In 2016, the film-maker Jake Auerbach applied for German citizenship, a move that was at once straightforward and deeply complicated. His father, the artist Frank Auerbach, had left Berlin in 1939 as a boy, one of six Jewish children who were sponsored to travel to Britain by the writer Iris Origo, and as a consequence, it seemed likely that Jake would get a new passport. But this had to be set against the fact that after saying goodbye to them, Frank never saw his parents again.
