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-...

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.

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.