LONDON — From backstop to Brexiteer, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, now scheduled for March 29, has spawned a baffling array of new terms.

The AP deciphers some key words and phrases:

Article 50

Article 50 of the European Union’s key Lisbon Treaty sets out the procedure for a country wishing to leave the bloc and imposes a two-year countdown to that country’s departure. Britain triggered the process on March 29, 2017, meaning the U.K. will cease to be an EU member on March 29, 2019.

Backstop

The Brexit backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement between the EU and Britain. It’s an insurance policy designed to ensure there are no customs checks or other border infrastructure between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit. The backstop says if no other solution is found, Britain will remain in a customs union with the EU in order to keep the Irish border open. Opposition to the backstop from pro-Brexit British lawmakers is a major hurdle to securing a divorce deal.

Brexit

A contraction of “British exit,” Brexit is Britain’s departure from the European Union. The U.K. joined the bloc in 1973, and held a 2016 referendum on its membership that was won by the “leave” side.

Brexiter / Brexiteer

A supporter of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Brextremist

Pejorative term for a Brexit supporter.

Brextension

Brexit extension, a delay to Britain’s exit from the EU. Some U.K. lawmakers advocate postponing Brexit so that Britain’s feuding politicians can agree on a way forward. A delay would require EU approval.

Brino

Brexit in name only: a pejorative term for a “soft Brexit” departure in which Britain retains close economic and regulatory ties with the European Union.

Citizens’ Assembly

A gathering of people, chosen to represent the population as a whole, tasked with studying an important national issue and offering conclusions. Some politicians think it could be a way out of Britain’s Brexit impasse.

Customs Union

The European Union customs union makes the 28-nation bloc a single customs territory, with no tariffs or border checks on goods moving between member states. It also has common tariffs on goods entering the bloc from the outside.

European Union

Formed in 1957 as the European Economic Community by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands, the group is now a 28-nation bloc of more than 500 million people with substantial powers over member nations’ laws, economies and social policies.

Hard Brexit

A Brexit that sees the U.K. cut many of its ties with the EU, including leaving the EU’s vast single market and customs union. Some supporters of the idea prefer the term “clean Brexit,” and say it will enable Britain to forge its own new trade deals around the world.

Leaver

A Briton who voted to leave the European Union. See also Brexiteer.

No-Deal Brexit

If Britain and the EU do not finalize a divorce deal, Britain will cease to be an EU member on March 29 without an agreement setting out what happens next. A no-deal Brexit would see the rules that govern ties between the U.K. and the EU end on a certain day. Many businesses say that would cause economic chaos.

Remainer

A Briton who voted to stay in the European Union.

Remoaner / Remaniac

Pejorative terms for people who want the U.K. to remain in the EU.

Single Market

The EU’s single market makes the bloc a common economic zone in which goods and services can move freely with no internal borders or barriers.

Soft Market

A Brexit that sees the U.K. retain its close economic ties with the EU, including membership in the bloc’s single market and customs union.

Withdrawal Agreement / Political Declaration

In November 2018, Britain and the EU struck a two-part divorce agreement. It consists of a legally binding, 585-page withdrawal agreement setting out the terms of the U.K.’s departure, and a shorter, non-binding political declaration committing the two parties to close future ties. The agreement must be approved by the British and European parliaments to take effect.

BERLIN — Simon Wallfisch grew up in London as the grandson of an Auschwitz survivor who had sworn to never return to the country that murdered her parents and 6 million other Jews.

But more than 70 years after the Holocaust, Brexit has prompted Wallfisch and thousands of other Jews in Britain to apply for German citizenship, which was stripped from their ancestors by the Nazis during the Third Reich.

“This disaster that we call Brexit has led to me just finding a way to secure my future and my children’s future,” said Wallfisch, 36, a well-known classical singer and cellist who received his German passport in October. “In order to remain European I’ve taken the European citizenship.”

Britons holding dual citizenship from an EU country like Germany will retain the privilege of free movement and work across the soon-to-be 27-nation bloc.

Many Britons whose ancestors came from other parts of Europe have been claiming citizenship in other EU member states so they can keep ties to the continent. But for Jews whose families fled Germany to escape the Nazis, the decision has meant re-examining long-held beliefs about the country.

The German Embassy in London says it has received more than 3,380 citizenship applications since the Brexit referendum in June 2016 under article 116 of the German Constitution, which allows the descendants of people persecuted by the Nazis to regain the citizenship that was removed between 1933 and 1945.

In comparison, only around 20 such requests were made annually in the years before Brexit.

Wallfisch’s grandmother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was 18 in December 1943 when she was deported to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland where more than 1 million Jews were murdered.

She survived because she was a member of the camp’s girls’ orchestra. As a cellist, she had to play classical music while other Jews were taken to the gas chambers.

In November 1944, she was taken to Bergen-Belsen – the concentration camp where diarist Anne Frank died after also being transferred from Auschwitz at about the same time – where she was eventually liberated by the British army in April 1945.

Lasker-Wallfisch immigrated to Britain in 1946, got married and had two children. Her career as a famous cello player took her around the world, but it took decades until she overcame her hatred enough to set foot on German soil again in the 1990s.

In recent years, Lasker-Wallfisch, 93, has become a regular visitor, educating children in Germany about the Holocaust and speaking last year during the German parliament’s annual Holocaust memorial event.

On Sunday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Lasker-Wallfisch, her grandson Simon and her daughter Maya Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch performed for the first time together on stage at the Jewish Museum Berlin in commemoration of their family. They played music with other members of their extended family and read letters from the past as a tribute to those who survived and those who perished in the Shoah.

Before the show, the three generations sat together on the red couch in the museum’s dressing room and told The Associated Press about the emotional thoughts that went into the younger two’s decision to take German citizenship.

“We cannot be victims of our past. We have to have some hope for change,” said Maya Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch, a 60-year-old London psychotherapist who is Simon’s aunt and is still waiting on her German citizenship to be approved. “I feel somehow in a strange way triumphant. Something is coming full circle.”

More than just retaining the ability to travel easily or maintain business ties, Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch said there are other, more emotional reasons to acquiring German citizenship, with Britain due to leave the European Union on March 29.

“I feel an aliveness here (in Berlin) that I have not experienced before, but it totally makes sense because after all I am German,” Jacobs Lasker-Wallfisch said. She added that if the country behind the Holocaust is now one that welcomes the descendants of the victims, “that’s a good thing.”

But Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, remained skeptical and pessimistic.

“Jewish people never feel secure,” she said to her daughter and grandson, reminding them of her own past. “I had German nationality – it did not buy me security.”

Story: Kirsten Grieshaber