Hannah Arendt: Voice for the Stateless

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), known as a political theorist, was transfixed with the role of the state inprotecting the rights of its citizens. She herself was a stateless person for eighteen years, after theGerman government in the Nuremberg Laws (1935), stripped citizenship from “superfluous peoples.” Shealso saw that in Europe during the Second World War, where the government remained in tact after theNazis invaded, how governments responded — and the fate of the stateless. Only “stateless Jews” not“French Jews” were deported from France. After Germany invaded Holland in May 1940, the Dutchgovernment fled to England and this made “superfluous peoples” vulnerable. The Nazis deported onehundred four thousand, with only about five thousand surviving. Anne Frank (1929-1945), herselfstateless, Holland’s most famous deportee, perished in Bergen-Belsen two weeks before the Britishliberated it. In Denmark the king not only remained in power but he refused to cooperate with the Nazigenocide machine and so it ground to a halt — all but eighty of Denmark’s seventy-five hundred Jewssurvived. The state protects its citizens, period. This inspired Hannah Arendt to articulate some of herfundamental ideas of human rights’ protections. Today, with estimates of twenty-six million refugeesworldwide, w ho w ill e nsure t heir r ights? M any h ave r eturned t o H annah A rendt’s w riting o ut o frecognition the dispossessed require greater protection