Refugee children who were saved through Portugal during the Second World War (1940-1944)

Abstract

During the Second World War (1939-1945), and especially as from 1940, the year in which the German army conducted the main occupations and annexations in Western Europe, hundreds of children fleeing found temporary refuge in this small, poor and isolated country in southwest Europe, before managing to depart on ships sailing overseas to countries such as the United States of America. Besides the best-known case of the Colónia Infantil e Balnear de São Pedro do Estoril, some children were “boarded” at the Escola Agrícola de Paiã (Lisbon), at Colégio da Bafureira, in the town of Parede, in Cascais, at Casa Pia (Lisbon), at Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa and in shelters such as the Centro de Acolhimento da Cruz Vermelha, in Estoril. Under the sponsorship of Eleanor Roosevelt and the United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM), international aid organisations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JOINT), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC, Quakers) and the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) organised and funded the rescue and subsistence of these children. Although their stay in Portugal was brief, it was possible for them to escape from a blazing Europe and depart, safe and sound, to overseas countries. Through a qualitative and quantitative analysis, this article aims to contribute towards the historical knowledge of the phenomenon of Portugal as a place of refuge for children during that fratricidal War.