Staatenlose Status for Eastern European Jews Naturalized Since War

Eastern European Jews who will be deprived of their citizenship in the Reich if they were naturalized since the World War, in accordance with a recent Government decree will be given the status of Staatenlose (men without citizenship in any country) according to an official explanation issued here yesterday by the Government.

The announcement of this was accompanied by estimates that 10,300 Eastern European Jews had been naturalized in Prussia alone from 1922 until this year. The total number for Prussia, according to the official estimate, from 1919 to 1931, reaches 15,500. This does not include the members of the families of the individuals affected by the citizenship decree.

WEEDING OUT PROCESS

A strict examination of the lists of all those who obtained citizenship since the war, it was announced, is already under way with the purpose of weeding out the “undesirables” for cancellation of their papers. No appeals from the decisions reached in this examination will be accepted.

The process of withdrawing citizenship from Jews who have been naturalized in the Reich, has already been started and several who are residents of Berlin have had to surrender their passports to the political police, receiving in return, Nansen, League of Nations passports.

According to the decree, this process of withdrawing citizenship can continue until July 15, 1935, by which time, it is hoped, the authorities will have had sufficient time for a thorough “cleansing” of the Reich’s citizenship lists.

Commenting on the decree and the Government view, Ministerial Director Herr Hering, on behalf of the Government, explained that it was necessary in order “to make the German nation clean.”

“The naturalization laws in the past fourteen years,” he asserted, “have suffered from a laxity which enabled a large number of Eastern European Jews to become a part of the German body, although they are a foreign body.”