Reclaiming Your Birthright: How to Get German Citizenship in the Context of Restitution

Manuel:
[0:09] Jae isn't here today, but I am joined by Deborah from Australia. Hi, Deborah.

Deborah:
[0:15] Hi, Manuel. I'm pleased to be here.

Manuel:
[0:19] It's so nice to have you. You've been listening to our show, and you wrote us an email a few months back, and you wrote, "In regard to one of your previous discussions, my family and I were able to obtain German citizenship in 2009 under a clause of the Grundgesetz. My father was a German Jewish refugee who escaped Berlin on the first Kindertransporton December 1st, 1938. It was a relatively easy process to apply for German citizenship from Australia and to obtain a German EU passport, and I was able to retain my Australian citizenship."

Historical Context & Deborah's Father

[1:00] So this is a topic that I find hugely interesting and that I know very, very little about. So in a nutshell, basically, your dad was German. He was a German Jew, and he fled ...

Deborah:
[1:13] A Berliner.

Manuel:
[1:14] A Berliner. And he fled, or was helped to escape the country. He was a child when he escaped the Nazi regime in Germany. And you were born, and your family was born, in Australia and you have since reclaimed this citizenship.

Deborah:
[1:33] Yes, that's right. That's correct.

Manuel:
[1:35] That is amazing. Tell us a little bit about yourself and ... Maybe start with your father's story, and then we'll talk about your story.

Deborah:
[1:44] Yes. My father was an only child, I think a much-loved child. His father was a Kaufman, a businessman, in Berlin. Originally the family came from Prussia, German towns that are now part of Poland. I think my father had a good, kind and caring life before the Nazis came to power, because the family were reasonably comfortable or middle-class. But then, of course, when the the Nazis came to power in 1933, everything began to change.

Manuel:
[2:29] Mm hmm. So tell me about this Kindertransport. I had heard of this a little bit, but basically organizations in the US, I believe, helped children escape basically by themselves without their parents to different countries.

Deborah:
[2:45] So perhaps it would be appropriate to give a little bit of background that was happening from 1933 when Hitler came to power, because I think many of the listeners moving to Berlin will be in their 20s and 30s and be unfamiliar with the Second World War and why the Jews had to flee. So, once the Nazis came to power, they put in place strict laws that prevented the Jews from participating in everyday life. And as time went on, up to the start of the Second World War, the laws became stricter and more draconian, so that Jews could no longer own businesses, the Jewish children could no longer go to German schools, professionals such as doctors could no longer practice their employment. And they were compelled to sell their businesses, the Jews, to Germans, and so on. And that led up to 1938 where an action against the Jews occurred on the evening of the 9th of November, which was called Kristallnacht. You would have heard of Kristallnacht.

Manuel:
[4:12] Yes, Reichskristallnacht, is what it's known as in Germany.

Deborah:
[4:16] Yeah. So in English, it's called, "The Night of the Broken Glass." And the trigger for this was, a young German in France attempted to assassinate a German official, gravely wounded the official. That was the trigger for the Nazis to start a rampage against the Jews, including something like 30,000 Jews were rounded up, thousands of synagogues, which are the place of worship for Jews, were burnt down, schools were burnt down. My father was by that time at a Jewish school, and that was burnt down. Businesses were... The broken glass came from the smashing of windows and breaking into people's place of business or place of their accommodation. My father's parents had a maid, or had had a maid, and she had a boyfriend that who was in the normal German police - not the Gestapo, not the secret police - and in some way they were warned, and so they were able to go into hiding and they weren't rounded up. So that was November, the evening of November the 9th, 1938 into the 10th of November.

Manuel:
[5:47] It's good that you mentioned that. Maybe not everybody knows about this. In Germany luckily this is a huge part of our basic education now where we learn about these things in school, and maybe not everybody remembers the exact date, although they should, because this date is very important because of several historical events. But it's true that maybe not everybody has heard this name Reichskristallnacht and also this kind of gradual, at least in the beginning, gradual worsening of the situation, right? It wasn't ... I mean, everybody knows about the concentration camps and the genocide that happened, but the fact that there were many years of kind of a gradual intensification of the suppression and discrimination of Jews, maybe not everybody is so familiar with this. And yeah, this was when it really, really got bad, right? And people realized: Okay, this is not going to turn out well.

