Toronto – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada’s government will formally apologize for turning away a ship full of Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi Germany in 1939.
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The German liner MS St. Louis was carrying 907 German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution and it also been rejected by Cuba and the United States. The passengers were forced to return to Europe and more than 250 later died in the Holocaust.
Trudeau said in speech to a sold-out Jewish fundraising event Tuesday that the decision to turn away the St. Louis was a blight on Canada’s past.
In the run-up to World War II and the ensuing Holocaust, the Canadian government heeded anti-Semitic sentiment and severely restricted Jewish immigration. From 1933 to 1945, only about 5,000 Jewish refugees were accepted.
The Canadians accepted something like 5,000 Jews in the prewar period. The US took in 124,000. We commonly say Canada is ten percent of the US. So we see the Canadians took in fewer than half as many as the US adjusted for population.
The Jewish Agency was allowed to distribute a small number of entry permits to Palestine under the British White Paper. They refused to give them to the St Louis passengers because the voyage was organized by the “wrong” political group. The JA was socialist and the Joint was perceived as being Communist. One of many Zionist actions and inactions that failed to save Jews during the Holocaust. Read the first half of Segev’s book The Seventh Million.
Read the book Perfidy. It tells the truth about the Zionists and how they didn’t help save Jews during the holocaust.
Apologizing doesn’t bring back the dead. America also turned away the ST. Louis. Did they ever apologize?
The dead cannot accept your apology! Too late PM Trudeau!! You missed the boat!!
To #3- Did the Cubans ever apologize?