Samuel Schwarz

Samuel Schwarz (12 February 188010 June 1953), or Samuel Szwarc, was a Polish-Portuguese Jewish mining engineer, archaeologist, and historian of the Jewish diaspora, specifically of the Sephardic and crypto-Jewish communities of Portugal and Spain. He is known for his rediscovery of the Jews of Belmonte, Portugal, and restoration of the Synagogue of Tomar.

Life and work Early life Samuel Szwarc was born in Zgierz, Poland, on 12 February 1880, the first of ten eventual sons. His youngest brother was Polish-French painter and sculptor Marek Szwarc.

Samuel studied at a cheder and a Jewish high school in his youth. From 1896 to 1897 Samuel studied at the École nationale des arts décoratifs, eventually transferring to the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris in 1898.

In 1917 Schwarz's professional work as a mining engineer and his interest in crypto-Judaism led him to Belmonte in Portugal's northern Trás-os-Montes region. He undertook archaeological excavations and restoration work of the synagogue, proposing the building become the Portuguese Jewish Museum of Tomar (Museu Luso-Hebraico de Tomar). Schwarz donated the building on 27 July 1939 to the Portuguese government on the condition it be turned into a museum. There are plans to translate it into English by 2021.

Published works Inscrições hebraicas em Portugal (Hebrew inscriptions in Portugal). 1923. Os cristãos novos em Portugal no século XX (The New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century). 1925. Arqueologia mineira: extrato dum relatório acerca de pesquisas de ouro (Mining archaeology: an extract regarding searches for gold). 1936. Projecto de organização de um Museu Luso-Hebraico na antiga sinagoga de Tomar (Project of the organization of a Portuguese-Jewish Museum at the old synagogue of Tomar). 1939. Cântico dos cânticos / Salomão (Canticle of canticles / Solomon). 1942. Anti-semitismo (Anti-semitism), with Leon Litwinski. 1944. A tomada de Lisboa: conforme documento coevo de um códice hebraico da Biblioteca Nacional (The Siege of Lisbon). 1953. A sinagoga de Alfama: in memoriam do eminente olisipógrafo engenheiro Augusto Vieira da Silva (The synagogue of Alfama: in memoriam of the eminent Lisbon-ographer engineer Augusto Vieira da Silva). 1953. Histórias da moderna Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa (Stories of the modern Jewish Community of Lisbon). 1959, posthumous. La Découverte des marranes (The Discovery of the Marranos). Paris: Editions Chandeigne. . 2015, posthumous.