Deborah:
[6:48] Mm hmm. And I think by that time, many Jews had been trying to leave Germany but there were no countries that were willing to take them in, and that became the problem. I just wanted to also say the 9th of November is an important date because it's also the date in which the Berlin Wall in 1989 fell. And it's good for people to understand why that date, whilst it's a date of celebration in 1989, was not a date of celebration in 1938, and why it cannot be Germany's National Day, or why it wasn't made Germany's National Day once reunification occurred..

Manuel:
[7:29] Right. Yeah. Yep. That's a very good point.

Deborah:
[7:33] So that brings us up to the Kindertransport. As I said, Jews by that stage were trying to flee, and some German Jews managed to flee to other European countries that were unfortunately later invaded by the Nazis. But in England, there was a recognition that they needed to do something to help save some Jews, and so they decided they would try and save Jewish children. And so that's how the Kindertransport were organized by some organizations in England. Not by America, America didn't do anything to help.

[8:19] And one group, the Quakers, who are a form of Christians who believe in pacifism, they attempted to help as well. They are a form of Christianity, the Quakers, and they have beliefs about peace, and beliefs about helping people no matter what their religion or background is, and I believe they also helped. And so the Kindertransport were organised with various organisations in England, but I'm not sure of all the details. And I have read that the first Kindertransport mainly had Jewish children from orphanages or without parents, but I believe my German grandmother was involved in some way in helping organize the transport. And that's how my father, who was aged 16, and his 14-year-old cousin were able to be placed on the transport. So all the children left without their parents, and there were just a few adults to supervise them along the way.

Manuel:
[9:42] That is incredible, if you think about it. Your own grandparents putting you on a transport in a different country because they know you'll be safer there without you, than you would be staying with them. That's just unimaginable.

Deborah:
[9:58] To be leaving and not know when you would see your parents again ... And, of course, many children were much younger than that. My father was 16. I think you had to be under 18 to be put on the transport. So Kindertransport is important because the British ended up being able to save 10,000 Jewish children, not only from Germany but of course Austria - which had been occupied by the Germans by that time - and Czechoslovakia. And so that's a very large number of children to have saved.

Manuel:
[10:38] That's incredible. So your father arrives to Australia, of all places.

Deborah:
[10:45] No, not here. No, he arrived on ... He never would speak - like many Holocaust survivors - about it, except to say that it was fairly terrifying when they got to the border, which I think was the border between Germany and the Netherlands, and the Gestapo came on the train. And then they were put on, I assume, a boat to England, where ... that's where they arrived, in England.

Manuel:
[11:15] Okay. So they went to England ,and then he moved to Australia later in life?

Deborah:
[11:20] No, it's a little bit - it's a war story! - it's a bit complicated. My father ... There's a very good documentary called, "Into the Arms of Strangers," which we saw some time after, which shows the story of the Kindertransport children. And one of my brothers was watching it, and there was my father arriving as a 16-year-old, a few seconds clip of my father! And my father was a very keen student, and apparently he was interviewed, and all he said was that he wanted to sit his exams. So they were able to stay in England and they were placed with guardians or in orphanages or taken into British families. My German grandparents managed to escape in early 1939. But what happened was ... another bit of war history - some of your listeners will know this - that the Nazis invaded France, and the British had to be evacuated back to Britain. And then the British became afraid of these "German aliens," these Jewish refugees in Britain, and they rounded them up for transport. At that stage, they were were classified as "enemy aliens."

Manuel:
[12:58] So then from there, how did he end up in Australia?

Deborah:
[13:02] Well, he was transferred on a ship that's infamous amongst the Jewish Australians, called the Dunera, which held, obviously a lot of Jewish German refugees, but also some German soldiers. The Nazis tried to submarine it, attacked it a couple of times, but then some luggage was thrown overboard. And so they realised there were German soldiers, prisoners of war on it as well, and so they didn't attack it. My father was placed in an internment camp, but some time later the authorities realised they had these young German Jewish refugees they still called, "enemy aliens," but somewhere along the line they became, "friendly aliens." And my father was actually able to volunteer for an ... or he worked for an employment company, and he actually served in the Australian army overseas, which is how later, after the war, he ended up staying in Australia.

