In June 2021, the Bundestag passed a significant reform to immigration law, granting many descendants of victims of Nazi persecution the legal right to obtain German citizenship for the first time. The scope of eligibility has been greatly expanded. Now, individuals and their descendants who were not formally stripped of their citizenship but lost it as a result of the racist and discriminatory laws of that time—or were unable to acquire German citizenship for the same reasons—are entitled to reclaim it.
Additionally, individuals affected by a former rule that prevented women married to foreign nationals from passing on their German citizenship to their children are now eligible to acquire German citizenship retroactively.
Applicants for this restitution-based naturalization process are not required to demonstrate proficiency in the German language or meet several other requirements typically associated with naturalization. Authorities recognize that those affected lost their German citizenship through no fault of their own, or, as in the case of children born to German mothers and foreign fathers, were denied citizenship due to discriminatory laws.
Despite these changes, the process remains complex for many applicants. The complex histories of displacement often make collecting, translating, and certifying the required documents a time-consuming and challenging process.