28 Jan 2017 12:45 pm
Trump bars door to refugees.How America’s rejection of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany haunts our refugee policy today
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s important to remember why America welcomes refugees.
The US (and other countries in the Western Hemisphere) could have saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis. They didn't.
At one point, the US literally turned away a ship of 900 German Jews. Shortly afterward, it rejected a proposal to allow 20,000 Jewish children to come to the US for safety.
That is a moral stain on the nation's conscience, and it's what led the US and other countries, after the war, to create a way for persecuted people to seek and find refuge.
Modern refugee policy, in other words, is largely a response to the failures of the Holocaust era.
And if Donald Trump signs the refugee executive order Friday, he’ll be doing it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day itself.