02-08-2025
Their families fled the Nazis. Facing Trump, US Jews are making Germany ‘Plan B'
Joe Sacks, a high school science teacher in Washington, DC, has begun the process of obtaining German citizenship. He is one of hundreds of Jewish Americans looking to reclaim German citizenship after their families fled the Nazis.
"You click 'Yes, I'm Jewish' on the German form and send it to the German government,' he told NPR in an interview last month. 'It's wild.'
Among the hundreds of Jewish-American applicants seeking German citizenship, many cite practical reasons like easier travel or opportunities in Europe. Others say they want to have a 'Plan B' in today's tense political climate.
But for many, it is a decision taken with a heavy heart.
A growing trend
Trump's attempts to demonize and scapegoat segments of the population – notably immigrants, 'elite' institutions like universities as well as the media – are uncomfortable echoes of 1930s prewar Germany. His insistence on abject loyalty and taking control of state, independent and cultural institutions to serve his own ends have drawn comparisons to fascist and autocratic regimes. And more than one former Trump adviser has publicly made a Nazi salute – in one case, prompting a French far-right leader to cancel a planned US speech.
The United States is also experiencing a surge in hate crime and xenophobic speech.
"This rise of authoritarianism just parallels the rise of Hitler,' Eric Podietz, a retired, Philadelphia-based IT consultant who has applied for German citizenship, told NPR. "The squelching of speech and the academic institutions being compromised. The signs are there. It's happening."
Podietz's mother fled Germany when she was a child in the late 1930s. Like Sacks, he isn't planning to move, but is increasingly worried by the political rhetoric in the United States that he says harks back to that heard in Germany before his family was forced to flee.
At a ceremony held in July 2024 at the German consulate in New York, 82 Holocaust survivors, along with their children and grandchildren, became German citizens.
"We've seen an upward trend since 2017, when Donald Trump [first] became president,' David Gill, Germany's then consul general in New York, told the German news program Tagesschau, which covered the event.
And the numbers only continue to increase. The New York consulate received 350 applications in 2016 versus 1,500 in 2024, which resulted in 700 naturalizations, according to the German Consulate General NY Instagram account.
Streamlined procedure
The German constitution granted citizenship to former German citizens who were persecuted by the Nazis and their descendants back in 1949. But for years, difficult legal requirements prevented many applicants from taking advantage.
Some were denied German citizenship because their ancestors had adopted another nationality before their German citizenship was officially revoked. Individuals born before April 1, 1953, could only obtain citizenship if they were able to prove that their father had been stripped of German nationality – citizenship having been stripped from the mother was not enough.
Germany addressed these problems and others beginning in 2021, significantly simplifying the citizenship process. Anyone applying now can rely on proof obtained on the maternal side, and no longer need to prove they can support themselves financially. Applicants just need to prove that their ancestors were persecuted in Germany between 1933 and 1945, or that they belonged to a targeted group like Jews or Roma, political dissidents or the mentally ill.
Although the application process is free of charge, finding old documents to prove family links can be a major hurdle, said Marius Tollenaere, a partner at Frankfurt-based immigration law firm Fragomen, in comments to CNN.
The applications must also be submitted in German.
Reluctance from some families
All four of Scott Mayerowitz's grandparents were forced to flee Germany in the 1930s. He grew up in New Jersey with parents who refused to buy any German-made products or drive a German car.
The decision to apply for citizenship from the country that had caused his family so much pain was a weighty one. His mother Susan agreed to gather the necessary documents, albeit reluctantly. 'My parents must be turning over in their graves,' she told CNN.
Mayerowitz convinced his mother by pointing out the practical benefits, including the work and educational opportunities the EU could offer his own daughter. 'And finally, I said if for some reason she one day needed to flee the US for persecution, this opened up a lot more doors,' he told the network.
Arlington resident Anne Barnett had a similar experience with her mother, who was initially upset that she wanted citizenship from the country that had exterminated so much of her family.
She came around eventually, Barnett told CNN. Unfortunately, what convinced her was the increasing anti-Semitism in the United States.
Travel writer Erin Levi of Connecticut also made the move to obtain German citizenship after she found her grandfather's US alien ID card, which was stamped '1942' and had Germany as his country of citizenship. Eighty years after the end of World War II, Levi told CNN she feels safer in Germany than in other countries where anti-Semitism is on the rise.
'I think Germany has become such a strong ally and supporter of Israel. It's incredible to see the responsibility they've taken for the atrocities they committed. There aren't that many other countries that have,' she said.
Turning the Page
Steve North made the decision to apply for German citizenship in 2020 out of fear that Trump would be re-elected.
North, a writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, recalled an emotional exchange with former consul general Gill, who handed him his naturalization papers. To his surprise, Gill said that giving him his papers 'feels wonderful, because we Germans get part of our history back', North wrote for the agency.
''It reminds us how much knowledge and wisdom was lost by expelling and murdering the Jews.'
Gill went on to describe handing naturalization papers to a 97-year-old woman from Hamburg who said the process gave her closure, and of repatriating a 95-year-old man who told him, 'the Germany of today is a Germany I feel comfortable with'.
While North isn't planning on leaving the United States just yet, he is keeping his options open.
'[T]he unthinkable happened in a supposedly civilized country in modern times, and it would be foolish to disregard the possibility of history repeating itself here, given the Jew-hatred we constantly see expressed on both the extreme right and left of the American political spectrum,' he wrote.
