It was the shoes that got me. Tiny ones made of leather that had walked way too many miles of hardship for a dozen lifetimes, let alone one that had been so short. Then there were the dolls and toys. Treasured possessions that little hands had clung to, offering a glimmer of joy and play in a world that had otherwise been saturated with hard labour. Auschwitz. It pained my soul. "How could this have happened?" I asked as we walked around the camp, from the gas chambers to the hellish sleeping quarters and to photographs of prisoners hanging on the walls, like ghosts, haunting the place. "How could the world have stood by and watched as this happened?" It blew my mind. It still does. Train upon train of people being herded like animals to the slaughterhouse. And yet here we go again...except this time, instead of shipping Jews off to extermination camps, deporting them to their deaths, we're barricading people out. People that are running for their lives, for the lives of their children. We're strangling them with red tape and inaction as they beg for help, for asylum, for refuge from the madness of the homeland they're fleeing from. How could this happen?
Today, I cried for little Aylan Kurdi as I saw his lifeless little body washed up on a beach in Turkey. I cried for his five-year-old brother, Galip and for his mother Rehan who also died with him on that beach. I cried for their father, Abdullah, who survived in body at least. I'm sure his heart and his soul are crushed. As a mother, when I saw Aylan lying there, face down, I wanted to pick him up and rub the wet sand from his baby-soft skin. I wanted to dry him off and give him a cuddle, tell him everything was going to be OK. The same age as my little boy, the war in Syria is all he ever knew in his too-short life. It had already begun when he was born and he died trying to escape it. A child. An innocent, beautiful child.
Here we are again, 70 years later and the images are scarily similar. How could this happen? The same question...over and over and over...Who's going to answer it?
Syrian refugees trying to get on a train in Hungary
Jews in Holland being deported to Auschwitz
Syrians travelling from Turkey to Greece
Women and children on deportation ship in Greece, March 1943
The problem is we are not allowed to say what I am about to say.
ReplyDeleteDear Refugee. You country and culture has failed you. If you want to come into our country and live within our culture you must abandon most, if not all, of yours.
Abandon you country. Abandon your culture. What you know did not work.
It's not your religion. It's not your society. It's not your government. It's all three.
Here in your new home you must assimilate. Please, by all means. Pray to whoever you want. But your outward life must be like ours.
Why? Because what you and your people were doing, believing and associating with is failing. Do not bring your failure to my country. We have enough of our own problems. We don't want you adding to them.
So please, make yourself at home. My home. Not yet yours. And while you are in my home you will live by my rules.
1. Women are equal to men. No exceptions. Even in the home. Even in how they dress. If you can't agree, please leave.
2. Politics and Religion do not mix. Ever. For any reason. If you can't agree, please leave.
3. You being here will cost our country a lot of money. Your new neighbors pay that money. Act appreciative and teach your children to be appreciative. If you can't do that, please leave.
You have no right to be here. None. It only by our good nature that we are allowing you to live here. If you assimilate to our culture, our language and our customs you are welcome to call this place your home also.
Welcome!
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But we can't say that. We can't require that. 100 years ago when people from "strange" worlds and strange cultures came to America... one the first things they did was to take an American name. Bob, David, Henry.... they knew that success was through integration and assimilation. Not ghettos of people speaking the same language from the homeland. Living within the same cultural rules.
This isn't racist. This isn't xenophobic. It's just the facts. It's how you make this work.
But, because we in the west live in a politically correct society (one of our many failures.) we can't even mention the way make this situation with millions of refugees, work.