"Keep silence before me, O islands, And let the people renew their strength; Let them come near, then let them speak; Let us come near together for judgment."--Isaiah 41:1
Of all the remarks philosophers have made about history, few are as simple or powerful as Hegel's comment that history is a butcher's block. It is the blood of innocents that flows most freely from that block, their cries muffled by those who shout of high politics and diplomacy. In this new age of refugee crises, we would do well to remember that no government is immune to this special deafness, not even our own.
1938
On March 11, 1938, Hitler's troops marched into Austria and terror immediately engulfed the Jews. Foreign newspapers described arrests, brutal beatings, deportations to the Dachau concentration camp, and just plain disappearances; the morgue, meanwhile, did not have space for all the suicides. Jews could not obtain entrance visas to foreign countries. Ironically, the immensity of the task of relocating the six hundred thousand Jews of Germany and Austria had furnished a pretext for stopping immigration altogether, and the victims of Nazi aggression were caught in a trap from which there was no way out.
But on March 26, elating news swept through some segments of the Austrian and German Jewish communities. Those who dared listen to foreign broadcasts heard the news that the President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt, had called for an international conference to which he invited "the nations of the world" to face the problem of the refugees. America had always been seen in Europe as the champion of freedom and was living up to its tradition. Many obviously would be permitted to emigrate to the United States, and its influence would open other doors.
