Yes, they would initially say all is okay. once she pulls the Syrian passport they say: Sorry, we can't open the account.

if any one is in berlin and can guide me to a bank that won't mind opening an account for a Syrian citizen, I would really appreciate it.

Sadly, this was not the only case we encounter, you can read about a similar story happened to my family here :

http://nidalalhariri.com/post/55999109847/airbnb-racism-how-...

I'm not German, but I know from experience how many will not call you back if you just have a foreign sounding name. I really thought banks would be different though, I guess there must be many Syrian people in Germany and they all need bank accounts. I would guess that there are some organization for immigrants or even some for Syrian immigrants in Germany, and they could probably help you out with some recommendations.

Are you sure the issue is racism and not due to sanctions that a US based company has to follow (and possibly may not be well defined)?

in that case, doesn't a genuine customer at least deserve an explanation ?

especially that the account was verified and active for weeks, with a valid credit card and all supporting documents (passport etc ..)

I got rejected many times from paypal, 2co, rackspace etc .. but they used to explain the reasons like "we can't deal with syrian citizens" or "you are from a sanctioned country" etc ..

maybe I shouldn't call it racism, But I'm not a native english speaker, and I don't know what should it be called when you are treated differently for being accidentally born in a different region.

They don't know whether you are some regular person just trying to live your life, or some supporter of the sanctioned regime trying to protect ill-gotten gains by moving them out of the country. Unfortunately the latter is a frequent occurrence in military conflicts. The problem is that they don't really have the cultural or social context to judge which sort of Syrian person you are.

The best idea I can come up with offhand is consider a closer but wealthier and more stable country as an intermediate destination, such as Turkey or Dubai, but I realize that's not very helpful.

It's less risky to not to provide an explanation than provide the one that will blow up in your face in court.

Yes indeed ! that's exactly what I think it is.