Life is Waiting…

Remember the predicaments of Tom Hanks’ character Viktor Navorski in The Terminal? After a coup in his East European country Krakozhia, Navorski wasn’t allowed to arrive or depart JFK airport until his formal status had been determined, and meanwhile was to remain stationary, unable to participate in society, in the comparable legal quagmire of a stateless person in no man’s land.

The real story is happening with Igor Skrijevski (51) and Galina Skrijevskaia (49), who fled to the United States from what was in 1990 still the Soviet Union. Lawful stay in the US was eventually denied, but meanwhile the USSR they left behind ceased to exist and the couple proved unable to be deported back to this country that had now disappeared. An uphill struggle with bureaucracy for recognition and admittance followed, ultimately continuing to this day from that ill-defined legal space in between countries where stateless persons are relegated to. They’ve been passing time in waiting rooms like airports, holding cells, and asylum centres; the non-places where non-persons often end up. After being sent to Ukraine, which in its turn tried to return them, they became stranded in the Netherlands. Sitting in waiting, now nearly eight years ‘delayed’.

The legal perspective

Regardless of possibly violated US obligations (e.g. under the HRC’s understanding of a person’s right to enter his ‘own country’ under Article 12(4) ICCPR), the pertinent question is what the country where the Skrijevskis currently are ought to do with them. This question became most pressing after the Netherlands rejected their asylum claims and moved to expel them under the EU-Ukraine readmission agreement – a move which the highest Dutch appeals court for such decisions found unobjectionable.

One expects to find answers in the 1954 Convention which aims to protect stateless people. While it does offer the Skrijevskis some important rights as administrative assistance and identity papers, many are conditional upon lawful stay, such as access to the labour market, social security, travel documents, and protection from expulsion. Yet at the moment there is no obligation to grant lawful stay. Although implementation of a determination procedure would briefly help (see paragraph 20, UNHCR Guideline #2), without a corresponding right of residence for verified stateless persons little would improve. The UNHCR therefore recommends a (temporary) residence permit as good practice – echoed by the UN Secretary-General – unless protection is realistically available elsewhere or when statelessness results from voluntary renunciation as a matter of convenience or choice (Guideline #3). These two exceptions could be called the ‘alternative’ and ‘unwilling’ obstacles to residency. In the first exception a transitory arrangement is appropriate, in the second involuntary return would not be ruled out. However, the UNHCR narrowly interprets voluntary renunciation and distinguishes this from the ‘loss of nationality through failure to comply with formalities, including where the individual is aware of the relevant requirements and still chooses to ignore them’ (paragraph 44 and accompanying footnote, Guideline #1). By the many references to the couple’s personal responsibility and their uncooperativeness in obtaining Ukrainian nationality, choosing to give up a nationality or choosing to refuse one, passively or actively, might be the same in the eyes of the Netherlands (or the UK, cf. Al-Jedda). Both exceptions would then apply. In their defence, after almost sixteen years of working and living in New York they understandably feel American. Their business and social life is there. They also connect Ukraine with the place they fled from persecutions. Lastly, it’s conceivable that they’ve been advised to remain stateless in order to increase their chances of gaining readmission to the US.

The Skrijevkis expose an uncomfortable challenge in addressing statelessness. Can people choose to become or remain unnecessarily stateless, and if so, are States justified in attaching the consequence of withholding certain rights? Does the right to have a nationality mean there’s no obligation to have one, just like the right to health doesn’t mean one can’t choose to live unhealthy? Here is not the place to go into this in detail, but in short I think the answer to the last question should be no. The reasoning in Pretty v UK can be applied whereby the right to life emphasises a State’s obligation to protect it, rather than an individual’s discretion to reject it – the same could be true for nationality.

A short comment is warranted on other possible obligations aside from those under the Statelessness Conventions. In DCI v the Netherlands, the European Committee of Social Rights held that foreign children are entitled to certain rights under the Revised European Social Charter, whatever their residence status, hence despite the exclusion clause in the Appendix, paragraph 1 to such effect. In CEC v the Netherlands, the right to food, clothing and shelter are now being invoked for undocumented adults. If the claim is upheld, it could bring such rights into reach for stateless persons. Although they receive separate treatment in paragraph 3, excluding them when the lawful residence requirement would be waived for aliens is hardly tenable in light of the 1954 Convention’s core principle, codified in Article 7, which prohibits treating stateless persons worse than foreigners who do possess a nationality. Especially when the second requirement of belonging to contracting Parties is also ignored, perhaps because of the progressive insight that fundamental human rights shouldn’t be based on reciprocity. Whether stateless persons could benefit from the Charter remains to be seen though.

