November 01, 2017
by Jacqueline Mendels Birn
The current stories of migrants around the world remind me of World War II and the millions of Jewish migrants, desperate to escape from Europe, with nowhere to go because no country was willing to accept them. We all know about the Kindertransport (my mother’s cousins were on it in 1938, and I have distant cousins and their descendants who made a home in England).
My father talked of going to Curaçao, but it was too late: men were not allowed to leave France after 1940. In any case, who knows if that Dutch colony would have accepted us, a Jewish Dutch family. At that time, my father said, “We will all live together or die together.”
After the war was over, my father was able to write to his cousin Sieg Mendels. Sieg was a strong Zionist. He had moved to Palestine, married a Dutch Zionist in a kibbutz, and settled down in Palestine. Sieg wanted us to migrate to Palestine. My father answered that he was thinking about it, but first, he wanted to rebuild his business in Paris.
While we were in hiding, my father gave us the names and addresses of his cousins in San Mateo, California. My sister and I learned their names and addresses, and we might have emigrated to California if we were alive and my parents were rounded up and deported.
The current migration situation reminds me very much of what we went through in the 1940s. Whole families are trying to escape wars, bombing, and destruction of their homes and villages and towns
The refugees live in camps, and they have nowhere to go. The migrants cross the Mediterranean Sea and drown if the flimsy boats cannot carry them. They end up on the coast of Turkey, Sicily, and other shores.
Now, even with legitimate visas, the United States does not want them. They are considered enemy aliens even when they served as interpreters and translators for American and European officials. France and Germany are saturated with refugee camps and temporary housing. The migrants have to learn foreign languages and eat foods that they never had in their previous lives. It is true that there have been terrorist attacks and the vetting system is not perfect. It has accepted migrants who never should have been accepted. It seems to me that the planet Earth is in turmoil (again), and no government seems to be able to cope with the situation.
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