Manuel:
[14:05] Wow! That is an incredible history, an incredible life! And so he started a family, you're his offspring, you're the result of his life story.

Deborah:
[14:18] Yeah.

1948 German Basic Law & Eligibility Clause

Manuel:
[14:19] So maybe before we go into your personal history and your decision to get the German citizenship, can you explain how and why this became a possibility? Why is it that someone like you, who was born in Australia, is able to get German citizenship today?

Deborah:
[14:41] So the Nazis had a number of laws, which became more and more severe, so I think some German Jews and dissidents were deprived of their citizenship in 1933. My father had a much older cousin who was an editor of a left-wing newspaper, who went over the border, so to speak, in 1933, and lost his citizenship. But in 1941, the Nazis brought in what they called the 11th degree to the law on the citizenship of the Reich, where they took away the citizenship of Jews and dissidents. And it's important to say that whilst Jews were, I suppose, the largest group that was persecuted, there were the Roma, so your listeners might know them by the term, "gypsy," which we would think of as a pejorative term now to use. So they were persecuted people who were from communist or socialist background, who were also rounded up and put in camps. So the German Jews were probably not the only population that lost their citizenship, but they're probably the largest group of people that did. So my father was effectively stateless really, from 1933 to the end of the war, 1945.

Manuel:
[16:18] So he was without citizenship, and then applied for Australian citizenship at first?

Deborah:
[16:24] Yes, yes. He applied for Australian citizenship. And so when the German ... when the Basic Law, the Grundgesetz was made in 1948 ... And that would have been West German Basic Law ... I don't know if you ...

Manuel:
[16:46] Yes. Or constitution.

Deborah:
[16:48] Constitution. Do you think of it as a constitution, Manuel?

Manuel:
[16:52] Basically. It's basically our constitution, except that technically we don't have a constitution, we have a Basic Law. And I couldn't explain the exact difference or why it's technically not a constitution but a Basic Law, but that's what it is. The German constitution is called the Basic Law, and in German that would be the Grundgesetz.

Deborah:
[17:14] So I'll just read you the clause or the article in the Basic Law that enabled people in my circumstances and others to apply for German citizenship. It says: "Former German citizens who between 30th of January 1933 and the 8th of May 1945 deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds and their descendants shall on application have their citizenship restored." Which is, I think, a means ... a way that Germany was trying to provide restitution for what they had done.

Manuel:
[18:08] Yeah. And as a side note, I was actually planning on having my dad, Janusz, here because he was actually granted German citizenship under the same law. His story is very different, and so maybe it's a story for another, another episode, but this law very much helped a lot of people claim German citizenship, because their ancestors had German citizenship and then it was taken away from them by the Nazis.

Deborah:
[18:44] Yes. And at the time my family applied for citizenship in 2008 and we received it in 2009, there were some restrictions. So my eldest niece, who was 18 then, was born out of wedlock, that's to say her parents weren't married until she was two or three years old. And so when we all received our citizenship, she didn't initially, because your heritage in Germany is through your father, and not through your mother.

Manuel:
[19:21] Really? Still? Like it's not enough if your mother was German? Your dad had to be German?

Deborah:
[19:28] Yes, yes. Well, what has happened in recent times, so this was back in 2008, 2009, but in 2019 there were some restrictions that were ... the German Interior Ministry issued a couple of degrees to remove some of the restrictions. And then in 2021, there was new legislation put in place that removed that time limit of between 1933 and 1945 and also removed that old-fashioned idea of being born out of wedlock.

Manuel:
[20:04] Okay. I'm glad. I'm glad they did something about that! I was born out of wedlock. I mean, not that I need this law for anything personally, but still it seems very archaic.

Deborah:
[20:17] Well, having listened to your Easy German podcast, I'm surprised always to find out that some things in Germany are a bit old-fashioned.

Manuel:
[20:31] Yeah, strange, so strange. Okay, so they put this law in the Basic Law that made sure people who were essentially robbed of their citizenship or their descendants could get it back, which I think is great, right? It's great that we had the wisdom to put that in there.

