The Portuguese Jewish community has expressed its disappointment in a bill aimed at repairing damage done to an army captain for his kindness to the descents of Jews.
Arthur Carlos Barros Basto served in Portugal's military during the 1930s, during Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar's strongly Catholic and nationalist regime. Despite the prevailing attitudes of the time, Barros Basto tried to help create a community out of the descendants of Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity from the time of the Inquisition.
Barros Basto was dishonorably discharged from the military after his enemies falsely accused him of sexually abusing men under the guise of circumcising them.
Modern legislators proposed a bill to symbolically reinstate Barros Basto, who died in 1961, but withdrew it due to opposition from the local Jewish community. The community complained that it did not offer any financial compensation, unlike the reinstatement of non-Jewish officers who had been persecuted under Salazar.