Diana Cook

Reflections on German citizenship  

Margot was 90 years old, frail and confused when said to me:

‘I must go and see my mother. She hasn’t answered my letters’.

My heart was pierced by the sudden realisation of the anguish she had carried with her all her life. On that day, things changed for me.

Margot was my mother. Of course, I always knew her story. I grew up with it.

I knew her family came from an area of eastern Germany which is now western Poland, and that her comfortable world fell apart when Hitler came to power. I knew her family were German through and through and not religious Jews. I knew that her father’s business was boycotted, and that she and her brothers were treated with contempt by their schoolteachers. I knew her mother was widowed and struggled to make ends meet, feeding and clothing five children. I knew that she started to train as a nurse at the Jewish Hospital here in Berlin when she was 17 and that she fled Germany just before war broke out. I knew that she expected to be able to send for her mother and her young brothers as soon as she was settled in England.

What I didn’t know then was that my mother’s story would become mine; my inheritance and my responsibility. A heritage which links me directly to Germany, and a responsibility to ensure that my mother’s message of tolerance and understanding towards refugees and minorities is heard by younger generations.

When I discovered I could reclaim the citizenship denied to Margot, I had no doubt it was the right thing to do. It would be a tribute to my mother, a recognition of her loss and suffering and part of the healing between our two nations. The tragedy and loss of the holocaust runs through my DNA, but I knew that modern Germany was coming to terms with the dark past and was intent on building bridges, not walls. I wanted to be part of that reconciliation.

It was 2016. My application was refused because I was born too early, before 1953 (but only just!) I was resigned to this until I became aware of Felix and Isabelle’s determination to reverse a discriminatory law. I re-applied when the door was pushed open in 2019 and, Hey presto! I am a proud dual national, with precious freedom of movement.

I didn’t know that my responsibility would be to preserve and retell my family story, and I would feel compelled tell my family story to new generations. I didn’t know I would become a guardian of information, that it would fall to me to put together the evidence, precious clues of lost lives and times, and scraps of memories from Margot to record and honour a life and a time. I didn’t know that official recognition of my heritage would help me find my legacy and my voice – to be a writer and holocaust educator, to write, to speak, to talk about real people, my family who lived, loved, and perished.

Now I am a grandmother myself, I realise how important it is that young people know about the past. When they grow up, they can all help challenge those who would prefer the world to forget, and help promote the values of inclusivity, empathy and understanding.

I now know that my family history resonates today, when millions of people are running for their lives, fleeing wars, famine, drought or oppression. Fears are stirred up talk of swarms of immigrants, poring in, invading our shores, and this atmosphere of fear and loathing fuels intolerance and the far right.

I fear the forgetting and convenient amnesia, when experiences of the Holocaust are forgotten or denied, and drift into oblivion, like so many other stories of prejudice and scapegoating. I know that by learning from history, and speaking out when faced with hatred or intolerance we can together be part of building a future with love and justice.

Margot wrote a short memoir which ends:

‘I pray that never again will conditions which allow the mass murder of innocent people be repeated. To that end, I hope for better understanding and for tolerance.’