Obama Reverses Roosevelt Decision, Will Take Refugees Fleeing Nazis

Analysts believe the gesture has more to do with satisfying certain domestic constituencies than with any moral sense.

Washington, November 10 – US President Barack Obama today ordered the State Department to issue entry visas to the more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany aboard the MS St. Louis, departing from the policy of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

The St. Louis embarked from Hamburg, Germany in May 1939 with 937 Jews aboard, most of whom had arranged for passage to Havana, Cuba. However, the Cuban government altered its immigration and refugee policy before the ship arrived, and retroactively voided the visas of most of the passengers. Captain Gustav Schröder eventually took the St. Louis toward US shores, but Roosevelt refused to admit them. The Canadian government similarly rebuffed such requests. Various European countries agreed to take the Jews, but eventually most of those countries were in turn overrun by the Nazis. The move to issue the entry permits comes amid questions of policy surrounding other beleaguered refugee and migrant populations.

“This is an opportunity to right an historic wrong, and I am proud as an American, as a member of an ethnic minority, and as a human being to finally grant these entry permits to people so desperately in need of a safe haven,” said Obama at a ceremony on the East Lawn of the White House. “I believe President Roosevelt made a grave error, and it is time both to own that and to take the necessary steps to fix it.” Obama said he would personally affix his signature stamp to each of the 937 documents if necessary.

Passengers say that while they appreciate the gesture, it may be too late for some of them. “One man slit his wrists and jumped overboard” when Cuba and the US refused to let them in, said Meyer Krakov, 81, who left Frankfurt in March 1939.

Analysts believe the gesture has more to do with satisfying certain domestic constituencies than with any moral sense. “The State Department itself acknowledged the situation in 2009 and issued a formal apology then,” noted former New York Times correspondent R. W. Apple, Jr. “This is little more than a photo-op, because even almost a thousand refugees aren’t going to make such an impact demographically. The U.S. has more than three hundred million people. Also they’re white and came from Europe, and American culture is no longer antisemitic. Basically this kind of thing was going to happen anyway over time. The point here is that Obama can now turn to the forces agitating for greater openness to refugees from, say, Syria, and claim that he’s taking steps to let refugees in.”

Immigration officials reported today that of the 937 sets of forms, only about 70 might be necessary.