{"id":32847,"date":"2015-12-22T18:05:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T16:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=32847"},"modified":"2015-12-18T08:44:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T06:44:32","slug":"22-00-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=32847","title":{"rendered":"Memorial for Jews turned away from Canada in 1939"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>\u2018None is too many\u2019: Memorial for Jews turned away from Canada in 1939<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

\"\" Kathryn Blaze Carlson<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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This picture dated June 1939 shows the M.S. St. Louis in Havana, Cuba. The St. Louis carried 930 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to Cuba where all but 22 denied landing. After being refused refuge in the U.S., the ship returned to Europe where the refugees were scattered in Great Britain, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Many of the passengers who were not in Britain were ultimately rounded up and sent to concentration camp<\/em><\/span>s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s city lights disappeared into the dusky distance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Canada did not want the refugees traveling on the vessel either \u2014 \u201cnone is too many,\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wanted us,\u201d Dr. Messinger, now 78 and a retired physician in Buffalo, N.Y., said in an interview with the National Post. \u201cWe were Jews, we were expendable \u2026 It was terrible \u2014 terrible, terrible \u2014 of Canada and the United States, of all countries, to not let us in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Messinger said the German crew had treated the passengers \u201cas human beings,\u201d even offering them \u201cbig breakfasts, and ice cream with mini umbrellas pegged in the scoop.\u201d Canada, though, would offer the family nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

He and his parents managed to survive the Holocaust \u2014 thanks to a \u201cseries of miracles,\u201d he said \u2014 but 254 of the Jews turned away by the Mackenzie King government would not.<\/span>
\n On Thursday, more than 70 years later, at Halifax\u2019s Pier 21 \u2014 the very place where the ship would have docked had Canada welcomed it \u2014 a memorial designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be unveiled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to remember the mistakes the country has made,\u201d Dr. Messinger said of the memorial, the first of its kind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s mistake nearly cost Dr. Messinger his life: En route to France from Brussels, his mother laid on top of him to block machine-gun fire that threatened to rain from German planes overhead. Then later, just weeks after his family fled southern France for America in 1942, the French rounded up the Jews and sent them to concentration camps.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Related<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Libeskind to make monument commemorating Jewish refugees
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nDr. Messinger said he appreciates Canada\u2019s gesture in erecting the steel memorial, titled The Wheel of Conscience and which is part of a $500,000 project initiated by the Canadian Jewish Congress and paid for by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brilliant symbolism: the very facility through which these refugees could have entered and found refuge only to have the door slammed in their face will now feature an enduring memorial to their memory,\u201d Mr. Libeskind, who was born to Holocaust survivors in Poland and whose projects include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, wrote in the Ottawa Citizen last fall.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Bernie Farber, CEO of the congress, the Wheel culminates a decade of efforts to memorialize what has become known as the Voyage of the Damned.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn this boat was the world: There were children, the elderly, young men and women, brides and grooms, teenaged romances, it became a metaphor for life,\u201d said Mr. Farber, whose mother arrived at Pier 21 in 1933. \u201c[The St. Louis] was the microcosm of the macrocosm of what was the Shoah.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Farber explained that the congress has never asked Ottawa to apologize for the wrongdoings of those in power at the time \u2014 most notably Frederick Charles Blair, the head of immigration, and Vincent Massey, Canada\u2019s high commissioner to Great Britain (and later Governor-General) who, according to the 1982 book None Is Too Many, \u201cworked through External Affairs to keep Jews out of Canada.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWithin [the Jewish] tradition it is not really permissible to demand apologies,\u201d Mr. Farber said. \u201cIt is more accepted for people to do T\u2019shuva, which means to make amends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

National Post<\/span><\/em>
\nkcarlson@nationalpost.com<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Messenger<\/p>\n

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\u2018None is too many\u2019: Memorial for Jews turned away from Canada in 1939 Kathryn Blaze Carlson This picture dated June 1939 shows the M.S. St. Louis in Havana, Cuba. The St. Louis carried 930 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to Cuba where all but 22 denied landing. After being refused refuge in the U.S., the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32847"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32873,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32847\/revisions\/32873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}