Germany eases citizenship path for descendants of Holocaust survivors
The German government drafted a law on Wednesday that would ease the path to German citizenship for children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.
While there is a long-standing policy of restoring citizenship to those hurt by the Nazi regime, not all survivors and their families were able to regain their status as German citizens, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.
Jewish-German citizens in the Nazi state were stripped of most of their rights, including citizenship, in 1935. Those who left Nazi Germany and gave up their citizenship before then in order to emigrate, that is voluntarily, or before the Nazi regime stripped all German Jews outside the country of their citizenship in 1941, for example, were not able to reclaim it later. Anyone attempting to flee the Nazis after that point was a stateless person.
Nor could people born to a non-German father and a German mother before April 1, 1953, obtain a German citizenship.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer explained that the change, even when approved into law, will not put “things right,” but is about “apologizing in profound shame,” the German broadcaster noted.
He added that if people want to become Germans despite that “we took everything from their ancestors” is a “huge fortune for our country.”
This injustice cannot undone,” said President be of
the German Central Council of Jews Josef Schuster about the Nazi persecution of Jews, “but it is a gesture of decency if they and their descendants are given legal opportunities to regain German citizenship.”
Austria also changed its laws
in 2019 as it previously only allowed the direct victims of Nazi Germany, meaning survivors, to regain Austrian citizenship. Now they and their children and grandchildren can also become Austrian if they wish.