The Consideration 4: Starting the Process for Portuguese Citizenship

Since I posted The Consideration 3 I was contacted by a few cousins asking for help in the process in obtaining citizenship in Portugal. While I have yet to start the actual process I have begun obtaining the needed documentation. One of the first cousins to contact me had already found a translator to work with and was seeking my help to flesh out the exact details of our lineage from Portuguese Jews who were kicked out due to the Inquisition. So we set out to detail our lineage and prove our ancestry.

The first thing to do was go through the regulations set in the law by using an unofficial translation which also describes the history of the Inquisition in Portugal as well as common Portuguese surnames used by Sephardic Jews. I made a list of all the surnames which matched families on our tree and then began going through each branch documenting the exact lineage. Once the document is complete we will match documents to it for each line. A lot of this is most likely overkill but we also see it as something that many cousins can use as thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people descend from the ancestors talked about in these documents.

I recently found a website called SephardicJewsPortugal.com which details what is needed quite nicely. On the website they describe three ways to prove your descent -

1 – Documented evidence. For example, family records, family tree, community archives of births, marriages and deaths (such as those in Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Curacao, St. Thomas and Sofia), cemeteries and lists of tombs (like those found in Surinam, Thessaloniki, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Curacao, Bayonne, Paris and Vienna), brit milah records, general Government archives that show arrivals from Portugal, lists of ships and passengers arriving from Portugal. It is a criminal offense to falsify documents. The Committee of the Jewish Community will always strive to ascertain the veracity of documentation submitted, which will be evaluated together with the other evidence obtained during the course of the investigation.
2 – Testimonial evidence, ie, reputable witnesses who can attest to a family’s oral tradition. Testimonial evidence must be submitted in writing. Testimony must be in the form of written depositions, signed by the witnesses and certified by a Notary Public  (languages: Hebrew, English Spanish or Portuguese). The depositions must be sent to us together with copies of passports or ID cards of the witnesses. Witnesses must be credible and their testimony convincing. It is a criminal offense for a witness to falsely testify in writing to any legally relevant fact. The Committee of the Jewish Community will always endeavor to ascertain the credibility of depositions, which will be evaluated together with other evidence and information gathered during the course of the investigation.
3 – Expert evidence, ie, support of an expert on Portuguese Jewish diaspora. Expert evidence must be submitted in writing. The reports of experts in Portuguese diaspora (languages: Hebrew, English Spanish or Portuguese) must be in writing and signed by the expert(s).

Besides proof of lineage you must also supply other documents which basically prove you are who you claim to be. The first thing you should obtain is a certificate from the Jewish community of Portugal. There are two communities in which you can obtain this certificate - Lisbon and Porto. A cousin who has already completed this part of the process said that he went through The Porto Jewish Community and it took them about a week or two to accept his claim. I emailed the Porto Community inquiring about what they ask for and their response was short but straight-forward - "Please send the documentation in pdf, send copy of passport, birth certificate, surnames of parents and grandparents and proof of Judaism."

Next you will need to get a translated and legalized Birth Certificate, a certified copy of your passport, a copy of your criminal record from every country in which you've lived, and a Power of Attorney letter from a Portuguese Lawyer. The Porto community even suggests contacting legal representation as soon as you receive the certificate from them. If the application is rejected you will need a lawyer with previous knowledge of your case to properly appeal otherwise you could lose your eligibility to obtain citizenship through this law. They even suggest a law firm called Yolanda Busse, Oehen Mendes & Associados who actually lists an office in Porto and Lisbon. 

Now this process is not cheap, so be prepared for some serious costs. The legal costs I've heard being spent have fallen between $700 - $800 (€600-€700), although different lawyers will have different costs. On top of that you have the costs of the documentation and translation of documents which could easily become a couple hundred dollars or even more depending on where you have to order the documents from. To give you an idea, in my own case it would cost me $25 for a copy of my birth certificate, about $35 for my criminal records (I lived in two states since I was 18, so I assume one from each), $195 for my passport (assuming you need a new one or to renew it), and I'm assuming about $20 in postage fees, notary fees, and gas. That comes to a total of $275 for me but I'm guessing it could be a lot more for others, especially anyone who has lived in a lot of states or multiple countries. I have also heard tell that a donation to the Jewish Communities is encouraged of around €500 (about $550) to help with upkeep and sustain the work to prove Sephardic ancestry for applicants. This comes to an estimated $1,625 for the total costs associated with the application, at least in my case, and could easily be even more. 

