Recognizing Past Wrongs
With our current set of sensibilities it appears a despicable act, one beyond human comprehension, that governments of the western world would turn away desperate refugees attempting to flee the reality that a return to their place of origin would equate with a sentence of death. The dreadful voyage of German Jews anxious beyond words to escape the fate that would in the end extinguish the lives of six million Jews, countless political dissenters, gypsies and homosexuals, represents a tale of unbelievable rejection.
The MS St.Louis was full of refugees from Germany, most of them Jewish men, women and children who were experiencing horrible privations with the ascent of the Nazi regime to power, after years of persecution culminating in the tormenting noose of disenfranchisement from all aspects of normative living. A campaign of bigoted dehumanization was launched. Jewish children were refused entry to schools, employment was refused Jewish adults, properties were confiscated and soon Jews were arrested and imprisoned in squalid ghettoes.
Those who yet could, chose to flee the seemingly inevitable; the collapse of normalcy for Jews in Germany, with the hope of finding safe haven elsewhere in the civilized world, as far from Europe as possible. In 1939, the St.Louis pulled out of Hamburg with its 937 passengers, headed for North America, hoping to be able to land in Cuba, receive visas for the United States and find refuge there. But the United States did not respond to the plight of the refugees, nor did Cuba where the entry of Jews was resented and protested by the populace.
Canada, which had the dubious reputation of having taken in fewer refugees- under five thousand - than any other refugee-receiving countries had in Prime Minister MacKenzie King and his minions, a prevailing anti-Jewish sentiment that also refused to accede to the request for haven. Canada was the last country to refuse landing permission to the passengers on the St.Louis. Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and the United States had all refused entry before Canada.
Now, on the waterfront of Halifax, where in 1939 the MS St.Louis had been turned back from port, a federal-government-funded memorial has been erected and unveiled to the public. In memory of the refusal to give asylum to desperate people fleeing oppression, discrimination, imprisonment, servitude and death, a memorial was designed by the American architect Daniel Libeskind, once a refugee from Poland, descended himself from Holocaust survivors.
The memorial represents a wheel within which are contained four machine gears of various sizes. The smallest of which has been labelled "hatred", and it turns a slightly larger cog, "racism", which in its turn leads to "xenophobia", and it finally turns the largest of the cogs, "anti-Semitism". The back of the memorial is inscribed with the names of each of the St.Louis passengers.
The country that immigrants built has had to confront its background of racism where Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, Jewish Canadians, East Indians, Ukrainians, Poles and others met with bigotry and institutionalized discrimination. Ironically, the indigenous populations of Canada had themselves confronted and suffered racism and degradation at the hands of the first immigrants who came from France and the British Isles.
Sculpture commemorates ship of refugees turned away on eve of WW II
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2011/01/20/ns-stlouis-memorial.html#ixzz1BdhyJMkm
The MS St.Louis was full of refugees from Germany, most of them Jewish men, women and children who were experiencing horrible privations with the ascent of the Nazi regime to power, after years of persecution culminating in the tormenting noose of disenfranchisement from all aspects of normative living. A campaign of bigoted dehumanization was launched. Jewish children were refused entry to schools, employment was refused Jewish adults, properties were confiscated and soon Jews were arrested and imprisoned in squalid ghettoes.
Those who yet could, chose to flee the seemingly inevitable; the collapse of normalcy for Jews in Germany, with the hope of finding safe haven elsewhere in the civilized world, as far from Europe as possible. In 1939, the St.Louis pulled out of Hamburg with its 937 passengers, headed for North America, hoping to be able to land in Cuba, receive visas for the United States and find refuge there. But the United States did not respond to the plight of the refugees, nor did Cuba where the entry of Jews was resented and protested by the populace.
Canada, which had the dubious reputation of having taken in fewer refugees- under five thousand - than any other refugee-receiving countries had in Prime Minister MacKenzie King and his minions, a prevailing anti-Jewish sentiment that also refused to accede to the request for haven. Canada was the last country to refuse landing permission to the passengers on the St.Louis. Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and the United States had all refused entry before Canada.
"The Cubans kept telling us 'Manyana, Manyana'. But manyana never came", an elderly Jew who had survived the ordeal as a boy reminisced. "After a week the Cuban government told us to get out of port. So we sailed up the coast towards the U.S. and Canada. We appealed to President Roosevelt, and to the Canadian government, but nobody wanted us."And so the ship was forced to return to Europe, where the passengers were finally taken in by their hundreds to England, France, Belgium and Holland. Many of the passengers ended up in Auschwitz and other death camps after Germany invaded Europe. Those several hundreds who had been taken in by Britain managed to survive the war.
Now, on the waterfront of Halifax, where in 1939 the MS St.Louis had been turned back from port, a federal-government-funded memorial has been erected and unveiled to the public. In memory of the refusal to give asylum to desperate people fleeing oppression, discrimination, imprisonment, servitude and death, a memorial was designed by the American architect Daniel Libeskind, once a refugee from Poland, descended himself from Holocaust survivors.
The memorial represents a wheel within which are contained four machine gears of various sizes. The smallest of which has been labelled "hatred", and it turns a slightly larger cog, "racism", which in its turn leads to "xenophobia", and it finally turns the largest of the cogs, "anti-Semitism". The back of the memorial is inscribed with the names of each of the St.Louis passengers.
The country that immigrants built has had to confront its background of racism where Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, Jewish Canadians, East Indians, Ukrainians, Poles and others met with bigotry and institutionalized discrimination. Ironically, the indigenous populations of Canada had themselves confronted and suffered racism and degradation at the hands of the first immigrants who came from France and the British Isles.
Sculpture commemorates ship of refugees turned away on eve of WW II
The Wheel of Conscience was created by the Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind to commemorate the St. Louis. (CBC)
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2011/01/20/ns-stlouis-memorial.html#ixzz1BdhyJMkm
posted by Pieface | 7:12 PM
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