After Germany invaded France in 1940 and Arendt was sent to Gurs camp, Arendt, her husband Heinrich Blücher and her mother were able to secure exit papers to New York City. They arrived in the city in 1941, where Arendt reflected on being a stateless person: “We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life.”
(solemn music) (typewriter clacking) (engine whirring) - [Narrator] In the first place, we don't like to be called refugees.
We ourselves call each other newcomers or immigrants.
And as far as I know, there is not and never was any club founded by Hitler-persecuted people whose name indicated that its members were refugees.
We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life.
(wind rustling) We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world.
We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, (water rushing) the unaffected expression of feelings.
We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends in concentration camps.
I don't know which memories and which thoughts nightly dwell in our dreams.
Sometimes, I imagine that at least nightly we think of our dead, or we remember the poems we once loved.
(thunder booming)
