The Dusseldorf public prosecutor’s office is investigating 32 people, many of them Chinese, said to have posed as descendants of Jewish victims of the Nazis in order to fraudulently obtain German citizenship, the news magazine Der Spiegel has reported.
The fraud involves people claiming to be descendants of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, with falsified documents and biographical information being submitted to the Federal Office of Administration in Cologne.
The legal mechanism that makes this possible is Article 116(2) of Germany’s Basic Law, which provides for the restoration of German citizenship to former German citizens whose citizenship was stripped between January 30, 1933, and May 8, 1945, for political, racial or religious reasons, and to their descendants.
Der Spiegel details one specific example involving Chinese national Liu H., reportedly the subject of an international manhunt on suspicion of kidnapping and murder.
According to the magazine, Liu H. orchestrated various schemes to evade Chinese justice, including adopting new biographies, inventing names, and traveling under false identities. In 2024, Liu H. obtained German nationality under the name Derrick Wong, and subsequently obtained a passport.
How did Liu H. successfully obtain a passport?
According to Der Spiegel, he stated in his application that he was a grandson of Karl Siegfried and Gertraud Suesskind, who fled Germany to what was then British Mandatory Palestine. Liu H. is not one of their descendants.
Another Chinese national, Tian C., living in London, is also said to have unlawfully obtained a German passport by claiming descent from the same Siegfried-Suesskind couple.
The Dusseldorf public prosecutor’s office and the BKA (Germany’s FBI) are said to have been working on the case for about a year now.
According to the report, around 30 Chinese nationals are being investigated. Many of them are well-known, and some face allegations of serious crimes and have been the subject of international manhunts.
Der Spiegel noted that German citizenship cannot be revoked easily, and that an unlawful naturalization can only be withdrawn within 10 years.
All the suspects are said to live abroad, meaning that German investigators cannot easily bring them in for questioning. The accused are said to now live in Cyprus, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. In about half of the cases, German citizenship is said to have already been granted.
The Jerusalem Post reached out to the Dusseldorf public prosecutor’s office for confirmation of the report.