Frank,

I have seen many post-WW11 refugee passenger manifests where the refugees are listed as stateless.

Perhaps someone else with in depth knowledge of the stateless issue can post here.

Also, I was thinking that if Ladislav's father naturalized in The U.S. while Ladislav was of minor age than Ladislav would have become a U.S. citizen, even if living outside of The U.S.

But, that would not explain his statelessness.

Have you found Ladislav's father's naturalization papers?  You may be able to find them at www.familysearch.org

Good luck in your search,

Sherri Bobish

Searching: RATOWSKY / CHAIMSON (Ariogala / Ragola, Lith.)
WALTZMAN / WALZMAN (Ustrzyki Dolne / Istryker, Pol.)
LEVY (Tyrawa Woloska, Pol.)
LEFFENFELD / LEFENFELD / FINK, KALTER (Daliowa/ Posada Jasliska, Pol.)
BOJDA / BERGER (Tarnobrzeg, Pol.)
SOKALSKY / SOLON / SOLAN / FINGER(MAN) (Grodek, Bialystok, Pol.)
BOBISH / APPEL (Odessa?)

Hi Frank,

I'm not sure if there was a specific rule/law to declare Jews stateless in Czechoslovakia based on a parent's emigration to the US. However, I'll tell you want happened with my maternal grandparents, which may provide a clue.

My grandfather left Czechoslovakia in 1922 to establish himself in America. He obtained his US citizenship in December 1927, returned to Czechoslovakia and married my grandmother in Rosvigovo, a suburb of Munkacs, in November 1928. My grandparents planned to come to the US after the wedding, but the Czech government would not give my grandmother a passport. Their reasoning was that since she married a US citizen, she was no longer a Czech citizen. To the best of my knowledge this had nothing to do with her being Jewish. Anyway, they found a lawyer/notary in Prague who provided my grandmother with a document she could use in lieu of a passport (I have that document). They arrived in New York in March 1929.

Based on what happened to my grandmother, I'm wondering if, during your uncle's attempts to get a passport, the Czech government determined that his father was now a US citizen, which in their eyes, and possibly a rule/law, voided your uncle's Czech citizenship (now being the son of a US citizen). Just a thought.

Regards,

Mark Resnicoff

I have seen a lot of citizenship problems in police papers found in the Czech National Archives. It seems it was a tricky situation.

Austro-Hungarian citizenship based on "home rights" in a certain community. The Austrian law -- No. 103 from December 1863 -- stated that a woman lost her original home rights and took on those of the husband with marriage. That explains the situation of Mr. Resnicoff's grandparents. Conversely, the U.S. probably did not automatically issue citizenship to the wife just because she married a U.S. citizen. According to the Austrian Law No. 105 of 3 December 1863, paragraph 19, on which Czechoslovak law later based, Mr. Weinberger should have been designated as having "home rights" in the place of his birth after becoming homeless due to his father's emigration. Why that didn't happen, I don't know. Unless it had to do with the change with the break-up of Austiria-Hungary in 1918.

In the 1920 Czechoslovak citizenship law, ethnically non-Czech and non-Slovak people with home rights on the territory of what became Czechoslovakia were supposed to opt for Czechoslovak or another/their former citizenship. If they failed to do so, then they could became stateless.

However, statelessness was only really problematic when it came time to travel outside the country. In day to day life, it made little difference. If Mr. Weinberger did not opt, then it was not a great problem in a practical sense during the Republic. All of that became a nasty problem, however, after the Sudetenland crisis, and I've seen many examples of the Czechoslovak authorities acting arbitrarily to the detriment of non ethnically Czech/Slovak, especially German-speaking people/citizens and Jews in that period (Sept. 1938-March 1939). Many Jews with Czechoslovak citizenship fled the Sudeten region in peril of their lives with the Nazi takeover and the central authorities were very reluctant to allow them in or to allow them to stay.

That became worse after March 1939 with the Nazi invasion. Whoever didn't have their papers in order and didn't get out somehow very soon, by May, June 1939 could be in real trouble. The bureaucratic hurdles made it almost impossible, and many ended up in the camps and murdered for that very reason.

Rick Pinard, Prague

As I understand it, statelessness implies that you have lost your
citizenship without being acknowledged as a citizen of another state,
wherever in Europe you were born, and citizenship is confirmed by a
passport. In my family's case, my parents destroyed the German
passports that had taken us to England after England declared war on
Germany in 1939. We were told that we were therefore not German, but
stateless. Looking at my father's internment record, I see that in any
case the family's German passports expired in 1940. Some months later,
in order to be able to emigrate further to USA, my mother was issued
with a travel document which acted only as a one-way passport and did
not confer British citizenship on her (a passport she never used). Only
after WW2 was over were we able to obtain British citizenship by
naturalisation.
Eva Lawrence
St Albans, UK.
--
Eva Lawrence
St Albans, UK.

Destroying your passport does not cancel your citizenship. Rather, according to the decree of 25 Nov. 1941, German Jews lost their German citizenship when living or moving abroad. 
--
Andreas Schwab, Montreal, Canada

Mark,

If your gf naturalized in 1927 than your gm did not automatically become a U.S. citizen.  Even if they had both been living in The U.S. at that time, she would have to apply for citizenship separately.  If he naturalized prior to 1922 it would have been different.

Of course,  the Czech government may or may not have known about the change in U.S. naturalization law, or just may not have cared.

Regards,

Sherri Bobish