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Germany eases citizen rules for WW2 refugee descendants

30 August 2019 19:10 (UTC +04:00)

Germany has enforced two decrees to help families of people who fled the Nazis to take up German citizenship, after a challenge by British descendants of Jewish refugees, APA reports citing BBC.

Although anyone deprived of citizenship by the Nazis is entitled to have it restored, hundreds of applicants have fallen foul of exemptions in the law.

Germany's interior minister said it had to live up to its responsibilities.

The UK's planned exit from the EU has led to an increase in applications.

As recently as 2015, only 43 descendants of Nazi refugees had applied for German citizenship, but that number swelled to 1,506 in 2016.

"Germany must live up to its historical responsibility towards descendants of German victims of National Socialist persecution who have been deprived of citizenship rights," said Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. "This applies particularly to those whose parents or grandparents were forced to flee abroad."

Descendants from the second, third and fourth generation, and "in some cases even [the] fifth generation" can apply, the interior ministry said.

Requirements would be reduced to a minimum, including a basic level of German and a basic knowledge of Germany's "legal and social order", the ministry added.

A spokesman for the Article 116 Exclusions Group, Nick Courtman, said that while the decrees were helpful a change in the law was necessary as processing of applications would still take years.