← back to glossary ← back to glossary

Jewish quota refugees

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Jewish migrants moved first to the GDR and later to the reunified German state. This was initially based on a law the GDR, which was later applied in reunified Germany as well. On 9 January 1991, the federal states’ Prime Minister Conference decided to apply the law on quota refugees to Jewish migrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union. This enabled people who were considered to be Jewish in the former Soviet Union as well as people who were in possession of rabbinical documents and their children to receive a permanent residence and work permit in Germany. With this law, more than 200,000 people migrated to Germany until the early 2000s.