Errol Louis: Saying ‘Never Again’ Here & Now...

Of all the signs carried at the countless demonstrations against President Trump’s ban on the residents of seven predominantly Muslim countries entering the U.S., the ones displaying variations on “Never again” hit home most directly. America once faced — and failed — a moral test of our pro-immigrant credo in a way that haunts the current debate.

Back in May of 1939, a ship called the St. Louis, carrying 937 passengers, most of them desperate Jewish refugees, embarked from Hamburg, Germany, bound for Havana, with the ultimate aim of allowing the refugees to wait until visas to the United States could be processed. But the families fleeing fascist persecution never got the help they needed and deserved, thanks to suspicion, anti-Semitism and the callous indifference of President Franklin Roosevelt.

The refugees’ plight was dire. The St. Louis sailed only six months after the ruling Nazi Party had instigated a notorious wave of racist violence throughout Germany, known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” in which party-led mobs looted 7,500 Jewish-owned stores, burned over 100 synagogues and arrested more than 20,000 Jews, often seizing their homes and property.

The Hitler government’s dark intentions were known and widely publicized, but a conservative government in Cuba refused to let passengers from the St. Louis wait on the island while their U.S. visas were processed. The boat was ordered out of Cuban waters and ended up steaming around in circles near Miami — tailed by the U.S. Coast Guard — and warned by American authorities not to attempt a landing. 

Click here for the full article. 

Source: The New York Daily News (via the Empire Report)