Country pursuits: Steven Burkeman finds citizenship

‘The date of the fire was 9 November, 1938 – Kristallnacht.’

by Steven Burkeman 26th May 2023

From a safe distance, a fourteen-year-old girl, with her mother and stepfather, watched in horror as her place of worship burned down. Someone had called the fire brigade, but the firefighters stood by (though they made sure the flames didn’t spread to any neighbouring buildings). Many years later – this year, in fact – a man, accompanied by his wife, signed a form at the German Embassy in Belgravia. I’m the man, and the girl was my mother. The burning building was her synagogue in Berlin. The date of the fire was 9 November 1938 – Kristallnacht, ‘the night of the broken glass’. It was the signal to many hitherto-patriotic German Jews that the time had come, if it were possible, to leave home and find somewhere they might be safe from the Nazis.

So, in February 1939, my mother, still with her mother and stepfather, sailed from Hamburg to the UK. She was one of the lucky ones: the trio escaped as a family, though they had to leave a much-loved grandmother behind (she subsequently perished in Terezin concentration camp, near Prague). A few years later, my mum met my British dad. In 1948, I was born.

My wife and I now have two children, and three grandchildren. Following Brexit, they’re no longer citizens of the European Union. Among other consequences, they will be denied the opportunity to work or study in European countries other than the UK (I insist that we in the UK are still part of Europe, even though we’re not, for the time being, in the EU). The German government has offered to ‘renaturalise’ those victims of Nazi persecution who were forcibly deprived of their German nationality, along with their descendants. As you see, that applies to me – my children and grandchildren and I are entitled to reclaim the citizenship denied to my mother.

It’s not a process to be undertaken lightly. Extensive documentation is required – birth certificates and so on. I then had to travel to a village outside Leeds to meet the honorary consul, so he could certify some of the paperwork. Finally, it was all submitted to the Embassy in London, from where it was sent to Germany. After a further long wait, I was informed that our naturalisation certificates were ready.

This is how Jane and I fetched up in Belgravia a few weeks ago. The very kind young woman who dealt with us chatted for half an hour, talking about the circumstances which had entitled me to reclaim citizenship. She told us that, before Brexit, the Embassy was dealing with approximately thirty applications a year from people in my position. Since Brexit, it’s around 2,000 a year.

Theresa May once said ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere’. There are quite a few of us now – many more reclaiming Irish citizenship – who are sinfully-proud to be able to reassert that we are indeed citizens of the world. It does feel rather strange to be a citizen of Europe again, but also rather wonderful.

I never told my mother what I was doing. She died, aged ninety-six, while I was working on it. I’m not sure she would have understood.

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