This article shows that, during the Estado Novo and World War II, Jewish institutions adapted themselves to Vargas and nationalist restrictions, and created sophisticated strategies to undermine both law and national ideology. This social history perspective, based on primary documents from major institutions associated with Jewish immigrants in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, provides an important corrective to the historiography that focuses on law, elite ideology and prejudice during the Vargas regime, giving the erroneous impression that Jews lived in a climate of fear and generalized persecution in Brazil. This article also shows that the years 1937- 1945 were decisive in for formation of an ethnically active community that created a clear Jewish-Brazilian identity.
Estado Novo; Jewish immigration; World War II