British Jews, German Passports

The British people have spoken, and the answer is, "We're out".

As the country waits to discover how the future will unfold

after the referendum,

thousands of Brits are applying for dual nationality

to remain citizens of the EU.

Because their ancestors fled the Nazis, many British Jews

are discovering they are entitled to a German passport.

70,000 Jews came from Germany between 1933 and 1939.

Very few of them were at all interested

in applying for German citizenship until the Brexit vote.

It's a dilemma dividing the British Jewish community,

as it means reconnecting to the country associated with the trauma

of the Holocaust.

I'd never even contemplated becoming German.

Why? Why do you want that?

We kept walking on bones and broken glass wherever you walk.

The possibility of applying for a German passport is leading some

to delve deeper into their family history.

I need to go to Germany to get closure on the death of my grandparents,

and to try and help me along this path of decision-making.

In this film, we're following three British Jews as they decide whether

dual citizenship with a German passport is right for them.

To suddenly be learning about my family history,

but also reclaiming it, in a way, and becoming German,

it's very strange.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a privilege for me

to be with you today to share with you the moment

when you become citizens of the United Kingdom.

In his role as Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, retired businessman

Robert Voss awards new Brits citizenship.

He has come full circle.

His parents only became British subjects 80 years ago.

My parents both escaped Nazi Germany.

But, unfortunately, my grandparents

and other members of the family perished.

I have the option of applying for German citizenship

through my parents,

but it's something that I'm struggling to come to terms with.

When I mentioned it to some of my family they said that my late father

would turn in his grave.

Baroness Julia Neuberger is one of the country's most prominent Jews.

I support this amendment very strongly.

She's part of the rise in

British Jewish applications for German citizenship

from around 20 each year to 800 since last June.

Julia believes it is possible to reconnect to Germany

without undermining her British identity.

All four of my grandparents were born in Germany.

My mother first came in 1937 as a domestic servant to Britain.

She was fleeing the Nazis.

I'm British and proudly so.

And I'm Jewish.

I'm a passionate European.

I'm a rabbi, but I'm also a peer, a member of the House of Lords.

I have multiple identities.

I would argue most people have multiple identities, and actually,

I think it's wrong to say you can only have one identity.

Although Brexit was the trigger,

for some the actions of modern Germany

have been changing perceptions for years.

I decided to apply for a German passport for a mixture of reasons.

One was the Brexit vote,

but actually my views on Germany were changing.

I think having taken a million migrants, refugees,

Angela Merkel, obviously, recognising the nation's past,

I think that made a difference to an awful lot of us.

Come in.

So, let's go up to my study where I have quite a number of documents.

Particularly since my mother, unfortunately, passed away.

Traumatised by their own experiences,

Robert's parents did not discuss the fate of his grandparents.

To decide if he feels comfortable with German citizenship,

he wants to know how they died,

and so has been pulling together the family archive.

This is one of the only photos of my grandparents,

Alfrieda and Ferdinand together.

I'm guessing this was about the early '30s,

probably just about the time that Hitler came to power.

They look like a normal, happy couple.

Now, I understand my grandfather served in the first World War,

for Germany, of course.

They must have been, and felt, German through and through.

To the best of my knowledge,

I don't know when my father found out about the fate of his parents.

And still, to this day, we don't know exactly what happened to them.

I feel I owe them a duty to find out what happened, and if necessary,

to be able to say a prayer for them.

So this is my father's little cousin, Karla,

who was absolutely beautiful.

This photo was taken in 1929, when I would say she's probably about two.

And all it says on the back...

..is Richard's little cousin, Karla.

Killed by the Nazis.

I don't know how.

Or when.

Robert is feeling the weight

of his ancestors' tragic history on his shoulders.

Immediately after Brexit it came out that I was eligible,

because of my parents.

The one question I ask myself again and again and again is

what would my father have felt?

My initial reaction was under no circumstances.

But it's an insurance policy in case, heaven forbid,

something should happen in future.

If my grandparents had thought about this in the end of the '20s,

they would have turned around at that stage and said,

"What on earth could ever happen to us?"

Ten years, 12 years later...

..they were dead.

