'NONE IS TOO MANY'

I will forever be grateful to this great country of ours for taking my parents and me in as refugees from Nazi Germany. We were able to come to the United States in 1936 ONLY because we had an American sponsor who had pledged to look after our needs.

Of 907 Jewish refugees, all but 22 were not as fortunate as my family was. They were aboard a ship that was turned away by Cuba after only 22 Jews were allowed to leave the vessel. The ship then proceeded, first to the U.S. and then to Canada, but unfortunately for the Jews aboard, both countries refused to accept any of the refugees. The ship then returned its human cargo to Belgium. 254 of the refugees that had been aboard the ship were eventually exterminated in Nazi death camps.

While I am proud of my country, I believe that America’s refusal to accept any Jews who did not have a sponsor was a shameful chapter in our history. It is ironic that Argentina, a nation that maintained close ties to Nazi Germany, took in far more Jewish refugees than the U.S.

That was back in 1939. Nowadays Jews are still persecuted in many parts of the world. If given the opportunity to leave, where can they go? That is why it is of the utmost importance for Israel to exist within borders that will allow it to defend itself from enemies that have vowed time after time to destroy the tiny Jewish state. And that is why, contrary to the demands of the international community that it gives them up, Israel must keep the permanent settlements that have been established on lands the Palestinians want for their own state.

MEMORIAL FOR JEWS TURNED AWAY FROM CANADA IN 1939
By Kathryn Blaze Carlson

National Post
January 17, 2011

Sol Messinger was just six years old when, as one of 907 German Jews aboard the M.S. St. Louis seeking a place to escape persecution, the ship was shunned first by Cuba and then by America. He remembers sailing along the Florida coast as Miami’s city lights disappeared into the dusky distance.

Canada did not want the refugees traveling on the vessel either — “none is too many,” an immigration agent would say of Jews such as those aboard the ship in May, 1939. The St. Louis was within two days of Halifax Harbour when Ottawa, under pressure from high-ranking politicians within, refused to grant the Jewish families a home.

“Nobody wanted us,” Dr. Messinger, now 78 and a retired physician in Buffalo, N.Y., said in an interview with the National Post. “We were Jews, we were expendable … It was terrible — terrible, terrible — of Canada and the United States, of all countries, to not let us in.”

Turned away thrice, the ship had no choice but to journey toward an uncertain fate in Belgium. Dr. Messinger, then just a boy, would celebrate his seventh birthday en route back to the very land his parents feared spelled disaster for their only son.

Dr. Messinger said the German crew had treated the passengers “as human beings,” even offering them “big breakfasts, and ice cream with mini umbrellas pegged in the scoop.” Canada, though, would offer the family nothing.

He and his parents managed to survive the Holocaust — thanks to a “series of miracles,” he said — but 254 of the Jews turned away by the Mackenzie King government would not.

On Thursday, more than 70 years later, at Halifax’s Pier 21 — the very place where the ship would have docked had Canada welcomed it — a memorial designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be unveiled.