"In the same month, when Their Majesties issued a decree that all Jews should be expelled from the territory of the kingdom, in the same month they gave me the order to go on an expedition to India." With these words begins the diary of Christopher Columbus, in which the traveler shares his memories.
1492 in history
The exile that Columbus mentions in his diary was so catastrophic that since then 1492 has gone down in the history of not only the American, but also the Jewish people. If for Americans this date is associated with the discovery of America, then for Jews it was a tragic year. On July 30 of the same year, the entire Jewish community of about 200,000 was expelled from Spain.
Tens of thousands of refugees who were brutally expelled from the country died trying to reach safety. In some cases, Spanish ship captains collected exorbitant fees from Jewish passengers and then threw them overboard in the middle of the ocean. Rumors spread throughout Spain that people leaving the country had swallowed gold and diamonds, and many Jews were shot by robbers hoping to find jewelry in the stomachs of their victims.
Spanish Inquisition
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The expulsion of the Jews was a project of the Spanish Inquisition, led by the monk Thomas Torquemada. He believed that as long as the Jews remained in Spain, they would influence tens of thousands of newly converted Jews to spread Judaism.
Ferdinand and Isabella rejected the monk's demand for the expulsion of the Jews until January 1492, when the Spanish army defeated Muslim forces in Granada, thereby returning all of Spain to Christian rule. On March 30, the king and queen issued a decree on the expulsion of the Jews, which took effect exactly four months later. During these months, the Dominican priests actively encouraged Jews to convert to Christianity and thus find salvation in this world.
The most fortunate of the exiled Jews managed to escape to Turkey. Sultan Bayezid II greeted them warmly. “How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king,” he liked to ask, “the very Ferdinand who ruined his own land and enriched ours?”
The fate of the exiled Jews
The Spanish Jews who ended up in Turkey, North Africa, Italy and other countries in Europe and the Arab world were known as "Sephardic" - from the Hebrew name for Spain - Sepharad. After the expulsion, the Sephardim imposed an unofficial law prohibiting Jews from living in Spain again. Precisely because their stay in this country was so happy, the Jews regarded the exile as a terrible betrayal and since then they remember this event with special bitterness. Of the dozens of deportations directed against Jews throughout the history of their people, this was one of the most tragic.
The Alhambra decree ordering Jews who did not accept Christianity to leave the country was formally repealed on December 16, 1968 at the Second Vatican Council.
Author: Makarova Svetlana
