In New England, Number Of Jews Applying For German Citizenship Quadruples
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink April 28, 2017
The number of Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors who have applied for German citizenship has nearly quadrupled this year in the part of the United States served by Germany’s Boston consulate, radio station WBUR reported Thursday.
Consul general Ralf Horlemann told the station that 49 people had received dual citizenship in the first quarter of 2017 through a law that supplies those rights to descendants of people whose citizenships were revoked under Nazi rule. Only 13 received such status in the same period last year.
Larry Klein of Newton, Mass. told WBUR that the advantages of such a move go beyond receiving a European Union passport, which would make traveling on the continent much easier.
“The tone of this country at this point in time is disturbing,” he said. “A country like Germany which, you know, has this history that obviously my family’s well aware of, espouses the beliefs and philosophy that actually is the way I’d like a country to behave. So, things come around in very interesting ways.”
Demand for German citizenship has grown so great that Horlemann has created formal naturalization ceremonies, rather than just having recipients pick up their papers at the consulate office.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
