Oporto Holocaust museum building new ‘antisemitism room’

The new Holocaust Museum of Oporto in Portugal is building an “antisemitism room” to spread awareness about Jew-hatred.

It is due to house statues of modern antisemites and display their publications in a bid to show visitors how the world’s oldest hatred can take different forms.

Around 70 percent of the museum’s visitors are young people, and around four-fifths of the local Jewish population are descended from Jews expelled from north African countries in the last century.

The Oporto museum aims to show Jewish life before the Holocaust, as well as Nazism, Nazi expansion in Europe, the ghettoes and Jewish refugees, plus the camps, death marches and liberation.

It includes a reproduction of the dorms at Auschwitz, a names room, a flame memorial, cinema, conference room and study centre.

“Contemporary antisemitism can be found in radical and fringe groups espousing right-wing, left-wing or Islamist extremism, it can hide behind anti-Zionism, but it can also be easily found in the centre of society,” it said.