Brexit? Nein!

Oh the irony! After the incident when a certain leader of a political party suggested that some Jews have no sense of irony, let me start by reclaiming that word and illustrate it’s definition with a real paradox: that of the descendants of German Jewish refugees now seeking citizenship of the country that persecuted and murdered their antecedents.

A daily glance at the news will give even the most uninitiated the impression of chaos that Brexit has unleashed. While some repercussions such as a weakening pound, were clearly identified, it has also created societal issues.

Immediately after the referendum there were reports of discrimination against Polish and Hungarian workers, whose status after next March has been uncertain.

The decision to leave the EU has also prompted a steady stream of enquiries from the children and grandchildren of former German refugees exploring the possibility of acquiring German citizenship. Descendants from other countries where their relatives were oppressed are also exploring the possibility.

According to a report published last Friday (October 2018) there has been a significant increase in the number of applicants for German citizenship, up from just 43 in 2015 to 2,341 during the course of 2016 and 2017.

How can this be explained? Undoubtedly, most of the applicants have practicalities in mind; the right to travel easily across the EU bloc, to work, to live, to study.

For some it is a form of restitution, recovering the birthright that was forcibly revoked.

Having made the decision to apply, sometimes after much personal introspection, some are then frustrated to find they are ineligible owing to a quirk in the rules. The descendants of female refugees born before 1 April 1953 do not enjoy the same rights as those born after that date because post-war citizenship was conferred through the paternal line.

There is one further irony: one of the ways the formative AJR helped its members in the immediate post-war years was by guiding them through the process of naturalisation – to become British. And here we are, 70 years on, witnessing a role reversal that probably no one thought possible. Ironic, really.

Michael Newman, AJR Chief Executive. 23 October 2018