Israel has no choice but to take into account the Jewish people's history during the Nazi era when it faces the thorny issue of responding to persecuted people who come knocking on its door. I am not speaking about people seeking a better life by looking for work in Israel, but about that relatively small group who seek shelter from nascent or full-blown genocide.
Today, when we contemplate the Holocaust, we are dogged by the almost universal conviction that much more could have been done by the world to rescue Jews who were in danger. That more was not done remains a source of pain, resentment and disappointment even now, seven decades later. Many sum up the dearth of rescue efforts with phrases like, "The world stood idly by," or perhaps, somewhat more accurately, "The world did too little too late."
A good portion of our retrospective anger focuses on the lack of aid given during the implementation of the Final Solution, which began in the second half of 1941. At the same time thoughtful observers have come to recognize that during World War II, at the height of the murdering, the very pursuit of the war itself became a mitigating factor in the failure to mount decisive rescue efforts on behalf of the Jews - although of course this cannot fully explain or excuse that failure.
Regarding the prewar period, however, a different picture emerges. At that time, Jews were the targets of discrimination, marginalization, expropriation and escalating violence, culminating in the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. The first writers who sought to explain the response of the Allies to prewar German persecution of the Jews explored this late-1930s time frame, and expressed rage and disillusionment at the free world's failure to accept more Jewish refugees. Among other things, their studies scathingly attacked the United States for setting meager immigration quotas for residents of Germany (and subsequently Austria and what today is the Czech Republic), and then doing its best to restrict refugee flow even further by interpreting the rules as rigidly as possible.
Even if we grant that until 1941, Jewish refugees in search of a haven were not yet under threat of death - and since the Germans formulated the Final Solution only later that year, there was still no solid basis to envision that such a murderous plan was in the offing - we remain incensed at the pitilessness then prevalent toward the increasingly desperate Jewish refugees. Given this bleak historical record, leading Holocaust scholars and educators often maintain that we need to recognize that the time to prevent genocide is well before the atrocities actually begin.
A group of refugees from war-torn Africa, including Darfur, recently visited Yad Vashem. As the guide during their tour of our museum, I can attest to the profoundly moving experience they underwent on the Mount of Remembrance, where they learned about the Holocaust. Obviously, their situation is not identical to that of European Jews during the Holocaust era. And yet, there are some striking similarities. Mass murder and, according to some people, including the U.S. Congress, genocide of the native Furs in Darfur has been an integral part of the Janjaweed militia's activity since the vicious ethnic conflict erupted in the region in 2003.
Some Israelis are hesitant to acknowledge the similarities between these events and the Holocaust era. We, and more pointedly our leaders, seem reluctant to recognize that our history should sensitize us to the plight of others in danger of genocide and similar crimes. While several thousand refugees from Africa fleeing such danger have found a haven here, our core attitude toward them remains ambivalent at best.
Now the Knesset is considering not only tightening restrictions on the entry of refugees into Israel, but also punishing anyone who offers assistance to a refugee. With all due care when drawing stark, simplistic historical parallels - it is hard not to discern a significant likeness between the "unwanted Jews" of the 1930s and some of the refugees now begging to find shelter in our midst, and between our own attitude toward African refugees fleeing for their lives and the attitude of the free world toward Jewish refugees on the eve of the Holocaust.
It would be unrealistic to expect that moral considerations will serve as the sole basis for the weighty decisions required of our leaders. We recognize that, especially in the tough neighborhood in which we live, this cannot happen. But even in such a neighborhood, and perhaps all the more so because of it, Israelis should agree that morality has to be a significant factor in shaping public policy. We can and should distinguish between people seeking to improve their economic circumstances, and people who are being hunted. Our Jewish tradition and historical sensibility can and should guide us as we face such vexing contemporary realities.
Dr. Robert Rozett is director of the Yad Vashem Libraries, and author of "Approaching the Holocaust, Texts and Contexts" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2005).
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