Finally, an important question remains as to what sort of protection the ECHR obliges States to provide. In this regard, a potentially important case now pending is Dabetić v Italy. Dabetić became stateless after Yugoslavia dissolved and his nationality was ‘erased’. His complaint was previously declared inadmissible in Kurić v Slovenia for not exhausting domestic remedies, because in the Court’s view he had failed to express any wish to reside in Slovenia. His presumed unwillingness to obtain a solution elsewhere makes the case nearly identical to the Skrijevskis. If the Court will find Italy in breach of (any of) Articles 6, 8, 13 and 14 ECHR, by withholding statelessness status, a (temporary) residency permit and the more favourable treatment provided to refugees, it will have significant consequences for Dutch obligations. It will be interesting whether the Court could clear the ‘alternative’ and ‘unwilling’ obstacles through independent operation of ECHR standards.

Address unknown

In 2011, a Dutch television programme organised a protest at the Skrijevskis’ behest at the US embassy in The Hague. While the reporter saw his ambitions and patience run into a bureaucratic wall, Igor and Galina stood by carrying signs with ‘return to sender’. Standing in waiting, with quiet accusation in their defeated looks. Igor and Galina are among more than ten million persons frequently treated by States as undeliverable parcels, attempted to be sent back and forth. A solution to statelessness requires political will, but above all prevention by sound nationality laws. Drawing attention to the issue and talking about stateless persons is a way to help, to grant them recognition and to make them more visible.

Martijn Keeman, Statelessness Programme Research Clinic participant 2013-2014

Stateless people in the Netherlands deserve better

To hold no nationality at all, have no passport and enjoy no right to vote anywhere: that is something special. But not unheard of. Worldwide, over 10 million people are stateless and there are also cases here in the Netherlands. For more than fifty years, the Netherlands has also recognised statelessness as something special and stateless people as having special needs. The UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (from 1954) entered into force for the Netherlands in 1962 and this instrument sets out the rights to be enjoyed by stateless people. But just last week, an important Dutch advisory body concluded that “there is no proper instrument to establish statelessness in the Netherlands, which means that often cases of statelessness are left undetermined”. According to the Netherlands Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs (Advisory Committee), this must change because statelessness is something special. Their report, “No country of one’s own” contains a number of concrete recommendations that warrant our attention.

There are different ways in which a person can end up stateless. My first encounter with statelessness was with the little Omar (pseudonym). Omar was a healthy baby with two loving parents. But he faced one considerable disadvantage, right from the start: he had no nationality. He could not acquire his mother’s nationality because she was from a country where women do not enjoy an independent right to pass nationality to their children (still a problem in more than 25 countries around the world today). Nor could he get his father’s Dutch (!) nationality, because his parents were not married. His father needed to recognize his paternal link with Omar before the birth in order to automatically confer his nationality – but he didn’t know that.

Omar is not alone. Of the 2005 people who are registered as stateless in the Dutch Municipal Basic Administration (GBA) a surprising 1400 were actually born here in the Netherlands. While the nationality of these individuals is often not a purely Dutch issue, we are still forced to conclude that the Netherlands is contributing to the creation of statelessness. The Netherlands has a safeguard in its nationality law according to which children like Omar can opt for Dutch nationality after three years. However, in practice, the Advisory Committee has pointed out a number of problems in the implementation of this policy. A particularly troublesome issue is the condition that Dutch law stipulates for the exercise of this right of option, namely that the child is lawfully resident – a requirement that is, quite simple, in violation of the Netherlands’ international obligations (1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness). Thanks to this requirement, many children are unable to exercise their right to a nationality. There are currently 85 stateless children registered in the GBA who were born here and are now four years old or more, but who cannot opt for Dutch nationality because they do not have a residence permit. The Netherlands is failing these children. This is why the Advisory Committee report urges to “drop the condition of lawful stay for the right of option for children born in the Netherlands”.