Deborah's Decision to Apply for Citizenship

[20:54] And, I guess, how and why did you and your family start thinking about this?

Deborah:
[21:03] Well, I want to speak openly and honestly about what it means, and I'm thinking about how open and honest Jae has been about his experiences as an Afro-American in Berlin and the racism he has experienced. As a child, Manuel, I would never ever have applied for it. I could never have brought myself to apply for it. I felt so strongly about what happened to my German-Jewish family, because obviously quite a number of my relatives were murdered in the camps or died because of illness and lack of nutrition and treatment, and I felt I was always relieved that I belonged to the group that were from the victims and not the perpetrators. And so I'm a post-war child, so I'm a different generation to you. And so I felt really strongly about that.

[22:05] I didn't actually know that I was allowed to apply for German citizenship, but I know, as a young woman I would never have done it. And I was speaking to my younger brother on the weekend, and he said he was the one that suggested it after my mother died. I had thought it was my older brother, but my younger brother said it was him. And he said he'd suggested it to my mother, and she had been shocked and said, "Well, why would you do that?" And I think many people, my parents' generation just couldn't understand why you would go ahead and do that. But I can talk about why I did it for myself, and why my family did it, but also I have looked at what other people are saying, and there are some of the same feelings and reasons. So for me personally, I don't have children, so it wasn't a matter of getting citizenship for children. It was a matter of some kind of restitution, psychological, emotional restitution, acknowledgement of what was done, a reclaiming of birthright.

[23:18] That had become a really strong thing to me when my brother suggested it. For my brothers who had children, there was that element, but there was also this idea - because the children were in primary school, except for my eldest niece who was 18 - and so, there was this idea of being able to get German citizenship, an EU passport, and so for the children to be able to work easily in Europe. Because, as you may know, Australians are great travellers, and usually once they finish school and university they go travelling and they want to work in Europe. In the articles that I've looked at, there are some of the same kind of things expressed, this idea of wanting to … because quite a few people from what I've read have done it, people who are of German-Jewish descent from Israel, in England and so on. And there's this feeling of, yes, acknowledgement, restitution, and also the element of being able to have a second passport, because unlike many Germans who are only able to hold one citizenship, we can hold two citizenships.

Manuel:
[24:40] Which is about to change, hopefully, here. There's some ideas for how the whole immigration law is going to change by the current government, and one of them is to take away this requirement that you have to give up your first passport if you're applying for German citizenship, which ... There's already a lot of exceptions. For example, if you're from a country that doesn't allow you to give up your citizenship, which there are several countries around the world that will literally not let you give up your citizenship, then Germany will let you keep your second ... let you keep both passports already. But they're going to change this, hopefully - or probably - to where this is the norm, where you can apply for German citizenship and keep your original passport as well.

Deborah:
[25:28] Yes. And I think that would be welcomed by many people. And the only other thing I would want to say about why I did it, there's this sense of - and I read this elsewhere, someone else had thought this too - of a kind of ... I don't know if you know the expression, an, "Up yours!"

Manuel:
[25:48] Yeah. Up yours!

Deborah:
[25:51] Yeah. Up yours! We survived. We survived. And you think about that. I had a great-uncle by marriage who was a psychiatrist in Berlin who managed to escape, so, my great-aunt's husband, and he lived to 105. And I think: "Up yours!" Some of my ... a couple of my aunts who managed to escape, they lived to their 90s. When you think about the next generation, and the generation of my father's children and my brother's children, it's a sense of survival. And for me, that's another aspect about why I wanted German citizenship.

Manuel:
[26:36] Totally. That makes a lot of sense. In the notes that you prepared for this episode, you also wrote down, "Berliner's attitudes towards Jews."

Berliners' Attitude Towards Jews

Deborah:
[26:47] Yes, I wanted to get your point of view about - because of course I've heard and read a little bit - about the far right in Germany. And I know it's not only in Germany, obviously, far right in France ... And it makes ... I feel nervous thinking about what's the view towards Jews now?