To find out what his father never wanted to discuss,

Robert's contacting the Wiener Library,

Britain's largest Holocaust archive,

to see if he can find out how his grandparents died.

Ferdinand Voss.

Place of birth, which I know, Monchengladbach.

And now I will submit.

Hopefully, they'll come up with some interesting answers.

Hilary Freeman, an author and agony aunt

at the Jewish Chronicle newspaper,

intends to claim her right to German citizenship.

My entire family has histories from Europe.

My mother's parents were refugees from Hitler.

Hilary is on the way to her mother's house

to explain why she wants a German passport.

I do feel a little bit conflicted, applying for a German passport,

given what, you know, the Germans did to my family.

I was brought up to regard Germany as...

..a place that wasn't a good place,

that the people there were not good people.

To qualify, she'll need to prove her heritage.

It's a difficult process for her mother.

All right, what this time?

The trains were late.

She feels uneasy about her daughter's plans.

So, you told me that you've got these documents.

Yes, but I'm wondering what is going to be in them, because Saba,

unfortunately, got rid of nearly everything,

wanting to just rid themselves of anything to do with Germany.

So do you want to see what's what?

The documents help Hilary and her mother

piece together their family tree.

Hilary's grandfather, Siegfried Baruch,

fled to Britain in 1939.

Wanting a fresh start, he changed his name to Sidney Brooke.

His mother, Hedwig, died shortly after he left Germany.

The rest of the family were deported.

-So that's Saba's mother?

-That's Saba's mother.

That's Hedwig?

That's Hedwig, but that, of course,

is with the headstone at the cemetery.

In Krefeld.

I mean, all one can say, she was spared the camps and being shot.

-Yes.

-Which is what happened to all your other grandparents.

If Hilary is to apply for a German passport,

she wants to deal with her upbringing.

You brought me up feeling very anti-German, like, even like,

you know, the idea of having a German car or a German fridge,

or going to Germany was a no-no.

That was really passed on, initially,

um... your grandparents wouldn't have anything German in the house.

They'd said you shouldn't have a German car.

Unsurprisingly, Hilary's mother is not keen on the idea

of a German passport.

I think my immediate reaction was, how on earth could you do

something when your grandparents had escaped from Germany,

which had been so vile, come here, lived here, made their lives here.

I just thought, why, of all countries,

would you want to go back there?

Across London, Robert has heard from Mary Vrabacz at the Wiener Library,

who's found some information on his grandparents.

-Hello.

-Hello, I'm Robert Voss.

Perfect. Welcome. Come right in.

Thank you very much.

Mary, I know very little about my father's family.

He never really spoke about his experiences in Germany,

about his parents in Germany.

We knew nothing as children.

-OK.

-And we didn't dare ask.

The first question is, basically, what happened to my grandparents?

We hold a copy of an archive that is actually located in Germany,

and this archive was created after the war, basically,

as the Allies came through Europe.

They gathered up whatever material they could find.

I've been able to do some research on your family,

-and let's walk through and see what we've got.

-Right.

Mary's records illustrate the development of anti-Semitism

under the Nazis.

At first, intimidation and extortion caused many to emigrate.

But some, like Robert's grandparents, refused to believe

the situation could get any worse.

By the time war broke out in 1939, those Jews still in Germany and

those now under Nazi occupation faced an even greater threat.

Jews were forced into ghettos.

There were mass killings,

and in 1941, Hitler began his plan to eradicate all the Jews of Europe,

known as the Final Solution.

Robert's grandparents, like millions across Europe,

faced deportation to the death camps.

One of the first things that I found, unfortunately,

was the transport list of when they were deported from Monchengladbach.

According to this list, they were deported on the 15th of June,

in 1942.

Sorry to interrupt, were they deported together?

They were deported together.

You can see here, this is your grandmother's name right here,

and there's her birthday.

And here's Ferdinand, right below it.

So they were together on that transport.

And the obvious next question is, what was the destination?

The destination on the original transport list is listed as Izbica,

Poland, which was a smaller town on the eastern side of Poland.

But in actuality, the train didn't make it to Izbica.

