History of the Jews in Madeira in the Madeira wine industry from the early 1860s onwards. The Jewish community on the island of Madeira expanded in 1940, due to the Evacuation of the Gibraltarian civilian population during World War II to Madeira, which included a number of Jews, who attended the Synagogue of Funchal. Some of these evacuees were buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Funchal. Tito Benady, a historian on Gibraltar Jewry, noted that when some 200 Jews of the 2000 evacuees from Gibraltar were evacuated as non combatants to Funchal, Madeira, at the start of World War II, they found a Jewish cemetery (Jewish
History of Madeira of Allied Powers had agreed on Madeira because it was isolated in the Atlantic and easily guarded. Portugal in World War II was neutral and become non-belligerent in 1943,Salazar's decision to stick with the oldest alliance in the world, cemented by the Treaty of Windsor (1386) between Portugal and England, which is still in force today, meant that the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance allowed Madeira to help the refugees in humanitary work and in July 1940 around 2,000 Gibraltarian Evacuees were shipped to Madeira, this was due to the high risk of Gibraltar being attacked by either Spain or Germany. The Germans