Death Camp Visitor Tries To Drop German Citizenship

Twenty-four-year-old Ludwig Kabanow from Berlin had gone to Gdansk with a group of people last week. The trip included a visit to the nearby Stutthof concentration camp, where about 65,000 people were murdered by the Nazis.

Upset by the excursion to the camp, Kabanow threw away his passport and driver's license and refused to return home with the rest of the group, according to news reports.

When he threatened to kill himself in a conversation with the owner of the bed and breakfast he was staying at, the woman contacted the police, who took him into custody for his own protection.

Communicating in English, Kabanow told police officers that he did not want to speak German again and that he did not want to return to his home country. Polish officials then explained to him that he could have stayed in the country if he hadn't thrown away his papers, according to the AP news wire.

"He was very silent," Adam Atlinski, a Gdansk police spokesman, told AP. "When he learned he would have to be deported to Germany, he just nodded."

Police officials then contacted the German consulate in Gdansk, where diplomats issued a temporary travel document for him and informed his family about his pending return to Germany, a spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry told DW-WORLD. Kabanow has since returned to Germany, AP reported.

According to German law, anyone who wants to renounce their citizenship can only do so if he or she also is a citizen of another country.