Lisbon will host, on 9 February 2026, the symposium “Research and Lived Experiences in Portugal During the Holocaust,” to be held at the Historical Society of Independence. The initiative forms part of the cultural diplomacy mission of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Institute, and marks the beginning of a structured program of memory diplomacy in Portugal.
The event follows the invitation extended to Marina Pignatelli to join the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’s international network of memory diplomacy, in her capacity as the institution’s Honorary Consul in Portugal. The aim is to strengthen awareness of the Holocaust and of the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau (1940–1945), by promoting educational, cultural, and scholarly initiatives that confront antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, and all forms of hate-based ideologies.
Marina Pignatelli holds a PhD in Social Sciences, specializing in Anthropology, and a Master’s degree in Anthropological Sciences from the University of Lisbon (ISCSP), where she teaches. She has completed postgraduate studies in areas including the Ethnology of Religions, Sephardic Studies, Civil Crisis Management, and Intangible Cultural Heritage. Since 1990, she has devoted her research to Jewish life in Portugal and has conducted postdoctoral research on the Jewish communities of Mozambique.
A researcher at CRIA – the Centre for Research in Anthropology, Pignatelli co-coordinates the NAR – Centre for the Anthropology of Religion, serves as Deputy Coordinator of the ISCSP Laboratory of Jewish Studies, and participates in several national and international research networks. Her academic and scholarly career has been distinguished by sustained work on memory, cultural heritage, and Jewish communities—fields that now converge in this new role of cultural memory diplomacy in Portugal.
