When Britain, USA, Rest of World Refused Refugees

Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Chaim Weizmann, Jewish leader and Emir Feisal, Muslim leader  in Meetings in 1918 and Paris Peace Conference 1919.
We've had a rough time with the Arabs.  Hitler had introduced the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935, 
the most vicious anti-Semitic laws imaginable, and he received not complaints from the world about it, but silence, which meant acceptance to him.  The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood.  Jews were disenfranchised  and deprived  of most political rights.

 From the Arabs, however, he received telegrams and CONGRATULATION from all corners of the Arab world.  Feisal held out till later before he joined the bandwagon of hatred against Jews.  I suppose he didn't want to be different and lose his power.  

By 1936, when Nazis were feeling their oats and attacking Jews in Germany, Jewish immigration to Palestine was 66,472, highest since 1919.  In 1941, only 4,592 were able to get in with the Brits guarding the gates.
                                                                                     

We all know how the ship, SS St. Louis, was turned back from Cuba on May 13, 1939   and then the USA with over 900 Jewish refugees on board, and not allowed to enter their country.  250 were killed immediately after returning to Germany.                                                                            

SS George Washington carrying my uncle safely to New York,
May 11-14, 1939, two days earlier on a  voyage from Germany 

 My uncle, Werner Oster, was a lucky 22 year old since his parents had obtained a passport to the USA for him, and he boarded the SS George Washington on May 4th, 1939 that made it to New York City by the 11th.  They couldn't afford to get themselves out or their 16 year old daughter, Giesela,  as it had become nearly impossible for most, being attached to needing a  lot of money and documents.
                                                                         

Gisela Feldman, 15 year old passenger on St. Louis, lived to tell the story.  

Refugees had to have passports to their country, something many Jews were not able to do in view of the sudden attacks from Nazis in Germany on their families.

Palestine was a place these Jews should have found refuge in as Jewish leaders had procured their former land from the Allies in the 20's meetings, and was to have their assistance in creating a new Jewish Homeland out of their ancient one.  It had already been okayed through the League of Nations, the UN of that period, that it was to be the Jewish Homeland.
                                                                         

Rounding up Jews to take to death camps in Europe

Instead, Great Britain, who held a 30 year mandate over Palestine, closed the gates during WWII, just when Jews needed this land the most.  Hundreds of thousands of Jews found themselves stranded in Europe. Six Million Jews became victims of Hitler's Final Solution.

After the war, the Brits refused to allow the survivors of this Nazi nightmare to find sanctuary in Palestine.  Their mandate was not up until May 14, 1948, and the war was over in 1945.  They spent this time allowing Arabs to enter, instead.
                                                                               
By June 6, 1946, President Truman asked the British government to accept 100,000 Jewish immigrants who were being confined to displaced persons camps in Europe.  Can you imagine?  People had been rounded up and slaughtered in death camps by the Nazis all over Europe and then forced, kept past the war in another camp with barbed wire because no one wanted them in their country.

Britain's Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, was most sarcastic in his reply to Truman's request and threw back the retort that "the USA just wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine "because they didn't want too many of them in New York!"
                                                                                 

The Exodus, an illegal ship heading for Palestine, which departed from France on July 11, 1947, was filled to capacity with 4,500 Jewish refugees, making it the most populous boat to bear refugees to Palestine since the end of the Holocaust. For nearly the entire journey, the Exodus was followed by 6 British ships which, in spite of the Honduras flag which flew from its mast, had early on identified the Exodus as belonging to the struggling Jewish government in Palestine. In addition to the refugees, the Exodus carried 36 American volunteers and a cadre of Israeli Jewish volunteers largely dispatched from the Jewish Agency, the official governing body of the Jewish population in Palestine. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivors in France who had no legal immigration certificates for Palestine. Following wide media coverage, the British Royal Navy seized the ship and deported all its passengers back to Europe.  And to what?
Detention camps.  

