To them, the sight of uniformed soldiers was far less comforting, and they didn’t know whether the Americans would be any different than the government and soldiers they had just risked everything to escape.
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Over the weekend, a December 2013 article from the Halifax Chronicle Herald on Canada turning back a German ocean liner full of Jewish refugees became one of the publication’s most popular stories.
Of course, those men with rifles were not our executioners, but our escorts. My family and I continued on to Olympia, Washington, where we were welcomed by the local community, and established a new life and new beginning through the selfless help of countless Americans.
South of the border, the governors of 27 states now say, in light of the Paris attacks and yet-to-be-proven reports, one of the suicide bombers may have entered Europe in amongst the tide of refugees and migrants and they will refuse to accept Syrian refugees out of fears that terrorists may slip through the cracks.
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said he would welcome refugees who can “prove” they are Christians.
Presidential candidate Texas Sen.
“The refugee has got to be checked because, unfortunately, among the refugees there are a few spies, as has been found in other countries”, President Franklin Roosevelt said at the time.
There has been a swell of opposition to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks, leading to comparisons of how the world reacted to an influx of refugees during previous generations.
“Slamming the door in their faces”, said Obama, “would be a betrayal of our values”. Around 2,200 Syrian refugees are already living in the U.S.
The United States did accept thousands of Jews through regular immigration procedures during World War II, but until 1944 didn’t have a specific program to address the flow of refugees fleeing the Nazis. That left 273,000 Jews to the mercy of Nazi Germany in the year of 1938, alone.
Later that year, a ship named the St. Louis departed Europe with 937 refugees on board, nearly all of whom were Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Speakers included U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), U.S. Congressional Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL), U.S. Congressional Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, The Honorable Chaim Shacham, Consul General of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico and Pastor Victor Styrsky, Christians United for Israel. All but 28 were denied entry to Cuba. It’s incomparably more rigorous than other pathways to the United States. More than a quarter of the passengers died in the Holocaust.
Else Wolff disembarks from the refugee ship MS St. Louis in Antwerp, Belgium along with her husband and daughter (not pictured).
Many Americans who today are against accepting Syrian refugees argue that the situation is different this time because they believe Syrians represent a national security threat, whereas no one thought the same of Jews 75 years ago. Many of those alleged spies and their families were subsequently murdered in places like Auschwitz, Dachau and Sobibór.
“No historical parallel is ideal, obviously”, says Allan Lichtman, co-author of “FDR and the Jews” and a professor of history at American University.
That poll, which was conducted by an organization of campus editors called the Student Opinion Surveys of America, showed that Americans have a history of opposing people who want to take refuge in the U.S. By contrast, many Syrian refugees are Muslims fleeing Muslim-dominated lands, the victims of a group with a radical Salafi Islam ideology and/or the Syrian dictator Assad who has often appeased and funded Islamic terror groups. “It’s worth remembering this mood when thinking about the current moment, where the United States is once more in the throes of a debate over letting in refugees”. According to EU officials, every Paris attacker identified by authorities so far has been a European citizen. None of them were refugees. Tellingly, just days after the Paris attacks, French President Francois Hollande said France would accept 30,000 more refugees over the next two years.
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A better way forward: Paranoia should not and can not trump common sense and compassion. Mirroring the public opinion polls of 1939, when asked whether he would even admit young orphaned children from Syria, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said, “I don’t think orphans under five should be admitted into the United States”.