For many people, the first encounter with statelessness is through the story of Victor Navorski, the character played by Tom Hanks in “The Terminal”. As creatively demonstrated in this film, some stateless migrants find themselves stuck in limbo. In the film, limbo has a physical manifestation: Victor is trapped at the airport, he cannot leave through the exit doors because he has no permission to enter the country, but he also cannot board a plane to leave and go elsewhere because he does not have a valid passport. In the Netherlands, statelessness is also not a ground for a residence permit, but there is also no other country to which a stateless person can return. This can mean that a stateless person spends a long time trapped in immigration detention or is faced with the daily struggle of survival as an irregular migration in the Netherlands. This situation is not in anyone’s interest and requires a humane and practical solution. The Advisory Committee has therefore recommended that the Netherlands establish a procedure for determining whether a person is stateless and the grant of residence on that basis.

The Advisory Committee’s report demonstrates very clearly how the Netherlands can make just a few small policy adjustments to bring real change to a small group of people. It will also help to generate more understanding for stateless people. As a stateless woman once explained in an interview to UNHCR: “When I tell people that I am stateless, what I see in their faces is shock, ignorance and mistrust. Each time you have to explain. It’s as if you have to prove your right to exist!” It is vital to fight against this ignorance. Statelessness is something special, but a stateless person is also a person.

This blog is an English translation of a similar piece that was published on the public comments page of Dutch newspaper Trouw on Thursday 12 December 2013.

Dr Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme

GUEST POST: Long way back to citizenship

(Second blog on the history of 'Dutch statelessness' after the Spanish civil war)

In my first blog I described the recruitment of Dutch volunteers for the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), how the Dutch state reacted to this recruitment and how it actively sought the names of those volunteers to revoke their citizenship. At the end of my last blog, I described how a group of some 120 volunteers returned to the Netherlands by train and were declared stateless from now on.

Meanwhile I looked into the question of why this group came back in such an official manner. In a biography about the first Dutch volunteer in this war, Fanny Schoonheyt, also called the ‘queen of the machine gun’, the author offers an answer. It was due to an agreement in the Non-Intervention Committee, a committee which was set up by France and England and also joined by Germany, Italy and the USSR. The Committee had the goal of preventing this war from spreading to become an international conflict. In this committee, it was decided that the repatriation of the volunteers would be the task for the states where they came from. The Netherlands agreed to this. Furthermore it was decided that the volunteers would not be punished for their participation in the war. From the Dutch point of view, the loss of citizenship was to be considered a measure, not a punishment.

This point of view was debatable. In the Nederlandsch Juristenblad (Dutch Advocacy Review) of June 1937, lawyer I. Kisch anticipates the homecoming of the volunteers and writes an essay on the question of whether they should lose their citizenship or not. This essay is not only an interesting interpretation of the (French) history of this law and how it should be implemented, but also a confession of somebody who has seen, as he writes, ‘the misery of statelessness’: avoid as much as reasonable any case of statelessness, is his advice.

Prisoners of war

The misery of statelessness was very real for those volunteers who became prisoners of war. At least 25 Dutch volunteers were held in camps in Spain, and their situation became more complicated as Germany occupied the Netherlands and pressured Spain not to release any men between 18 and 40 years old: they might join the allied forces. Also, being repatriated to a country occupied by Nazi Germany was not a good option for those Dutch anti-fascists, and they were dependent on the good will and assistance from the Dutch authorities to find a country willing to accept them. Unfortunately, the Dutch authorities did not always make a big effort to help them, and for some time did not even feel responsible at all, as those prisoners were no longer considered to be Dutch citizens. This point of view was eventually revised.

One option was to absorb them into the Dutch brigades in England, whereto the Dutch government had fled in 1940. But the Dutch minister of defense refused to accept communists, although, as he admitted, they were probably experienced fighters. Finally, in august 1942, some eleven Dutch POWs were released to Curacao. Upon arrival there, it was disclosed that two of them were actually Germans pretending to be Dutch citizens in order to avoid deportation to Germany.

The last prisoners were released only in 1943, this time directly to England. They wanted to join the armed forces there, but were only offered the status of volunteers in the Dutch army, as they were considered stateless and thus not regular soldiers. Confusingly enough, those prisoners were given Dutch passports before their shipment to England due to differing opinions on whether they had lost their nationality or not between Dutch ministries. The business of enrolling in the army was settled in 1944, when it was concluded that somebody who had lost his citizenship might still be called up for army service. Other former volunteers in Spain, who had lost their citizenship and lived in the Netherlands, had received their draft card in 1939, just like everybody else. It seems that the consequences of losing one’s nationality with regard to the army draft were not clear.

 

German occupation (1940-1945)

So, some volunteers back in the Netherlands received a draft card, and many joined the resistance after the capitulation of the Netherlands. How did their statelessness affect their lives?

