Part I. Introduction and Context of this law contained explicit reference to Eastern Jews to be considered in particular for revocation of nationality.388 The Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 reduced Jews to secondclass citizens, and it “moved away from the individualized denaturalization and denationalization model and applied a collective approach to Germans of Jewish origin. The distinction between subject and citizen, between German Jews and so-called Aryans, laid the ground work for the series of exclusionary measures passed as supplementary decrees to the Citizenship Law. These successive supplementary decrees progressively separated Jewish Germans from their fellow countrypeople, legally, economically, psychologically, and physically. The process culminated with the 11th Decree of November 24, 1941, which stripped all German Jews who had left the German Reich of their nationality”.389 The obvious groups of people that were stateless after World War II thus included those who were heavily persecuted during the war: the surviving Jews and Roma.390 At the same time, there was a lot of uncertainty regarding nationality status throughout Europe: the status of ethnic Germans who were forced to leave Eastern Europe after the war was uncertain, and many other people around Europe were displaced with undetermined nationalities.391 The aftermath of World War II presented the world with many issues to address and these were answered to by different (legal) responses. One thing was clear though: the great wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 should not be repeated. It should be noted that this was all quite centered around the experience in Europe and that there was a dominant role of European states in the international legal developments that followed – that was already the case in the context of the LoN of course, but also within the UN. With the foundation of the UN, the international community was determined “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom (…).”392 388 389 390 391 392 72 Ibid, 252. David Fraser & Frank Caestecker, ‘Jews or Germans? Nationality Legislation and the Restoration of Liberal Democracy in Western Europe after the Holocaust’ (2013) 31 Law and History Review 391, 395. See for an overview on how statelessness was created and caused by the laws and policies of different European countries also Jane Perry Clark Carey, ‘Some Aspects of Statelessness Since World War I’ (1946) 40 The American Political Science Review 113,116–122. Miriam Rürup, ‘Lives in Limbo. Statelessness after Two World Wars’ (2011) 49 Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 113, 124. Preamble Charter of the United Nations (adopted 26 June 1945, entered into force 24 October 1945) 1 UNTS XVI (UN Charter). Intersentia