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British Jews apply for German nationality as Brexit looms

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AP Berlin
Last Updated : Jan 29 2019 | 3:56 PM IST

Simon Wallfisch grew up in London as the grandson of an Auschwitz survivor who swore to never return to the country that murdered her parents and 6 million other Jews.

But more than 70 years after the Holocaust, Brexit has prompted Wallfisch and thousands of other Jews in Britain to apply for German citizenship, which was stripped from their ancestors by the Nazis during the Third Reich.

"This disaster that we call Brexit has led to me just finding a way to secure my future and my children's future," said Wallfisch, 36, a well-known classical singer and cellist who received his German passport in October.

"In order to remain European I've taken the European citizenship."
"I feel somehow in a strange way triumphant. Something is coming full circle."
"I feel an aliveness here (in Berlin) that I have not experienced before, but it totally makes sense because after all I am German," Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch said. She added that if the country behind the Holocaust is now one that welcomes the descendants of the victims, "that's a good thing."

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First Published: Jan 29 2019 | 3:56 PM IST

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