Before and after the occupation, there were certain consequences that affected the life of a stateless person. One was not allowed to vote or to be a candidate in any elections. Now considerd an alien, one was even not allowed to be politically active at all. Also, one was considered an alien and had to register as such and apply for a residence permit, which had to be renewed on a regular basis. To travel to other countries, one needed a special passport that was more expensive and had a shorter validity than a regular one. Working as a civil servant, or any job that required a certain nationality, was not possible. Work was only possible with a work permit, which was necessary for every new job again, and this permit had a price - also for the employer. One former volunteer who worked as a painter described how the alien police would inform the employer about his past in Spain, and that if he had work, he would always be the first who was kicked out. At that time, it had a stigmatizing effect, as one’s political affiliation was revealed.

How the status of being stateless affected the life of the former volunteers during the German occupation is not clear. It is known that the Germans were interested in the Dutch files about those volunteers, and also that after the February strike in 1941, a strike in solidarity with the Jewish population of Amsterdam, those files were studied once more by the Germans. Maybe a study of the different biographies of those volunteers would give a better idea, but I suppose that the statelessness, and thus the fact that someone had fought in Spain, already made those people some kind of outlaw and the decision to go underground might have been almost a necessity for many of them.

Renaturalization after occupation

The fact that the volunteers were in an especially dangerous position with regard to the German occupier, was mentioned as an explanation regarding the re-naturalization of twenty former volunteers in the end of 1945. However, the renaturalization of the former volunteers in Spain would become a long story. In the beginning, after the liberation of the Netherlands, it did not seem so. As mentioned, many volunteers were part of the resistance, and there was more recognition for the fact that they had already fought against fascism in Spain. The Dutch Prime Minister Schemerhorn was in favour of granting permission retroactively, thus reversing the act of revoking citizenship. Unfortunately, the (Catholic) minister of Justice, Kolfschoten, was against this, and he was granted the time to come with another solution. Furthermore, the former volunteers were not the only group asking for Dutch citizenship: in 1946/1947, there were some 8000 applicants for Dutch citizenship. A big group of those applicants were mostly German, but also Polish or Russian wives of Dutch forced labourers returning from Germany. Between 1945 an 1947, nationality was not granted automatically to these foreign wives and some 1000 couples waited in a camp in Bocholt, Germany, close to the Dutch border, until the ‘Committee for marriages with women of enemy or other foreign nationalities’ decided about their case.

Finally, Kolfschoten orderd  to renaturalize as it was done before the occupation . So in 1946, twenty former volunteers were presented in a bill to parliament. Members of parliament had to agree with their renaturalization all in one. If one person was refused, the other nineteen would have to wait to be presented again in another group. As the explanatory memorandum, appended to the bill, was insufficiently informative, members of parliament made a specific request to the minister concerning the principle to be applied: the positive system, implying that the naturalization must be in the interest of the Dutch State, or the negative system, in which the interest of the applicant would be of primary consideration. The minister answered that the positive system would be applied, as it was before the German occupation.

Until 1948, some 62 former volunteers were given their citizenship back. The slow procedure was to the disadvantage of the applicants, as the tension between the East and the West was growing, and communists in the Netherlands were considered more and more to be an internal enemy. One incident especially stirred up anti-communists feelings: in February 1949, the French communist leader Maurice Thorez hinted at helping the Soviets against the imperialist West in the event of war. The Dutch leader of the communist party (CPN), Paul de Groot, agreed with Thorez, although he emphasized the importance of avoiding war altogether.

The strongest reaction to this statement came from the chairman of the catholic political party KVP, Romme. He asked (among a list of other things) to revoke the citizenship of all communists, as they potentially intended to take military service for another country (the USSR). Indeed, being a lawyer himself, he probably knew that this proposal stood no ground legally speaking. It exhibits, however, that the communists were more and more considered to be ‘fifth column’, traitors and bad patriots. This must be understood against the backdrop of the fear of a Russian invasion.

From now on it became official policy to exclude communists from re-naturalization. Not against whom one had fought was now of interest, but against whom one was willing to fight in case of war. According to this new standard, former SS-soldiers who had fought in the East stood a better chance.

In 1951, the next step by the government was the introduction of a bill that would re-naturalize all stateless people in the Netherlands at once – except for those too much aligned with communism. This was a big group: some estimated 15.000 men and their spouses and offspring had lost their citizenship due to collaboration with the Germans, mostly by joining the Waffen-SS. And there were still a dozen former volunteers who had fought in Spain.

