Mr. Speaker, I rise to join my fellow members for today's solemn proceedings, humbled and honoured by the presence of some of those who were wronged by the terrible and fateful decision of the Canadian government, almost 80 years ago, to turn away the passengers of the MS St. Louis when they sought a safe harbour from Hitler's Germany.
It is a sign of a healthy society to be able to look at history clearly and see both the light and the dark, to celebrate our achievements, but to also mourn our failings. There is no shame, as a country, in acknowledging shameful acts in our past. The real shame would be in forgetting them and not learning from them.
While it is true that apologies cannot change the past, occasions such as this, marked by remembrance, reflection and regret, can help guide our future.
The unique horror of the Holocaust, in which more than a quarter of the passengers of the MS St. Louis perished, produced the rallying cry “Never again”. That is not a passive hope; it is a call to action. It commands us to remember how, within the lifetime of some in this room, a civilized modern society succumbed to a primitive fear and turned its vaunted industrial prowess against its Jewish citizens and its neighbours.
“Never again” requires us to measure our actions today, not against the worst atrocities of that time but against the gradual process of dehumanization that preceded it and made the Holocaust possible. That insidious process of dehumanization was not confined to Germany or even to Europe. It was the same process that motivated Canadians, right up to the highest levels of government, to deny the MS St. Louis a safe harbour and to drive its desperate passengers back across the Atlantic into the gathering storm of war.
The men who turned away the MS St. Louis likely could not have foreseen the magnitude of the genocide that was on the horizon in Europe.
However, the new discriminatory laws and increasing acts of terror against Jewish citizens and the relentless and obsessive anti-Semitism of the Nazi government, which forced the passengers of the MS St. Louis to seek shelter across the Atlantic, leaves Canada with no excuses, not just in hindsight but at the time, for ignoring the dire threat they faced.
Historian Irving Abella has noted the bitter irony that:
To the condemned Jews of Auschwitz, Canada had a unique meaning. It was the name given to the camp barracks where the gold, jewellery and clothing taken from inmates were stored. It represented life, luxury and salvation. It was also isolated and unreachable, as was Canada in the 1930s and 40s.
To the passengers of the MS St. Louis, however, Canada was not geographically isolated or unreachable. They were there, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, searching for safety. It was not our lands, but it was the minds at the time that were isolated. It was hearts that were unreachable.
We apologize for closing our hearts and minds and our shores to the more than 900 Jewish passengers of the MS St. Louis.
Their plight has been called “The Voyage of the Damned”, and Canada was responsible for turning them away.
Canada was not alone in doing so. Cuba and the United States also turned the St. Louis away before it approached Canada. However, their callousness in no way excuses our own. There is no diminishment of individual guilt in such a shared failure. The Canadian government was responsible to the full extent of its own cold, deliberate and official inhumanity.
It is comforting to think that today we have learned the lesson of the MS St. Louis, but this apology should not make us comfortable. On the contrary, it should grab us and shake us. It should be an alarm that jolts us out of our daily routines and demands that we look at our world today through the lens of that experience.
True, Canada is not the same country it was in 1939. We have welcomed more people from more parts of the world than the government of that day could have possibly imagined, including 40,000 European Jews in the years immediately after World War II. Our peaceful pluralism today leaves no room for discrimination, and both the overt and subtle anti-Semitism that prevailed in that era no longer have any place in our laws and customs.
However, that does not mean that anti-Semitism and other virulent forms of intolerance no longer exist here. Anti-Semitism is not a relic of the 1930s. It was not eradicated with the defeat of the Nazis. It is, unfortunately and sadly, very much alive today.
In Canada, anti-Semitism accounts for the vast majority of religiously motivated hate crimes and the number of such crimes has gone up in the past few years.
On social media, in parades and public demonstrations, even on our own university campuses, we have seen a disturbing resurgence and even normalization of anti-Semitic rhetoric. We know from painful experience that where anti-Semitism is tolerated, anti-Jewish violence follows. This was brought home again, achingly, in a murderous attack at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue only days ago.
We see it also overseas where anti-Semitic rhetoric, blood libels and conspiracies are still used by repressive regimes to distract from their own failures and to direct the frustrations of their people outward against the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel, whose citizens, as a result, live under constant threat.
In 2011, under our Conservative government, these events were commemorated by the unveiling of a memorial monument at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, in Halifax.
Designed by Daniel Libeskind, who also designed the National Holocaust Monument just a few blocks from the House, the Wheel of Conscience is a polished, stainless steel wheel, incorporating four connecting moving gears labelled anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism and hatred. As one gear turns, it drives the others, showing their inextricable relationship.
Anti-Semitism has always been the first recourse of demagogues and the favourite fuel of tyrants. It takes many forms, from crude caricatures reminiscent of Nazi propaganda to the more sophisticated new anti-Semitism that singles out Israel among all the countries in the Middle East for disproportionate condemnation. It is why synagogues, Jewish schools and Jewish community centres in Europe, and indeed around the world, are once again forced to employ armed guards and to discourage their members from wearing identifying clothing or symbols.
As we witness this rise of anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance and discrimination, we cannot again stand by impassively. We cannot again watch and fail to act, as ancient prejudice mutates into new violence.
Barely four months before Mr. King's government decided not to offer the MS St. Louis refuge, a member of the House tabled a petition bearing more than 127,000 signatures, protesting against Jewish immigration to Canada.
Even in 1939, many Canadians knew that the seemingly rational arguments masked an irrational fear. They knew the right answer to the moral question posed by the plight of the MS St. Louis. Some, like historian George Wrong, spoke out bravely, petitioning the government on behalf of the passengers, but many more lacked the courage to give voice to their consciences.
We are here today because Canada was judged for its actions at that critical time and was found at fault. Every generation is tested. Every generation has to answer some hard questions and resist intolerance.
How will we respond when we face that test? What will we do to protect those fleeing genuine threats of violent persecution today? How far will we go to defend the religious freedom of our fellow citizens here at home?
This past Saturday, Canadians filled synagogues across our country as part of the #ShowUpForShabbat campaign. Jewish or not, all were welcomed by a community whose home in Canada predates Confederation by more than a century. It was a heartfelt show of support, demonstrating to our Jewish friends and neighbours that we will stand by them when they feel most vulnerable.
It was also a tangible expression of our oft-stated commitment to freedom and the rule of law. However, if that commitment is real, if the apology today is not just empty words, we must show the same willingness to stand, not just against violence but against hatred, intolerance and all violations of fundamental human rights.
With the lesson of history fresh in our minds, we have no excuse to failing to give voice to our convictions and making our conscience, and not expediency, our compass.
Canada should have been guided by that spirit in 1939. Canada should have offered sanctuary to the passengers of the MS St. Louis. For our failure to do so then, we stand with the government today in its apology. Never again must none be too many.
