According to the New York Times, fewer than 2000
Syrian refugees have been accepted for resettlement to the United States. Of these, half are children and one-quarter are
over age 60. So the refugee crisis, of which Syrians are a significant part,
affects older people as well as the young and the middle-aged. As we hear more
and more strident calls to keep out these refugees, ostensibly because they might
be terrorists, when in fact they are seeking to escape from those same
terrorists who roam their native lands, we would do well to remember an earlier
refugee crisis. It’s a crisis I’m all too familiar with, as my parents—then
ages 13 and 14—were among those who left Germany in the winter of 1939, at
first merely to escape persecution, later to escape death. It would be 8 years
before they finally found refuge in the United States, where they have lived
productive lives for the past 68 years.
By the summer of 1942,
tens of thousands of European Jews had already been rounded up by the seemingly
unstoppable Germans and incarcerated in ghettoes, enslaved as forced laborers,
or sent to extermination camps. Those who remained in Holland, Belgium, and
France were on the run. One of the only countries to run to was Switzerland, an
oasis of neutrality in war-torn Europe. But in August, the Swiss government
sealed its borders to refugees, invoking the time-honored allegation that
further Jewish immigration was a threat to the peace and stability of their
society. In December of 1942, the government clamped down further, ordering that every
refugee over the age of 16 be turned away at the border. In the coming months,
the Swiss police would send about 25,000 people to almost certain death.
It was not the
first time that the world had turned its back on Jewish refugees. In the summer
of 1938, just days after the American Independence Day holiday, representatives
from 32 countries gathered at the majestic Hotel Royale in the French lake-side resort of Evian-les-Bains to discuss
the plight of the millions of European Jews who wished to immigrate to avoid
discrimination, persecution, and worse. For over a week, the delegates convened
to express their concern--but did nothing.
A few months later, on
what would become known as Kristallnacht, synagogues were torched throughout
Germany, Jewish businesses destroyed, and 30,000 people arrested for the crime
of being Jews. In response, a democratic US Senator and a Republican
representative introduced a bill that would have admitted 20,000 Jewish refugee
children to the United States. But public opinion was resoundingly against
immigration on the grounds that it could be harmful to American citizens, and
the bill died an early death.
When the
United States entered the war, virtually all immigration to this
country ceased. But already that fateful fall, the State Department had deliberately put barriers in the way of Jewish
refugees. Even accessing the limited quotas in place as of the xenophobic
Immigration Act of 1924 became increasingly difficult. Consulates abroad were
instructed to “delay” and “effectively stop” the trickle of immigrants arriving
in the United States by resorting to administrative devices to “postpone and
postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.”
After World War
II was over, the member states of the newly established United Nations recognized
the callous cruelty of their behavior towards refugees. Committed to mending
their ways, they drew up the Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which asserted that
everyone has the right to “seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from
persecution.” This was followed in 1951 with the “Convention Relating to the
Status of Refugees” which defined refugees and delineated their rights. In
2001, dozens of countries reaffirmed their commitment to the rights of
refugees, acknowledging that “many persons still leave their country of origin
for reasons of persecution and are entitled to special protection on account of
their position.”
In light of this
history, the current attempts by state governors, including Charlie Baker of
Massachusetts, to close their hearts and barricade the gates to refugees is
both tragic and intolerable. We must not confuse the persecuted with their
persecutors. We need to remember the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, a
gift to us from France, from the poem, “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
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