Almost the whole parliament was against this proposal: against the mixing up of the two groups, and against the re-naturalization of the former collaborators with one stroke of the pen. The bill was amended and made law. Now it was only applicable to those who had served in an enemy state, thus excluding the former volunteers in Spain. The mixing up of the two groups was avoided, but to the disadvantage of the Spanish volunteers.

Between 1950 and 1955, only 22 volunteers were renaturalized. In an official document of 1964 the reasons for the refusal of renaturalization of 45 former volunteers are listed: 16% were accused of having collaborated with the Germans, 17% of a criminal past, one person of living together out of wedlock, and 65% had an ‘extreme left orientation’ (being present at communist meetings was enough evidence). The first reason, collaboration, is rather curious, as at the same time thousands of former Waffen-SS soldiers were renaturalized.

Finally, thanks to a particular individual case, the exclusion of people with unwanted political ideas was dropped. Former volunteer Siep Adema had applied for renaturalization twice and was refused both times because of his communist background. He applied again in 1963, this time with added motivation: West-Germany had finally come up with financial compensation for those who had been prisoners in concentration camps. Adema was imprisoned for four full years in different camps and would get the highest amount possible – but he had to be a Dutch citizen. It was a bilateral agreement, probably referring to ‚Dutch citizens’. It was considered too much of an injustice if he could not touch the money, and the minister granted citizenship retroactively, as this was the only way of being able to apply. Three more volunteers benefited from this procedure for the same reason.

From this point on, political convictions were left out of consideration regarding applicants. By the end of the 1960s, all applications were dealt with. Whether there were still stateless volunteers who never filed an application is unknown to me, but it seems quite possible, as some volunteers refused to apply for renaturalization.

 

Julia Mattern wrote her master thesis about the loss of citizenship of Dutch volunteers working for the Nazi construction organisation “Organisation Todt” during German occupation (1940-1945). This organisation built e.g. the Atlantic Wall.

 

Literature:

Hans Dankaart e.a., De oorlog begon in Spanje, 1985, Van Gennep, Amsterdam

M.D. Bogaarts and C.M.J. Ruijters, De periode van het kabinet Beel, 1989, SDU-uitgeverij, ’s-Gravenhage

Yvonne Scholten, Fanny Schoonheyt, 2011, J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam

Julia Mattern, ‚...Verzoek ik U beleefd mij weer als Nederlander op te nehmen...’, 2006, RUN, Nijmegen

I. Kisch, Vreemde Krijgsdienst in: Nederlandsch Juristenblad 1937, p. 719ff

Benjamin Kaplan et al.,Boundaries and their meanings in the history of the Netherlands, 2009, Brill, Leiden/Boston, p. 217

GUEST BLOG: A short history of ‘Dutch statelessness’ after the Spanish Civil War

The Dutch minister of Justice is currently researching the possibility of revoking Dutch passports or even the citizenship of those currently fighting against the Assad regime in Syria. According to the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, Dick Schoof, some one hundred, mostly young people have made the journey from the Netherlands to Syria. While the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats propose to revoke only passports to prevent people travelling to Syria, Geert Wilders’ PVV party asked explicitly to consider revoking Dutch citizenship in the case of double nationality and to deport those former Dutch citizens to the country of citizenship according to their other passport. Liberal Dijkshoorn (VVD) wonders, if those fighters might lose their citizenship in analogy to what was once considered ‘foreign military service’ and asks the minister, if it is possible to revoke as many Dutch citizenships as possible.

In light of the current affairs, it is worth looking at the history of Dutch volunteer fighters in foreign wars. One of these wars was the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Some 600 Dutch volunteers joined the communist International Brigades to fight against Franco and the Nationalists. Another dozen joined the anarchist forces. According to one publication there was also one Dutchman fighting on the side of Franco. The Dutch state chose a politics of non-intervention concerning the civil war in Spain, and a politics of intervention concerning the domestic groups, mostly communist, in support of the Spanish Republic. The Dutch government was aware of groups that started the recruitment of volunteers for the war in Spain. People who had fought in Spain but regretted their choice were helped to return to the Netherlands in exchange for information. Secret agents were used to collect names of Dutch citizens in Spain and helped to collect information pertaining to the manner in which these citizens arrived in Spain.

