Moisés Bensabat Amzalak [SEP] date of birth
Moisés Bensabat Amzalak
Moisés Bensabat Amzalak (4 October 1892 - 6 June 1978) was a Portuguese scholar and economist. Amzalak was born and educated in Lisbon. He combined a successful business career with broad academic activity. A devoted Jew, a central figure in the Portuguese Jewish Community, he headed the Lisbon Jewish community from 1926 until his death in 1978.
Biography.
Amzalak established a solid academic career. He became professor of philosophy and later dean of the Lisbon Institute of Higher Economics and Finance (1933-
Vashem. Other Portuguese who deserve credit for saving Jews during the war include Professor Francisco Paula Leite Pinto and Moisés Bensabat Amzalak. A devoted Jew and a supporter of Salazar, Amzalak headed the Lisbon Jewish community for 52 years, from 1926 until 1978.
Historian Carlton Hayes, American Ambassador in Spain during the war, writes of a "prodigious number of refugees", who began pouring into Spain in November and December 1942. Most were Frenchmen, half starved, without money or clothes, and Hayes writes of the decisive