In May of 1939, almost 1,000 Jews fled Nazi Germany on the SS St. Louis, heading for Cuba. Amidst a racist and anti-semitic outcry, the Cuban government turned them away.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Many Cubans resented the relatively large number of refugees (including 2,500 Jews), whom the government had already admitted into the country, because they appeared to be competitors for scarce jobs … Both agents of Nazi Germany and indigenous right-wing movements hyped the immigrant issue in their publications and demonstrations, claiming that incoming Jews were Communists.”
When the refuges then implored the United States, beacon of freedom, to let them in, the response was similar, and the ship had to return to Europe where many of the passengers were killed in the Holocaust.
An uncle of mine had a very similar experience on another ship headed for the Dominican Republic. He too was not allowed in by our country. The State Department said they had to “await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.”
Can we all please see the parallels with the Trump administration’s response to the thousands of refugees fleeing death squads, drug lords and other forms of violence in Central America? Can we have learned something from our treatment of “undesirable” Jews? Let us become the humane society promised by the famous words on the Statue of Liberty.
Ferd Wulkan
Montague