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27 L. & Critique 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq27 and id is 1 raw text is: Law Critique (2016) 27:1-4
DOI 10.1007/s10978-015-9173-9                                     CrossMark
Refugees and the Borders of Europe: A Minor
Contribution
Elena Loizidoul
Published online: 21 December 2015
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Introduction
In 1942 Stephan Zweig published in German The World of Yesterday (Zweig 2011)
where he offers us a pretty unique testament of the changes that were taking place in
Europe between the two World Wars. The book ends in London where he was
himself in exile. Zweig writes:
On reaching the border they had to beg at consulates for shelter in their lands,
usually in vain, because what country wanted to take in destitute beggars who
had lost everything? I will never forget the sight I saw one day in a London
travel agency. It was full of refugees, nearly all of them Jewish, and they all
wanted to go somewhere, anywhere. It didn't matter what country, they would
have gone to the ice of the North Pole or the blazing sands of the Sahara just to
get away, move on, because their permits to stay where they were had run out
and they had to move on with their wives and children, under strange stars, in
a world where foreign languages were spoken, among people whom they
didn't know and who didn't want to know them. I came upon a man there who
had once been a very rich Viennese industrialist and also one of our most
intelligent art collectors. I didn't recognise him at first, he looked so old, grey
and tired as he clung faintly to a table with both hands. I asked where he
wanted to go. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Who bothers about what we want these
days? You go wherever they'll still let you. Someone told me it might be
possible to get a visa for Haiti or San Domingo here.' It wrung my heart - an
old, exhausted man with children and grandchildren, trembling with the hope
® Elena Loizidou
e.loizidou@bbk.ac.uk
School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC 1E 7HX, UK

I_ Springer

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