Czechia: At long last, German and Czech citizenship for one of ‘Winton’s children’, more than 85 years later.

Following almost three years of committed work, Hana Lisa who emigrated to England in 1939 (on a Winton train) has been granted German and Czech citizenship.

Following almost three years of committed work, Hana Lisa, born in 1935 in what was then Teplitz-Schönau in Czechoslovakia – i.e., today, the city of Teplice in the Czech Republic, who emigrated to England in 1939 (on a Winton train), has been granted German and Czech citizenship. Her family history is a reflection of 20th-century history at large, especially in Central Europe, and of the paradoxical legal situation:

Hana Lisa and Hugo Dasch were born in 1930 and 1935, respectively, into a Jewish physician’s family in Teplitz-Schönau. Their father hailed from North Bohemia, their mother from Vienna. In October 1938, after Teplitz-Schönau had been occupied by Hitler Germany as a part of so-called Sudetenland in the wake of the Munich Agreement, the family fled to Prague, but in mid-March 1939, the German Wehrmacht caught up with them. In June 1939, the parents entrusted their children to an organization ran by youthful Nicolas Winton who brought both children (then nine and four years old) to England – along with 667 additional children whose lives he saved before end of August 1939; the last train was prevented from departing from Prague when war broke out on 1 September 1939. Upon arrival in England, the children were put into the care of a foster family. However, the Dasch parents were themselves able to flee Prague toward the end of July 1939 and arrived in London in August 1939 – an astonishing feat accomplished only by very few parents of ‘Winton’s children. No less astonishing were the poise and legal cleverness of Hans Dasch, the father: at the end of August 1939, he brought an appeal, filed in London, against the decision by Czech protectorate authorities to strip the family of their protectorate citizenship, with an extremely lucid argument: the revocation of citizenship ran counter to all fundamental principles of the rule of law. According to the archival records, the appeal still had not been properly accommodated in 1943; protectorate officials at that point no longer had any rule-of-law concerns whatsoever. Immediately after the war ended, Hans Dasch filed another protest, again through the Czechoslovak embassy, against the expatriation of the entire family by Beneš Decree No. 33/1945 Coll. of 2 August 1945, invoking Sec. 2 of the Decree, and argued that the Decree could not possibly be applicable to the family, seeing as it had itself been the victim of the Nazis. By that point, the Czech communists had taken control of the Czechoslovak ministry of the interior (cynics might say that in some sense, they’ve never relinquished control since). They rejected the appeal with the remarkable argument that no exemption should be granted firstly because the family was German-speaking, and secondly because it had been part of the Jewish bourgeoisie. So much for the democratic nature of post-war Czechoslovakia before February 1948.

In 2018, the children of Hana Lisa and Hugo applied for the issuance of Czech passports in the immediate aftermath of Brexit. Entirely in keeping with the Kafkaesque tradition of Czech bureaucracy and much to their dismay, they were told they had missed a statutory deadline that had lapsed at the end of 2014. At the beginning of 2022, they filed yet another application. This time, they were informed that they were subject to the Beneš Decree. At this point, dismay turned into anger: applying this Decree to German-speaking and Hungarian-speaking survivors of the Holocaust was and is risible nonsense both historically and legally – though it is also established practice on the part of Czech officialdom. Because of this, the children, as well as Hana Lisa – who survived Hugo who’d died in the meantime – in mid-2022 filed for German citizenship pursuant to Sec. 15 Sentence 1 (2) or (4) of the German Citizenship Law (StAG), on grounds of having been excluded from the collective naturalization for those in the protectorate/Sudetenland or with permanent residence in the German Reich; the family had not previously considered taking such a step, as they had always felt that Germany had been the source of all their misfortune.

When the family loudly criticized the practice of the Czech authorities as utterly ignorant of the historic realities and presented records which it had retrieved from Czech archives, the position of Czech officialdom took an astonishing turn reminiscent of the Good Soldier Švejk: On the one hand, the authorities, including in particular the embassy in London, continued to consider the deprivation of protectorate citizenship, which was taken from the family at the end of July 1939 on grounds of their Jewish descent, to be effective – so much for the Czech protectorate authorities’ spirit of resistance (the decision to strip the family of their protectorate citizenship had not been annulled by 1943). On the other hand, however, this meant that the family had in mid-1939 become stateless. Because of this, so went the nifty argument of Czech officials, the Beneš Decree of August 1945 misses its mark: the members of this family no longer had Czechoslovak or protectorate citizenship of which the Decree could have deprived them, as they were stateless. For the same reason, the disqualification based on the Beneš Decree, contained in Sec. 31 (1) of the current Czech Act on Citizenship (Act No. 186/2013 Coll.), does not come into play. (Incidentally, this shows how the lapse of the Beneš Decree, which supposedly is no longer operative, is in fact a constitutive myth of the Czech Republic, which in this respect is living a lie.) The ultimate consequence of all this? A certificate of citizenship was issued to Hana Lisa, still alive, by the registry office (matrika) in Prague 1, in recognition of her Czech citizenship (with theoretical effect also for all her descendants).

They however did not bother: in the meantime, they had been awarded German citizenship.

Lastly, it is owed to the common sense and legal acuity of Hans Dasch that the family was ultimately able to escape the legal thicket that thrived on the vagaries of two dictatorships – though it took them more than 85 years. Unfortunately, this does not mean automatic success for all Winton’s children’s families, because not all of them will be able to prove that they lost protectorate citizenship, and because the necessary changes to current Czech law still haven’t been passed (a bill that would remedy the situation has been sitting in the chamber of deputies of Czech parliament for more than six months).

To recapitulate: for the application of Sec. 15 StAG, the Dasch case provides a precedent for Winton’s children and for many Czechoslovak citizens of Jewish origin whose mother tongue was German who managed to emigrate by 1939/1940. While the restitution of Czech citizenship is mostly impossible, because of the continued force of the Beneš Decree and because of discriminating provisions dating from 1947/49 which are still slavishly applied by the Czech ministry of the interior, naturalization pursuant to German law should as a rule be possible. This puts many families into a paradoxical position: the atonement for injustice long past is to be found, not in the Czech Republic, but – in Germany. The Dasch case is in this respect a curious exemption, as both solutions proved feasible for this particular family.

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