Learning from history

Have you ever heard of a ship called St Louis? On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner sailed from Hamburg in Germany to Havana, Cuba. On board were over 900 Jewish refugees from Germany and eastern Europe; they were fleeing from the Third Reich. They planned to stop in Cuba until they could enter the US.

However, the Cuban government allowed only 22 Jewish passengers to land. The passengers cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. President Roosevelt never replied. A State Department telegram stated that the passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and then qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States". At the time, there was a waiting list of at least several years.

The ship was forced to return to Europe where, ultimately, many passengers perished in Nazi concentration or extermination camps. The St Louis passengers were not the only Jews escaping Nazi persecution to be rejected.

Between 1933 and 1939, more than 300,000 Jews migrated from Germany and Austria. Western nations feared an influx of refugees and stuck to restricted immigration quotas. Even when World War II started, and reports of Nazi genocide filtered to the west, host countries did not ease their strict limits.

As their options dwindled, tens of thousands of German, Austrian, and Polish Jews migrated to Shanghai, one of the few places without visa requirements. Thousands of Jews entered Palestine, then under British rule, as "illegal immigrants".

Years later, when mere mention of the Holocaust makes us shudder, it seems incredible that Jews were denied refuge and sent back to certain death. Of course, we speak with the hindsight afforded us by history, the same perspective which leads us to commemorate each year the genocide of six million Jews by the Nazi regime.

Today is one such occasion: 60 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp which became synonymous with the Holocaust. At these times, we revert to comfortingly familiar catch-phrases... "Lest we forget", "never again"...

Never again? A sweeping glance at the annals of 20th century history shows the same has happened again, again and again. Since World War II, the international community has notched up between 13 and 20 confirmed cases of genocide.

This statistic alone does not reveal the alarming extent of crimes against humanity which are far more widespread than those strictly defined as genocide. Indeed, the international community is always reluctant to define massacres and ethnic cleansing as genocide because, in that case, it would be legally obliged to intervene. This is partly why "never again" became "oops, sorry it happened again".

Take Rwanda in 1995: at the time, Security Council debates dodged the word "genocide" and failed to act. More than 800,000 people were killed. Today, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan freely admits to failure to stop that slaughter. But history is repeating itself as UN states quibble over whether violations in Sudan's Darfur region constitute genocide or not.

Whatever we choose to call them, crimes against millions of civilians perpetrated by state forces and, to a lesser extent, by non-state agents, are a hallmark of our times. Recalling the Holocaust, we are called to do some soul-searching, to reflect on our responsibility as Christians and as citizens of an interdependent society.

The tragedy of the St Louis can help us. Why were its passengers rejected? There were many reasons, including economic depression and two insidious factors: anti-semitism and xenophobia. Even before the liner left Hamburg, right-wing Cuban newspapers with pro-fascist sentiments announced its impending arrival and demanded an end to the continued admission of Jewish refugees. An antisemitic demonstration was held. Newspapers claimed Jews were Communists.

Play the same tune using different words - black, terrorist, Muslim - and you come up with a strikingly similar picture today. The refusal to accept Jews who were "illegal" because they had no visas or did not fit into quotas also echoes down to our day. Detention is not new either: after World War II, "illegal immigrants" into Palestine - then under a British mandate - were detained in Cyprus, including concentration camp survivors.

Perhaps those who turned the Jews away did not know concentration camps existed, but exist they did. Those who detained holocaust survivors may not have known just how much they suffered, but suffer they did.

Little has changed today: millions of civilians are still targeted and mercilessly persecuted. Just because we are not aware of heinous crimes of humanity does not mean they are not perpetrated. The presence of millions of asylum seekers in the world is a sure sign that they are.

As we mark the liberation of Auschwitz, can we learn something from history and make the ceremony more than just wishful thinking?