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On 8 May 1945, Nazi Germany’s armed forces – the Wehrmacht – surrendered unconditionally, marking the end of World War II in Europe.
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Eighty-one years later, a development that at first seems paradoxical is becoming increasingly visible: growing numbers of descendants of Holocaust survivors from Israel, the US and across the world are now applying for German citizenship.
Many had already begun the process before, but the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 have once again changed the reasons driving many of these applications.
At the same time, applicants continue to face significant bureaucratic hurdles, such as the case of Eliyahu Raful who was born in Bnei Brak.
The 37-year-old Israeli moved to Berlin in October 2020, successfully claimed German citizenship and later founded Chafetz Chayim, an organisation that helps descendants of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution navigate the application process.
Demand for the group’s support has risen steadily in recent years, he said.
A significant increase in just a few years
The figures are clear: according to Germany’s Interior Ministry, a total of 2,485 Israeli citizens were naturalised in Germany in 2021. By 2024, that number had risen to 4,275, a ministry spokesperson told Euronews. According to German tabloid Bild, the number of Israeli citizens granted German citizenship in Berlin alone reached 202 in 2024 – around three times higher than just a few years earlier.
Two legal provisions lie behind these figures. Under Article 116(2) of Germany’s Basic Law, people who were stripped of their German citizenship between 1933 and 1945 are entitled to have it restored. This right also extends to their descendants.
Since 2021, Section 15 of the Nationality Act has also applied. It covers people who never held German citizenship because, as victims of Nazi persecution, they were prevented from acquiring it in the first place. As Germany’s Federal Office of Administration explains, these claims are neither time-limited nor restricted to specific generations.
While most applications initially fell under the traditional Article 116(2) route, the new provision under Section 15 has now overtaken it. According to the Interior Ministry, 2,185 cases in 2024 were processed under Section 15.
Between legal rights and bureaucratic reality
Eliyahu Raful knows the gap between legal entitlement and bureaucratic reality from first-hand experience. When he submitted his application in Berlin in 2020, he remembered having been turned away with the remark: “How are you going to get German citizenship if you don’t speak any German?”
Descendants of victims of Nazi persecution are not required to provide a language certificate. It was only after he moved to Dresden that his application began to progress. He received his German passport in August 2023.
Raful is the founder of Chafetz Chayim, a citizenship restoration service. The company’s name roughly translates as “one who desires life”, and aims to bring together international consultants alongside German legal and archival experts.
“We help with everything, from historical research to the final administrative procedures,” Raful said. For him, Berlin is far from a random choice. “Berlin is a place that constantly forces you to redefine things,” he explained, adding that “for me, that is especially true of Jewish life. Precisely because Jewish presence here is historically not self-evident – almost paradoxical – the question of what it means to be Jewish in this place keeps resurfacing.”
A shifting trend
Raful says his clientele changed fundamentally after the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. Previously, it was mainly secular, internationally mobile Israelis who approached him.
Since then, he told Euronews, interest has spread to groups he would never have expected. “I have clients from Mea Shearim,” he said, referring to the ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem.
“In times of uncertainty, people become less ideological and more practical.” Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior emphasised the figures reflect that shift, with a spokesperson telling Euronews that the Hamas-led attacks and the subsequent developments in the Middle East had contributed to a further rise in applications.
Raful also observes a generational change. For older generations, the memory of the Holocaust was still immediate. For younger applicants, Germany today is perceived less through direct memory than through the question of future security and belonging.
“Having moved between different cultural and religious worlds myself, I understand that belonging is rarely easy. For many applicants, citizenship is not just a document, but also a way to create stability and a possible future.”
Felix Klein, the Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight against Antisemitism, sees this as an important signal.
“I consider it an enormous vote of confidence that Jews from Israel and the USA can imagine a life and a future in Germany, the former country of the perpetrators,” he said.
With Article 116 Paragraph 2, the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law have created a clear legal basis for this, “and I am very happy about that,” said Klein.
Trust instead of forgiveness?
What drives people to seek stability in the very country their families once had to flee? Raful chooses his words carefully: “I wouldn’t describe the symbolic meaning in terms of forgiveness.”
“In my view, it’s more about trust: trust that today’s Germany has learnt something essential from its history and that its legal and democratic system can offer security and a future”, he added.
Felix Klein echoed that cautious note: “I am deeply moved by the fact that descendants of Holocaust survivors are seeking protection in Germany of all places.” But, he added, the trust of Jewish people in the German state “is not something that can be taken for granted – it has to be earned anew every day.”
Klein outlined three conditions for maintaining that trust: consistent protection for Jewish and Israeli institutions, the determined prosecution of antisemitic offences and a society that does not relativise antisemitism “regardless of whether it comes from the far right, the far left, Islamist circles, or under the guise of supposed criticism of Israel.”
For applicants, transparency is the problem
For Raful, the main obstacle is not obtaining historical documents. In many cases, evidence can be sourced through archives such as the Arolsen Archives. Instead, he explained, the real problem lies in the lack of transparency surrounding the process itself.
The Federal Office of Administration emphasised that each application is examined on a case-by-case basis. Soemthing Raful agrees with and deems necessary.
From the perspective of someone who is involved in many procedures, the order in which applications are processed is often difficult to understand, he added. The real problem is less the waiting time itself than the lack of predictability. “I have cases I submitted almost three years ago and I haven’t heard anything about them yet. At the same time, I receive queries about cases that I only submitted a year ago.”
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 17,689 applications under Article 116 Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law were still pending at the Federal Office of Administration as of 1 April 2026. The ministry points to the sharp rise in the number of applications as the cause and emphasises that “considerable efforts” are being made to reduce backlogs.
Eliyahu Raful puts it this way: “If Germany sees the restoration of citizenship as part of its historical responsibility, the process should also reflect this responsibility – through greater clarity, speed and accessibility.”
German passport as a contingency plan
This trend, however, is not limited to Israel. At the German Consulate General in New York, the number of citizenship restoration applications rose from 734 in 2022 to 1,771 in 2025, according to German public news service Tagesschau.
Since summer 2024, US citizens have no longer needed permission to retain their American citizenship when naturalising in Germany, a change that has significantly lowered the barriers to applying. In many cases, the motivations differ from those of Israeli applicants. Rather than an immediate fear of war, there is often a growing unease about political developments in the US.
Raful told Euronews that among Jewish applicants from the US, the practical need for security is increasingly intertwined with a desire to belong to a Europe perceived as a more open political system. “People are not just looking for something with sentimental value,” he said.
“They are looking for stability, security and legal certainty.” At the same time, it remains almost impossible to determine how many applicants actually intend to move to Germany.
On 8 May, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation, the rising naturalisation figures represent more than a statistical trend. They tell the story of people whose families were once forced to flee Germany and who are now seeking legal security, stability and, in some cases, a new future in the country their ancestors once escaped.
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