Manuel:
[27:07] Yeah, it's a tricky question. I think I'm not qualified enough to give you any kind of answer based on research or statistical evidence or numbers. But just from what I hear on the news and in kind of the political discourse, is that, first of all, the far right that has kind of emerged in the last few decades, has been very focused on basically Islamophobia. Basically that's where a lot of that kind of hatred and discrimination and racism is focused, it's just people from an Arabic background. But I've also heard that antisemitism is on the rise again. Basically, that things had been getting better and better and better for many years, if not decades, and that now, with some infamous attacks that there have been ... there was an attack a few years ago on a synagogue that only didn't end up deadly because the door of the synagogue had a very, very strong lock and door. Basically they were prepared for this to happen and they had a security camera, and they could tell that someone with a weapon was trying to get inside. But there were other attacks on Jewish institutions.

[28:37] And overall, kind of, it doesn't feel out of control, and also, Germany, I think, is doing a lot to try to prevent anything from happening. Every synagogue, almost every Jewish institution has, basically, police stationed in front of it still. But yes, it seems like antisemitism is on the rise. I also read recently ... I read something about a band with antisemitic lyrics somehow making it into the charts at some point, just little bits and pieces here and there, where it just feels like: This isn't right. Like, why is this happening again now? So that's kind of how I think the situation presents itself in Germany. But you wrote,"Berliner's attitudes towards Jews." I think in Berlin, specifically, because this is kind of the epicenter of modern-day German politics, but also the Third Reich and the Nazi regime and everything there, and we have all of these reminders. We have a giant Holocaust Memorial, we have museums, we have the Jewish Museum. I do think that overall it's a very safe city, I hope, for Jewish people, and a city where people are welcomed, I mean, many people from Israel come to Berlin for a year or for a few months. And so I do think overall it's a place that very much welcomes people with a Jewish background.

Deborah:
[30:14] And I wanted to say, too, because I don't think I've mentioned it, my mother was not a Jewish and undertook conversion but did not complete it, so I have always grown up feeling a bit of a a bit of a Mischling, a mixture. Probably that was ... But in my upbringing, the emphasis on what happened in the Holocaust, and to my father's family, was pivotal. It was really the main aspect of my life as a child. I cannot remember a time when I didn't know of it, even if I didn't know the details. And just one other thing that might be of interest: in some of my reading in preparation for this episode, I was reading an article about descendants of German soldiers who had French mothers from the Second World War. And that was a great source of shame after the Second World War, so, French women who had children to German soldiers. But of course, I think they are also eligible to apply for German citizenship, or their descendants.

Manuel:
[31:38] That's interesting. You sent a lot of links to different resources and articles, so we will link all of those in the show notes, and you can continue reading about all of these topics.

Process for Application for German Citizenship

[31:53] So now let's get into the process. Once you made the decision to apply for German citizenship, what did that look like? What was the process? How difficult was it? What does someone who is in maybe a similar situation have to do to obtain citizenship?

Deborah:
[32:13] We have an expatriate German community here. So we have German Consulates, and my elder brother wrote to the Deputy Consul. There was a little bit of an email exchange, and then we had to fill in an application form, we had to provide evidence of my father's background. And when I looked at the evidence that we had, it wasn't a lot because, of course, a lot would have been left in Germany. But I had a family album, a Stammbuch, with official stamps of my grandparents' marriage and my father's birth, and we wrote what we knew. Because my father ended up being a soldier in the Australian Army, there were quite a few military records and records pertaining to his original name, and before he took out citizenship, and so on. But in recent times - and I've been reflecting on it - I figure that the Berlin government or the German government has quite a bit of information, because my father received restitution at some stage, post-war, for what was taken. So there must be some documents that we don't have access to that Germany has.

[33:41] And there was a program in the 1980s where Jewish German citizens were sponsored for a visit back to Berlin, and my father went back to Berlin. My brother, in talking to him, my younger brother, thought my father might have got a very small pension. I'm not sure about that, but I know that he got some form of restitution. So we put together what we had. We went along to the consulate and submitted it, and they were welcoming and helpful and not at all bureaucratic. We thought we were very German because we had everything very organized! And then we just waited. And I think it might have taken at least over nine months. I think I collapsed it in my mind to a few months But when I was looking the other day, we applied in 2008, and we didn't get our notification ... which just came by a two-line letter and said: Make an appointment and come and see us and we'll give you all your citizenship certificate! And which ...

