Since its inauguration on Tebet 10, 2020, the Porto Holocaust Museum has continuously expanded and improved. Clear examples include the acquisition, in 2022, of the metal boxes from the Bank of Portugal that once held Nazi gold stolen from Jews, and more recently, in 2026, of the famous Megillat Hitler.
Visitors who attend the Porto Holocaust Museum on European Day of Jewish Culture, September 6th, will have the opportunity to appreciate these objects, among everything else the museum has to offer.
The Megillat Hitler (Scroll of Hitler) is a unique, seven-chapter Hebrew scroll created in 1943 by Prosper Hassine, a Moroccan Jewish scribe and teacher from Casablanca. It was written to commemorate the Allied liberation of North Africa (Operation Torch), which saved the region's Jewish community from Nazi persecution under the Vichy regime.
Just as the traditional Megillah casts Haman as the ultimate villain plotting the genocide of ancient Persian Jews, Megillat Hitler casts Adolf Hitler as the modern Haman.
The text is deliberately structured to mimic the format, language, and cadence of the biblical Megillat Esther (The Book of Esther) read during the holiday of Purim. The scroll details the rise of the Nazi party, the occupation of Europe, the implementation of the Holocaust, and the suffering of Jews under Vichy laws. The final three chapters shift to the events in North Africa, celebrating how the local population was spared.
Paralleling the traditional Purim liturgy ("Cursed be Haman, Blessed be Mordechai"), Hassine wrote phrases like "Cursed be Hitler, cursed be Mussolini... Blessed be Roosevelt, blessed be Churchill".
Following the liberation, the Jewish community of Casablanca declared the day of the Allied arrival (November 8, 1942) as "Hitler Purim" (or a Purim Katan / Minor Purim)—following a centuries-old Jewish tradition where communities establish a local "Purim" to celebrate deliverance from a specific historical catastrophe.
Copies of the scroll are preserved today as vital historical artifacts at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca, Yad Vashem in Israel, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and in the Porto Holocaust Museum.
Although it celebrates a miraculous escape, Hassine explicitly noted in the preface that the scroll should not be read joyfully. Because millions of European Jews were being murdered at that very moment, he instructed that it be read with a serious, solemn demeanor in memory of the victims.
