Amanda Vanstone rears her ugly head once again in the SMH to deploy inflammatory terminology such as "queue jumping" and "destination shoppers". While true that more needs to be done to resettle refugees from camps, the notion of a "queue" is just plain misleading. Under resettlement rates as at 2009, this so-called queue would mean a 188 year waiting period for resettlement of all refugees around the world - would you wait that long??
Inspired by my recent trip to Poland, I did some searching online and found a memorial book which my late Grandfather, Moshe Halperin, helped to publish about his town, which he, like other Jews, was forced to leave during the Holocaust. My Grandfather was born in the Polish town of Mikulince, in Galicia, or Tarnapol area. The town is now part of the Ukraine, and is called Mikulintsy. Prior to WWII the town was estimated at 3200 Jews, comprising 70% of the town's population. According to the memorial book I found online for the town of Mikulince, only 30 from the town survived. Among them, my Grandfather and his sister, Sally. My Grandfather had been witness to the death of his parents, Michael & Henia, and his brother Yosef, all three of whom were shot dead before his eyes.
Mikulince was the first Polish town to be declared by the Nazis as "Judenrein" - free of the Jews. After the war, those who survived returned to the town, but there was nothing to return to. From the Mikulince memorial book, one particular entry caught my attention. It was written by Nusia Schweizer Horowitz, of Mikulince, describing her experiences during the Holocaust. Mikulince had become part of the USSR before the war ended. Of the aftermath of the war, she said, "The Second World War ended on May 9, 1945. A few months later, a repatriation agreement was signed between Poland and the Soviet Union. Former Polish citizens, ourselves among them, were allowed to return to Poland. In this way, we left the U.S.S.R. When we got to Poland, we had but one ambition. We wanted to leave European soil which had absorbed too much of our people’s blood. Young people organized into Zionist groups of all political persuasions. By every possible and impossible means, they crossed borders illegally and got to port cities such as Hamburg, Marseilles, and Genoa. Helped by the Jewish Agency emissaries from Israel (Palestine), they tried to get there. We crossed the seas in unseaworthy ships and when we reached our destination, the British authorities deported us to camps in Cyprus. Once again, we lived behind barbed wire."
I don't know the exact story of my Grandfather's arrival to Israel, but I can only assume he made his journey in the same way.
There is nothing unique, unfortunately, about the state of refugees in our world today. What is different, from the time my Grandfather and his townspeople crossed the seas, like today, in unworthy boats with no guarantee on the other end, is the refugee convention of 1951. It gives people the right to seek asylum when arriving at a border by whatever means they arrive.
Crossing the seas is dangerous. Some people, people smugglers, profit from the phenomenon. But the suffering of many who risk the journey is real. And with a 188 year "queue" for resettlement and no solution in sight, I don't blame them for trying.
check out the memorial book for my Grandfather's town, here: http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Mikulintsy/mikulintsy.html
No comments:
Post a Comment