British Jews ‘are claiming German citizenship in their THOUSANDS’
British Jews including many descendants of Holocaust victims ‘are claiming German citizenship in their THOUSANDS’ amid fears of no-deal Brexit
- German law allows descendants of Nazi victims to reclaim their nationality
- The German embassy in London has received 3,380 applications since 2016
- Britons who claim dual nationality will retain free movement rights in Europe
Thousands of British Jews including descendants of Holocaust victims are claiming citizenship in Germany as Brexit draws closer.
Under German law, people whose ancestors were wrongly stripped of their nationality by the Nazis can reclaim citizenship in the country.
Britons who claim dual nationality in Europe will retain the privilege of free movement and work across the soon-to-be 27-member bloc.
Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, centre, her daughter Maya Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch, left, and her grandson Simon Wallfisch, right. The two younger family members are applying for German passports to keep their ties to Europe after Britain leaves the EU
Classical singer Simon Wallfisch, the grandson of an Auschwitz survivor, had vowed never to return to the country that murdered his grandmother’s parents and six million other Jews.
But more than 70 years after the Holocaust, Brexit has prompted Mr Wallfisch and others to apply for German citizenship.
His application is one of more than 3,380 requests that the German embassy in London has received since the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
In comparison, only around 20 such requests were made annually in the years before Brexit.
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‘In order to remain European I’ve taken the European citizenship,’ said Mr Wallfisch, 36, who received his German passport in October.
Mr Wallfisch’s grandmother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was 18 in December 1943 when she was deported to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland where more than one million Jews were murdered.
In November 1944, she was taken to Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where diarist Anne Frank died after also being transferred from Auschwitz at about the same time, where she was eventually liberated by the British army in April 1945.
Ms Lasker-Wallfisch immigrated to Britain in 1946, married and had two children.
‘We cannot be victims of our past. We have to have some hope for change,’ said Maya Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch, a 60-year-old London psychotherapist who is Simon’s aunt and is still waiting on her German citizenship to be approved.
Under German law, people whose ancestors were wrongly stripped of their nationality by the Nazis can reclaim citizenship in the country. Pictured: the entrance to Auschwitz in Poland
‘I feel somehow in a strange way triumphant. Something is coming full circle.’
Article 116 of the German Constitution allows the descendants of people persecuted by the Nazis to regain the citizenship that was removed between 1933 and 1945.
More than just retaining the ability to travel easily from country to country or maintain business ties, Ms Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch said there are other, more emotional reasons to acquiring German citizenship, with Britain due to leave the European Union on March 29.
‘I feel an aliveness here (in Berlin) that I have not experienced before, but it totally makes sense because after all I am German,’ Ms Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch said.
She added that if the country behind the Holocaust is now one that welcomes the descendants of the victims, ‘that’s a good thing’.
But Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch, who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, remained sceptical and pessimistic.
‘Jewish people never feel secure,’ she said to her daughter and grandson, reminding them of her own past.
‘I had German nationality – it did not buy me security.’
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