Originally Posted by
Aviatrix
I think we may be getting mixed up between two cases now... jugnage's father, and JoostvD's friend.
jugnage's's father was born in Germany, in 1941, to Polish parents who - reading between the lines - were living in Germany as forced labourers. He had German citizenship when he arrived in the USA in 1947. How he acquired German citizenship when his parents' were not German is an interesting question, but he did. (There was no German state in 1947... who would have been responsible for issuing travel documents to German residents at that time?)
JoostvD's's friend was born in South Africa to German Jewish parents who left Germany in 1939. His case appears to be identical to several cases I know of people who were able to acquire German citizenship because their parents were victims of Nazi persecution. JoostvD's, I'm afraid I don't have any web links - this is just something I've always known, ever since I was a child (long before the Internet was invented!) as I have always known people who were in that situation.
It is always difficult if you do not have the facts.
I understood that
jugnage's's father was born in Germany. His grandparents may well have been Polish, however, they may have been of German origin because plenty of Germans were forced to become Polish after WW1. This might explain his German citizenship. And of course there was a German state in 1947. The Deutsche Reich never seized to exist. It was controlled by the four powers, however, it still was Germany. So this does not constitute a problem at all.
I understood that
JoostvD's's had grandparents with a passport from the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian empire and lived in Germany. This does neither make them nor him - despite his parents being bron in Berlin - German.
This is more than complicated and you need the full set of facts. Just an example: A good old friend of mine was born 1916 in the so called "Sudetenland" as a son to an Austrain-German father and an Austrian Hungarian mother, both Jewish. He fought in WW2 with the Czech resistance and emigrated to the UK in 1968. At the end of his life he had Austrian, Hungarian, German, Czech, UK und Israeli passports.