"We Cannot Turn Our Back on the Refugees From ISIS Barbarity

2015 is not 1938. The faces of the refugees are different. The languages they speak are different. The places and killers from which and from whom they are fleeing are different as well. But the refugees' anguish and despair, their fear and sense of abandonment, are very much the same.

So is the xenophobia of much of the world that wants no part of them.

Then, the refugees were Jews persecuted in Nazi Germany. Today they are Christians, Yezidis and Muslims targeted for mass killing by ISIS in the Middle East.

Then, the refugees were Jews whose synagogues and homes had been burned and ransacked during the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 9, 1938. Today, they are Christians and Muslims whose churches and mosques have been bombed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

The failure of most of the world, including the United States, to give a haven to Jews fleeing first from Nazi Germany and then from German-occupied Europe gave Hitler the assurance that no one would stop him from taking his anti-Semitic hatred to the next, foreseeable level. How many Jews murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and the other death camps might have lived if only the gates of the United States, Canada and Australia had not been closed to them?"

President Obama points out that "Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values." He is right, of course. And we must never forget that we already betrayed these values 77 years ago.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/menachem-rosensaft/we-cannot-turn-our-back-o_b_8624260.html