It went straight to Sobibor, which is a death camp.

And there's no known survivors from this transport, unfortunately.

Is there any way we can track

what happened to them when they got to Sobibor?

How long they stayed alive?

Unfortunately, there's no surviving records from Sobibor.

But the way that the camp was set up,

as cars arrived,

they were unloaded quickly

and people were taken straight to their death, unfortunately.

There was no facilities to hold people.

So they would have perished within a few hours of their arrival.

Julia believes modern Jews can overcome the horrors of the past

and forge new links to Germany.

She's come to the World Jewish Relief,

the organisation set up to cater for refugees fleeing the Nazis,

to see if others agree.

Harry came to Britain in 1939,

aged just seven on board the children's transport,

or Kindertransport, which saw Britain rescue 10,000 children

from Nazi territories.

He feels very strongly about reclaiming German citizenship.

I was appalled that anybody would wish to be,

to have a passport from the people who not only threw them out,

but murdered six million Jewish...

I know. A lot of people feel as you do,

even though the people who did are that longer alive.

And the people who are alive now are coming to terms with it.

-I agree...

-Hang on. I don't believe you can forgive.

The only people who can forgive are the victims, and they're dead.

But it is about a form of reconciliation.

Sure. For myself, I would certainly not wish to apply.

Why? Why do you want that?

Because I want what was taken away from my mother.

So that seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I think it's also fair to say that post-Brexit,

I want to claim my European ancestry,

because all four of my grandparents were born in Germany.

And that's quite important to me.

But the most important of all

is that Germany has, in coming to terms with its past,

been extremely generous to refugees and migrants.

And that has made me feel very, very differently about Germany.

I didn't feel like this as a younger woman. I do now.

Richard Ferber from World Jewish Relief

has seen many of these debates.

I can definitely see it both ways.

My grandma was on the Kindertransport.

And on the one hand, I'm fascinated in finding out what life was like

for her in the north of Germany in Friedrichstadt.

On the other hand, I'm appalled, because this is a country who,

political leaders in the 1930s and '40s wiped out,

not just six million Jews, of course,

but millions of people with disabilities, gay people and so on.

So I can certainly see it both ways.

British Jews who are eligible remain divided on whether the scars of the

Holocaust are too much to overcome.

Whilst applications are increasing,

numbers applying remain relatively small.

Before he decides whether or not to apply for German citizenship,

Robert wants to discover more about how his grandparents were treated.

He has come to Monchengladbach in Germany,

the town of his father's birth.

Feeling uneasy about returning, he has asked Gunter,

his father's first cousin, who fled the town in 1937, to join him.

They have come to the city archives, where Gerd Lammers has found

evidence in the city's property records

that Robert's grandparents moved address unexpectedly

just a few months before deportation.

So why would they have moved to... Is this Hindenburgstrasse?

It was a house with many Jewish persons.

-OK. So they moved from their own property...

-Indeed.

..where they lived by themselves?

-Yes. Forced.

-In February, they were forced to move

to a multi-occupancy house with many families,

before deportation in June 1942.

That you can see here -

Ferdinand Voss, and in June, 1942,

to Poland.

-Goodness me.

-We know it was Izbica.

Only we've now found out it wasn't Izbica,

-they ended up in Sobibor.

-Yes.

As Gunter knew Robert's father,

Robert is hoping he may be able to help him make his decision

about whether to apply for a German passport.

Hearing all this,

I think that would be the same nationality as the people

who did such terrible things.

What would my father have thought?

Because that's really the question I'm trying to ask myself.

For your father, it was too near in years

to go back to Germany.

But you are the next generation.

It's many years ago.

I think he would understand that you would make this choice.

Hilary has never been to Germany before.

Now keen to learn more about her heritage, she's on the trail of her

grandfather's family.

She has arrived in Krefeld, 20km north of Monchengladbach.

It feels strange to be on a street where my grandfather might have

come and might have walked down at some point.

He might even have come to this house, that's the Villa Merlander,

which is now the archive

and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Krefeld.

She has come to meet Burkhard Ostrowski,

a local historian

who's been researching her grandfather's family.

