Germany bids to erase last traces of Nazi era as it deletes remnants of anti-Jewish legislation
Anti-Jewish laws introduced during the Third Reich are among pieces of legislation that the German government is being asked to remove from its statute books.
One such law required German Jews who did not have a “typically” Jewish name (according to a list compiled by the Reich Interior Ministry) to add a forename, “Israel” for men and “Sara” for women, in all official documents. The law, passed in 1938, came into effect in January 1939 and gave Jews one month to register their “new” name or face a prison sentence.
The Federal Antisemitism Commissioner Felix Klein found 29 statutes that had still to be deleted entirely, including many introduced under the notorious Nuremberg Laws. Although the post-War occupying powers purged the Israel/Sara law, it was never completely deleted. Describing it as “the most blatant of all”, Mr Klein said that anyone who wished to change their name in Germany, even today, was still “confronted with this antisemitic-motivated law.”
Mr Klein said that he had sent the German Bundestag a complete list of antisemitic laws still on the statute books, calling for their reformulation or deletion.
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