Manuel:
[34:48] That's crazy! And so, the fact that it took so many months, either means that it is very bureaucratic and slow - just like always! - or that they really somehow thoroughly check if the whole story checks out, right? Like, what's your feeling? Is it just a matter of bureaucracy?

Deborah:
[35:05] Ah look, I should say we also obviously had to supply, I think, probably my father's ... evidence of my father's citizenship here, and we had to supply our birth certificates. And my nieces, my brother had to supply the birth certificates of their children, and so on. So we put together that sort of whole bundle and submitted it. Our meeting was only about half an hour, and then we went on our way and sort of forgot about it for a few months - because we were told it would take at least six months - until we got the letter. And all of us got citizenship, except, initially, my niece who was born out of wedlock. But then, a few months later ...

Manuel:
[35:53] That's so crazy! That's just crazy!

Deborah:
[35:55] Well, she got a letter to say that they were thinking about it, because their aim was to keep families together - the Germans' aim was to keep families together - and that was in conflict with the fact that she was initially born out of wedlock.

Manuel:
[36:08] What?!

Deborah:
[36:10] And so in the end, a few months later after us, my niece got German citizenship as well.

Manuel:
[36:15] Oh, I'm glad to hear it.

Deborah:
[36:17] And then, Manuel, about a month after I got it, I went along and applied for my passport. And as you know, you have to give a fingerprint, which we don't have to do for Australian passports, but we had to give our fingerprint, and we had to go somewhere special to get our photos taken, because the Australian passport photos ... Sorry?

Manuel:
[36:36] ... You can't smile ... Not allowed to smile on the passport photo. It's very strict rules.

Deborah:
[36:43] No, we're not allowed to in Australia either, but they said the Australian photos weren't going to be good enough. Now when I ... Ten years had passed, so I had to reapply for my passport, which I did, I think, in 2019. And now they've got ... because everything's digital, you could just turn up and they do the photos.

Manuel:
[37:04] Okay. So you went in and you got your passport. How did it feel when you actually received the passport after having done all of this and having spent your childhood and youth thinking that you would never want to be German. How did it feel to have this passport in your hand?

Deborah:
[37:27] There's a sense of pride, and being quite glad to remember my family, my German family. And I have been learning German on and off since then, because I had decided that if I'm going to have citizenship, then I should make an attempt to learn to speak the language. I should say my father wouldn't speak the language to us. So apart from using a few German expressions, and teaching us to count to 10, and singing in German - he would sing in German - he didn't want to speak to us in German. I think that was because because he wanted us to be safe, and Australian. And unfortunately, we didn't learn German as children.

Manuel:
[38:22] So you had the passport. What did you do? Did you do anything with this new, kind of - what should we call it? - this new passport, this new ... I mean, I guess now you suddenly had the opportunity to come to Germany, not just to travel, but potentially to stay here for a longer period of time. But that was never really your plan, right? You just ... What did you ... Did you do anything when you got the passport?

Deborah:
[38:49] Well yes, yeah, look, I visited Berlin in 2010 and I did a four-week German course at Goethe [Institute], and then I came back in 2011 and then in 2014. I haven't for various reasons been able to get back since, but plan to. And I'd like to come for a few months and try and improve my German, because obviously it's much easier to learn the language when you're living in the country. Yes.

Manuel:
[39:18] Of course. And what was the moment like when you arrived at the airport and you went through passport control and you presented your German passport for the first time?

Deborah:
[39:28] Well, I would have been anxious, but fortunately my older brother, he was always a step ahead of me, so he actually came in 2010 but he came and stayed for a few months. And also my niece, who probably didn't have her passport then, the eldest niece, she came and stayed with her dad. So, you kind of ... Oh, you feel a bit funny. You feel: Am I a bit of a fraud? I think because my German's a bit better now, I would feel easier. My German pronunciation is not great, but my comprehension is certainly better. And yeah, it's something, you know, when ... Well, I don't know what it's like now, post-Covid, but pre-Covid, it was so quick to go through the queue, because you arrive at some awful hour of the morning from a long flight from Australia.