He has found that Hilary's great-grandparents met in Krefeld,

and that Hedwig Baruch died just a few weeks after

Hilary's grandfather fled to England.

Eduard was left alone.

-TRANSLATION:

-Eduard was forced into a Jewish house,

and there he met Frieda Coppel, who he married in 1941.

So they weren't together for very long at all?

No, and in October 1941,

the deportation started in Germany and in Krefeld.

They were on the second deportation to the Riga ghetto.

The Nazis told them they were going to work in the East.

The Riga ghetto was established in 1941.

It was the site of several terrible atrocities,

and Hilary's great-grandfather was among 50,000 Jews murdered

by the Nazis there before it was closed in 1943.

What happened to Frieda? Did she get shot too?

-TRANSLATION:

-She amazingly survived Riga.

But as the Russian army approached, she was forced into another

concentration camp.

So what happened to most of the people there?

Mostly, the people were murdered.

Some were sent to Auschwitz.

But we don't know exactly what happened to Frieda.

But she didn't survive.

Burkhard has a surprise for Hilary.

The town wants to commemorate her family's history.

Here in Germany we have something called the stumbling stones,

where you walk along, and can see where the Jews once lived,

to ensure they are remembered.

We've planned to place a stone next year, to commemorate Sidney,

your grandfather, and Eduard,

your great-grandfather, in front of the house where they once lived.

That's lovely, thank you.

-So there'll be a permanent memorial to them.

-Quite, yes.

Until her stone is in place,

Hilary's most tangible link to the past is somewhere in this graveyard.

Professor Michael Brocke is helping her find her great-grandmother's

final resting place.

Is it down here? I think it might be down this one.

I'm not very good at map reading.

I think it's one, two, three, four, five... Seventh.

I think it should be over there.

There.

Hedwig. This is my great-grandmother.

It looks like no-one's really looked after it for a long, long time.

I think I'd like to just clean it up a bit,

move some of the leaves out of the way.

It's really nice to have a real connection with my family.

It's incredibly sad as well.

I mean, she died in October 1939, which is just...

..a month after my grandad left Germany.

And they say, the family say, she died of a broken heart

with everything that was going on around her.

-She wasn't very old?

-The same age as I am now.

Do you mind if I just have a minute on my own, just to...

..stand here?

Please?

Robert's grandparents were deported in 1942.

He is retracing that journey to Dusseldorf,

and has asked Joachim Schroeder, a Holocaust historian, to join him.

The fate of his cousin Karla is playing on his mind.

Joachim, can I ask you, I have a picture of a beautiful young girl,

who is my...

My father's little cousin, Karla.

It says on the back, in my mother's handwriting, "Killed by the Nazis."

Do you know anything about little Karla?

Indeed, I made a research,

and I found her name also on the deportation list.

-From?

-From Dusseldorf.

-From Dusseldorf.

-And to Izbica as well.

They perhaps, stayed some weeks there, perhaps only one week,

perhaps two weeks. It's not known.

And then they were deported to Belzec, or Sobibor.

It's sure that she died...

..because nobody survived who was deported to Izbica.

So we know what happened to little Karla.

It's difficult for me...

..to get...

To get the feeling what it must be like to know you're on your way

to your death.

And looking out the window for the last time.

Really unimaginable.

Keen to discover her German history prior to the Holocaust,

Hilary has traced her family back to the town of Frechen.

To discover how deep her roots go, she's come to the city archive.

So I've learned that my great-great-grandfather Isaac Baruch

came from Frechen, so what can you tell me about my family here?

My family history?

Yes, the first Baruch who came to Frechen was Feisel Baruch.

So that's my great-great great-great-grandparents?

That's correct.

The ancestors on the mother's side -

the Levys is the oldest family in Frechen.

-Right.

-Jewish family.

-My family is the oldest Jewish family in Frechen?

-Yes.

They've been here since the 18th century?

-Yes.

-At least.

In a sad end to Robert's journey, Joachim shows him the place

Karla spent her final night in Germany.

Now a library, in 1942 it was a cattle slaughterhouse

used to gather Jews before deportation.

A memorial has been established in a side chamber.

Walter, Robert, nice to meet you.

