In 1939, four months before the invasion of Poland, 937 souls set sail aboard the MS St. Louis as a dark cloud of totalitarianism swept through Germany at the hands of the Third Reich. Passengers aboard the St. Louis, many of whom were Jewish, left their homes in Hamburg for what they hoped would be a new life across the Atlantic Ocean and a world away. Instead, the world turned its back.
Today, the Rohingya people in Burma suffer at the hands of dictators bent on genocide amid a world awash in indifference.
As you read my column published in the Jewish Journal, we have an opportunity to act or risk the same outcomes that led to the near-erasure of the Jewish people.
The Jewish community knows the impact of indifference all too well – let us not make those same mistakes for our Rohingya sisters and brothers.