Sometimes, where there's a will, there's a way, and the Jewish resistance organizations thought this was terrible, so they found a way to smuggle in  some dilapidated ships to reach Palestine.  Between August 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, 65 "illegal to the Brits" immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people, arrived from European shores.
                                                                             

Jews who survived 1945

In August 1946, the Brits still didn't want Jews to enter THEIR Palestine.  They began to intern those they CAUGHT in camps in Cyprus.  About 50,000 Jews were detained in these camps.  28,000 of them were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948.
                                                                         

Following the liquidation of the concentration camps of Europe, the British set up a detention camp in Cyprus for Holocaust survivors illegally trying to enter Palestine. From 1946 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the British confined some 53,000 Holocaust survivors on the island. Once the State of Israel was created, most of the refugees made aliyah. In 1951, only 165 Jews remained on the island and in 1970, only 25 Jews were left. Those huts must have made the heat even worse.  The middle of summer (July and August) is usually hot, with an average maximum coastal temperature of around 33 °C (91 °F) during the day and around 23 °C (73 °F) at night. In the centre of the island – the highlands – the average temperature exceeds 35 °C (95 °F)).  

Therefore, one can see the cold- heart of the Brits who never changed their policy after World War II to allow the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to settle in Palestine.  And why?  Because they were Jews.

"Within months of Germany's surrender in May 1945, the Allies repatriated to their home countries more than six million displaced persons (DPs; wartime refugees). " "Most Jewish survivors, who had survived concentration camps or had been in hiding, were unable or unwilling to return to eastern Europe because of postwar antisemitism and the destruction of their communities during the Holocaust. Many of those who did return feared for their lives. In Poland, for example, locals initiated several violent pogroms. The worst was the one in Kielce,  Kielce, Poland
50°50' N 20°40' E 159 km S of Warszawa in 1946 in which 42 Jews, all survivors of the Holocaust, were killed. These pogroms led to a significant second movement of Jewish refugees from Poland to the west.  At its peak in 1947, the Jewish displaced person population reached approximately 250,000. While the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) administered all of the displaced persons camps and centers, Jewish displaced persons achieved a large measure of internal autonomy.

At a time when Jews were faced with being murdered, they couldn't find a refuge.  The USA, also cold hearted as to their up-coming murder, had  immigration restrictions which strictly limited the number of refugees permitted to enter the country.  Most countries demanded baptismal certification, something Jews certainly didn't have.  

Jews had needed their own Homeland for the past 2,000 years, and needed it now more than ever.  "Holocaust survivors from displaced persons camps in Europe and from detention camps on Cyprus were welcomed into the Jewish homeland by the Jews. Many of them fought in Israel's War of Independence in 1948 and 1949. In 1953, Yad Vashem (The Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority), the national institution for Holocaust commemoration, was established.
                                                                              

4 Jews killed by Muslim Terrorists in France in 3 day killing spree

France was reeling after three days of attacks by Al-Qaida-linked terrorists left 20 dead.

With the situation today having Muslims who are refugees from war-torn lands and marauding ISIS Muslims cutting off anyone's heads who were not the same as they are, they are in need of a refuge, and are meeting some of the same objections, except that Jews were not trying to kill anyone in Europe.  They were BEING KILLED.    Jews were not trying to create their own caliphate nor were they on a proselytizing binge.    They were a minority group just living there, and as in the case of Germany, were already citizens. 

 I tried to get a Syrian friend with a Syrian passport  into the United State in 2013 who was in Egypt at the time, and could not do it.  His problem was that he had a Jewish mother unknown to the Syrian government, and wanted to get into either Israel or the USA as he was Jewish at heart.  He was college educated, brilliant, but not a PhD.  Now he's out of Egypt and back in Syria.  My Oregon Senator couldn't even help.  I felt  he was not a terrorist, but of course had no way of verifying this.    He remains in harm's way.  Today, this is the reasoning why refugees are not allowed into the USA in mass.  Too many have turned out to be terrorists.  It was not to be a problem with the Jews.  Then it was strictly anti-Semitism.  

Resource:  Myths and Facts; a concise record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb, page8,  9

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373131  St Louis ship, the ship nobody wanted

http://www.openu.ac.il/newsletter-eng/2013-1/exodus.html

https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007695

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005459

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Cyprus
Messages From A Syrian Jew Trapped in Egypt by Nadene Goldfoot