Manuel:
[40:23] Mm hmm. And you don't really have to talk, like in ... I don't know, it's different in other countries, maybe. But in Germany, they really just grab your passport, take a good look at you, slide it back, and kind of wave you through, like there's not really any conversation that's happening.

Deborah:
[40:35] No, no. And, you know, it's a legit, legitimate passport. And yeah ...

Manuel:
[40:41] Yeah, you're welcomed anytime.

Searching for Your Berlin Ancestors

[40:45] So the last point that you wrote down, that I find interesting, is: Searching for your Berlin ancestors. Did you do any of that? Did you try to find any of your father's relatives?

Deborah:
[41:00] Initially, in 2010, I had a quick look, and found information about some of the relatives who had perished that I didn't know existed, that my German grandmother, who died just before my birth, had submitted to a Holocaust site in Israel. Then I discovered that my great-uncle founded a bookshop in Berlin in Bayerische Platz that's still in existence and it's going to be 100 years old, I think, in a couple of years. And then I got busy with other things. And unfortunately, my husband became ill and he died a few years ago now, in 2018. And I was working full-time. But last year, I started to look again. I suddenly thought: Ah, I've got to start looking, and I found amazing amounts of information by joining genealogical sites, looking at some Jewish sites, but also by googling, Manuel. My great-uncle, the one who owned the German bookshop, was also an author of some very esoteric philosophical work.

[42:21] And one night, I think, you know, in December or November last year, I just thought: Oh, I wonder if that's available on Amazon? And it was! Another great-uncle moved to Palestine - he left very early - and I managed, two days ago, to find his doctoral thesis. He was a doctor, but then he did a doctorate as well. And I found it, because the towns my relatives were born in were German, were Prussian, but they're now part of Poland. I found it on a Polish university site, but it's in German, of course. I've got a link to birth records from Polish sites, so I haven't had had time to look through all of those. And a couple of Saturdays ago, Manuel, I started learning Polish, because I thought I might need some of that, but I don't ...

Manuel:
[43:18] Oh my God! That is amazing! So, that's amazing that you were able to find out so much, just basically through the internet. You added a few links to our document as well, which I'll put in the show notes.

Deborah:
[43:34] Yes, can I just say for people who may not be Jewish, but have German ancestors, I was astounded to see that Berlin has address books dating back to 1874. And I think I've sent you the link to that. And then when telephone became available, also, I think telephone numbers. So it's amazing what has been kept.

Manuel:
[43:57] Yeah. I mean, I think that's... That's not a thing anymore. I very much remember being a child and the new phone book would arrive every year in the mail, and we had two big phone books: one for people, and the other one for businesses, the Yellow Pages. And nowadays it seems kind of crazy that you would have your phone number publicly printed for everybody to just look up and call you, like I don't want anybody to know my phone number. But it's great that that was a thing for so many decades and centuries almost, so that you can do this research now and hopefully try and find people.

Deborah:
[44:36] Yes, and on the Berlin site, you can find whether your family applied for restitution. That's where I found my father's name, and a couple of his relatives who survived. And they will also do a search for you. So I've got more information to find, I just haven't had time to do it. Unfortunately, too, some of the Jewish sites have the places where your relatives died, and the transports, lists of the transport, the Nazi transports that they were placed on to go to the concentration camps. I suppose ... I'm amazed that so much survived, because of Germany being so bombed. I didn't think all of those records would survive, but they have.

The Importance of Speaking With One's Family

Manuel:
[45:26] So for anyone who is in a similar situation, what would you tell them? Is there any piece of advice or anything that you learned from this journey to claiming your birthright and claiming your German citizenship?

Deborah:
[45:47] I think that people who are of German Jewish descent are probably more likely to want to do it than ... and of course, they are the ones that are eligible. I think Jews who are not from German descent may find it harder to understand. The other thing I'd say, because many of the listeners to this podcast will be young, is to ask your family all these questions now, whatever they might be. So you're probably not from a Jewish background, but when you get to my age, there'll be all these things you want to know that you never asked your family. And in Holocaust families, often you couldn't ask. There was this unwritten law: Don't ask. But there'll be all sorts of things in families that are not spoken about, but speak whilst you can. Ask your grandparents or your parents about the questions that you have, because later on they won't be around and you won't have the opportunity.