Here, Joachim introduces Robert to a British rabbi

who now lives in Germany.

Moving from England to Germany was quite important.

My father was from Germany, a refugee in 1939, aged 16,

sent by his parents, like some of the people here.

-Exactly.

-So for me, it felt like a circle was closing.

I was offered a job in Berlin. One Walter Rothschild

had to leave Germany, another Walter Rothschild came back.

But how do you feel as a Jew living in Germany,

knowing full well, better than most people,

what happened a generation ago?

Being a rabbi in Germany, there is an enormous amount of focus on the

past and on death. I must say, there are times I can cope,

and there are times when it really gets to you.

-I'm sure.

-You are walking on bones and broken glass wherever you walk.

The only answer I can give you, although it's difficult,

is that when you study the history, no country had clean hands.

The Americans wouldn't let people in,

the British wouldn't let people in.

Some people did get in, and some were not - Kindertransports allowed,

other people were kept away.

I'm not a loyal German,

but one thing Jews have always learned from the past,

it's always important to have flexibility.

I want my children to be able to continue living where they are.

I think we need to learn from that for current refugee situations as well.

People can't help being homeless. People can't help being stateless.

My grandfather was a judge, a pillar of society,

he fought for the Kaiser in the First World War.

-As did mine, yeah.

-He lost his job in '33.

He was beaten over the head in Dachau in '38,

and he died stateless in Switzerland.

Coming back to Germany gives me the chance to rebuild a little bit.

There is no simple black and white answer.

So I'd like, now, to show you the basement of the memorial,

and we are going downstairs, the steps, where the deportees

-had to walk.

-And then, if you wish, we'll do a little ceremony,

-a little Kaddish.

-Thank you very much.

HE RECITES PRAYER

PRAYER CONTINUES

PRAYER CONTINUES

HE RECITES PRAYER

Robert is heading home to think about whether he should apply

for German citizenship.

Hilary wants to spend a final morning

in her ancestral town of Frechen.

I think my grandad would be really pleased that I've done this,

that I've seen his mother's grave, and I've seen where he came from.

Cos I think it was

always really important to him to tell us about his life here.

And he is somebody that I knew very well,

and it just makes it much more personal.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Getting a German passport, before I came to Germany,

was just purely something I was doing for kind of pragmatic reasons.

And I do feel, now that I've been here, and I've met people,

and I've seen the grave of my great-grandmother,

that does mean a lot to me now.

And I do feel a connection with Germany

in a way that I didn't before.

The people of this town, probably in a lot of places in Germany,

are so keen to make amends for what happened in the Holocaust,

and to show that they do care about the Jews and they do want to say

sorry for what happened.

It just makes me even more keen to have a German passport.

Not so much cos I want to be German,

but because I am everywhere in Europe,

I'm from everywhere.

In the two weeks since I've been back from Germany, I've been lying

awake virtually every night thinking about what I found out,

and what I'm going to do.

I certainly can never overcome my past, my history. However, it was

very interesting and inspiring to meet somebody like Joachim

and it showed me that the next generation have a desire, really,

to heal any wounds that are still left open.

I still feel as though I'm mourning.

And therefore, it would be difficult to walk in tomorrow to the

German embassy and ask to take up German nationality.

Hilary, Robert and Julia's journeys of discovery have led each to their

own conclusions. Despite seeing how some cannot accept her decision to

reconnect to Germany, Julia still wishes to reclaim citizenship.

Germans can't, if you like, get rid of guilt.

And Jews, like me, can't forgive.

But what there can be is a coming to terms,

coming to some form of reconciliation.

Hilary has begun a new relationship with Germany, thanks, in part,

to the efforts of modern Germans to commemorate the past.

I'm going to get my German passport.

And, who knows, next time I come to visit Frechen,

perhaps I'll be a German citizen.

With everything he now knows, Robert has decided to put his application

-on hold.

-I don't know whether I can ever reconnect to the country of my

heritage, a country which murdered my grandparents, little Karla,

and six million others.

It's very difficult to imagine that I could ever reconnect to Germany,

and maybe the family has now moved on,

and we are British through and through.