization,” said Barros Basto’s granddaughter.

In 1937, although acquitted of the initial charges (essentially homosexuality) he was found guilty by an Army Disciplinary Counsel of carrying out circumcisions, rendering him “morally unsuited to the prestige of his office and the decorum of his uniform.”

It was like a death sentence for Barros Basto, said those who knew him. His daughter Miriam said that he would come home, “sit and bury his face in his knees, asking what he had done to deserve such a sad ending.”

Barros Basto never lost hope that one day he would return to military service. “Before he died, he was still saying: ‘One day, I will get justice,’” said Miriam.