The problem was that there were no legal means to stop people from leaving the country (as is the case today). What could be done, however, was putting a stamp in new passports that made them invalid for Spain. This probably did not have much effect, as those involved in recruiting and helping volunteers had prior experience in helping German communists who fled persecution in Germany since 1933, sometimes helping them to get to Belgium or France: they had experience in secretly helping people cross the border illegally. Once a volunteer reached the French-Spanish border, the republicans couldn’t care less about their passports, with or without a stamp. They openly welcomed the help offered by the foreign volunteers, especially in the early phase of the conflict.

Another measure by the Dutch state was a communiqué by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January 1937, stating that those who joined the armed forces in Spain would lose their Dutch citizenship. This was not a new law: according to the Dutch Nationality Law of 1892 article 7, section 4: ‘one loses his or her citizenship by joining foreign military or civil service without Our permission.’ From a legal standpoint, this loss was automatic and not to be considered a punishment. This communiqué must be seen as a measure to restrict travel for future volunteers. It seems, however, as if it didn’t have much of an effect, as most volunteers left the Netherlands after this communiqué.

At the same time, as stated above, the state actively researched the names of those who went to Spain (by, for instance, interviewing family members of those suspected). While revoking their citizenship might have been automatic, acquiring the names of the concerned individuals was anything but. In June 1937, a new royal order was implemented, stating that all acts promoting and assisting participation in one of the forces in Spain are forbidden, thus criminalizing all recruitment activity. All political parties were in favour of this order, except for the communist party (CPN). Despite a few arrests in enforcing this order, recruitment was secretly conducted from the very start and thus hardly affected. Meanwhile, some deserters returned to the Low Countries, stating they were promised work in Spain. Interviews with some of these deserters in the newspaper de Telegraaf draw a picture of poor workless people being press-ganged with false promises. It is most likely the case that these deserters created a story that would ultimately help them in not having their citizenship revoked, e.g.: it was work they were looking for in Spain, not war, and they were forced to fight.

It is estimated that some 250 volunteers lost their citizenship upon returning to the Netherlands, and about 200 volunteers managed to avoid it. As Toon van de Berg stated: ‘It didn’t happen to me, I left in silence, and I came back in even more silence.’ In 1938 the Spanish Republic decided to withdraw all foreign volunteers. This measure was done in the hope to gain more sympathy and help from Western States, especially France and England who were neutral in the conflict. While Germany and Italy officially also were neutral, they supported Franco. The biggest support for the republicans came from the U.S.S.R., and their help was on the decline. At the same time, the political situation in Europe was becoming ever more tense, as Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia with an armed conflict in order to annex the Sudentenland.

In October 1938 a big parade was organized in Barcelona as to see off the foreign volunteers- some 200.000 people gathered to celebrate their departure. The welcome in the Netherlands was a different one. A group of 117 Dutch volunteers entered the country by train in Roosendaal and were welcomed by the Marechaussee and official investigators. The singing of battle songs was forbidden, but as it was 5 December, the day of St Nicholas, the group decided to sing the well-known Dutch St Nicholas song: ‘See over there, the steamboat from Spain is arriving again’, a song that could hardly be forbidden. After all luggage was inspected by the Marechaussee, who were searching for weapons and propaganda material, an official told the group that they had lost their Dutch citizenship. They were served a meal of sauerkraut and bacon, which led afterwards to a discussion in the Dutch parliament: was this meal, paid for by the State, indeed necessary? It is unclear why those volunteers didn’t try to reach the Netherlands without being noticed by the authorities – maybe the group was just too big to do it otherwise. Some 62 volunteers followed later on.

What is striking in the literature about the Dutch volunteers in Spain is that, on the one hand, people were aware of the possibility of losing one’s citizenship by joining the armed forces in the civil war, and, on the other hand, that the fact of losing this citizenship also gets a prominent place in the literature. In my research for my Master’s thesis about loss of citizenship after the German occupation, it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially with regard to other groups than the SS. The fact that the statelessness of the volunteers in the Spanish Civil War receives such a prominent place in the literature is not only due to the indignation of this measure, as the volunteers felt they were fighting the first and just battle against the upcoming fascism in Europe, but also because this statelessness put them in a vulnerable position as soon as the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. In addition, the process of regaining the Dutch citizenship after the German occupation would become a theatre play with many acts, with the latest known re-naturalisation in 1969.

More on the consequences of statelessness for the Dutch volunteers after the Spanish Civil War and the long way to become a Dutch citizen again in my next blog…

Julia Mattern wrote her master thesis about the loss of citizenship of Dutch volunteers working for the Nazi construction organisation “Organisation Todt” during German occupation (1940-1945). This organisation built e.g. the Atlantic Wall.