Spiegel Ausland1 hour agoCrime1 min readGermany

Fraud with German passports: Descendants of Nazi victims targeted

How criminals fraudulently gained German citizenship by faking their ancestry

Quick Look

A scandal involving fraudulent German passports is shaking the administration: fraudsters falsely posed as descendants of Nazi victims in order to obtain citizenship.
The SPIEGEL podcast “Eight Billion” sheds light on the background and government errors.

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Why It Matters

The Basic Law allows descendants of Nazi victims to become naturalized under certain conditions. This regulation was apparently abused through false information.

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A scandal that needs to be addressed: Apparently, a number of fraudsters managed to obtain German passports by falsely claiming to be descendants of persecuted Jews.

While the unjustified naturalizations trigger horror and outrage among the actual descendants of the Nazi victims, a central question comes into focus: Is an important article in the Basic Law being abused on a mass scale?

In this episode of "Eight Billion" host Juan Moreno talks to SPIEGEL journalists Christoph Giesen and Lukas Eberle about their research: How did Chinese criminals get a German passport? What roles did Israeli notaries play? And where did the German administration make mistakes?

Listen to the episode here:

Open Questions

How many passports were issued illegally in total?
What specific measures are the authorities taking to reverse the transaction?