Porto Jewish community calls Portugal's criminal probe into its actions 'Holocaust against families

(JTA) — The head of the Jewish Community of Porto, Portugal said that a criminal investigation stemming from the organization’s role in vetting Jews with Sephardic ancestry for Portuguese citizenship amounts to antisemitic persecution by officials.

In an unusually harsh letter to lawmakers last week, Gabriel Senderowicz said the probe was perpetrating a “Holocaust against families.”

And in a sign of splits among the country’s Jews, a former leader of the Jewish community of Lisbon dismissed Senderowicz’s allegations as baseless and “absurd.”

Senderowicz’s letter to lawmakers was the latest dev...