The costs may not end there for some as certain countries charge extra taxes for dual citizens. If someone from the United States received their Portuguese citizenship and went abroad to work they may be taxed in the United States on any income earned abroad (learn more here). This is somewhat similar in the UK (learn more here) but for many of those in Britain I'm sure this is a much more enticing opportunity as Portuguese Citizenship will allow you to retain a European Union passport.

For anyone who is going through the process or has completed the process I'd be quite interested to hear about your experiences. Please use the message form.

Read the Previous articles;
The Consideration: Obtaining My Spanish Citizenship As A Sephardi
The Consideration 2: A Step Forward For Obtaining Spanish Citizenship
The Consideration 3: Spain and Portugal Pass Sephardic Right To Return:

Meeting Sephardic Cousins

For privacy’s sake no names will be mentioned in this post.

Having grown up in America I never felt any connection to the Holocaust. By this I mean I never felt like it really affected me, as a little kid it just seemed like something that had happened in the past which I learned about in school. As I grew older I realized more and more the impact it had on me but I still didn’t feel like my family was affected, my ancestors had all immigrated to America before the First World War. By the time I was in High School I knew that by being Jewish I had to have some family connection to the war and became curious about my genealogy.

                I poked around my ancestry for a few years but it wasn’t until the summer before my senior year in college that I truly began my genealogy research. I really began tracing my ancestry by using the information I found on websites and putting the trees together into my own tree, which is where I found the first names of my relatives murdered in the Holocaust. I was astounded by how quickly it went from finding just a few individuals to finding whole branches of my tree seemingly wiped out, spending hours putting name after name of cousins who didn’t make it through the war. Some of these cousins being as close as 2^nd cousins twice removed. I soon learned this is common in almost every Jewish person’s tree. 

Then I made one of my most astounding discoveries, I found cousins whose ancestors survived the war. After I emailed them they explained to me that my email was like being contacted from the dead. They thought that they were the only part of the family left, having never known any family but their own. Our relation was slightly distant, 5^th cousins once removed, but the similarities were uncanny. I then began a quest to enter as many relatives into my digital tree as possible, in the hopes that I could connect to more relatives who had survived the war.

 Now I am not only in contact with thousands of relatives of mine throughout the world I have also helped dozens of families find their ancestry and connection to my tree. Some having tried for years and years to find their ancestry which was lost in the war and often kept secret by the few survivors who were stained by their experiences, some even hiding that they were once Jewish.

What could be the next best step in my research? Meet them! I mentioned the idea to almost every relative I had contacted. But being stuck at school I spent my time connecting other relatives with each other to meet. My sister stayed with 5th cousins of ours in England and a 4^th cousin once removed of mine visited some of our shared 4^th cousins while staying in Israel. I was able to visit some of my close relatives I had never met before (although I did meet some as a baby); two 1^st cousins twice removed, one of their wives and a 2^nd cousin once removed. 

I was then contacted again by the cousins who I had found whose family had survived through the war. They were visiting the states from Amsterdam for two weeks and would be traveling around the coast. Now that they were in contact with cousins they were hoping to meet some. Their itinerary showed they would be in the capitol, which is only 5 hours away. I had to go. 

My sister, my brother-in-law, and I met our cousins at the National Mall. I was the first to meet them.  There was a father, a mother, and three brothers. The father looked strikingly similar to my uncle in build and facial features. He looked me in the eyes and told me he knew my eyes, they were the same as his fathers. As I introduced myself to the brothers I was dumbfounded by how odd it felt to look them each in the eye. Then I realized it’s because I knew their eyes as well. Then they met my sister and the similarities just kept showing themselves. We then headed to dinner and everyone was quickly captivated in conversation.

They had brought photographs and documents to share. As well, I explained our relation in more detail and spoke of what I knew about our family. They shared the knowledge they had learned from their travels throughout Europe, coming across people and places which could hold clues to tracing our shared ancestry generations further back in time. They also shared stories about how their grandparents had survived the war, sometimes by luck and other times through wit and cunning. After a few hours we decided it was time for bed but our meeting was not done and we would see each other for breakfast. The next day we spent hours once again held in conversations about everything: family, life at home, music, history, hobbies, food, and travel. The topics were endless. 

Of course plans are now in the works for future visits with them. I also hope to travel and meet my relatives around the world, learning the story of my family’s diaspora throughout the world.