Syria vs. the Holocaust
As news cameras take pictures of desperate children and families fleeing the chaos in Syria, social media screams at the West in anguish to take some more action and live up to its values and responsibilities. The United States government is in the midst of a noteworthy debate on the immigration policies and logistics surrounding accepting Syrians onto U.S. soil.
On Dec. 16, 2015, President Obama compared Syrian refugees to Jewish refugees during World War II, in his speech at a naturalization ceremony, in Washington D.C., which was attended by 31 petitioners seeking U.S. citizenship. Since then, social media outlets have declared that this comparison is either completely wrong, or couldn’t be more right. Although there are several aspects of the comparison that do align, most of it, if you scrutinize both situations, they don’t compare at all.
Both Syrians and Jews had difficulties gaining entry and assimilating into the US, because of prejudices and stereotypes already established in the minds of Americans. Jews were known as the “job and money hoarders,” which caused, in 1939, the infamous MS St. Louis to be turned away from the US, leaving 908 Jews stuck at sea with nowhere to go. Syrians on the other hand, are labeled as “terrorists,” because approximately 90 percent of Syrian citizens identify as followers of Islam. Therefore, both parties faced and are facing racism and prejudice, not only in the United States, but in many countries around the world.
However, the conflict that lead to Syrians and Jews having to flee their native country in the first place come from very different causes. Syria is in the midst of a civil war between four main parties that all want to gain control of the government: ISIS, Federation of Northern Syria, Syrian Opposition (also known as “the rebels”) and Syrian government forces. Syrian citizens are fleeing for fear of being caught in the crossfire of the different parties and for fear of being killed by ISIS for not believing in their type of Islam. Jews, on the other hand, had to flee from all over Europe, because the Nazis gained control of certain countries and were actively looking for them, to kill them.
One parallel that some social media outlets have made is that both Syrians and Jews were “members of the wrong ethnic or religious group in the wrong city” and have nowhere else to go. In terms of having nowhere else to go; as it was previously mentioned, although there are many difficulties in assimilating and entering another country, namely the United States, it is still quite possible. The Jews had a harder time with this because they had to avoid large chunks of Europe that were occupied by the Nazis and faced similar amounts of prejudice all over the world as the Syrians currently do. Therefore, that’s not so much a parallel as it is a difference between the two situations. In terms of being “members of the wrong ethnic or religious group in the wrong city,” this statement is so fundamentally wrong, it’s borderline offensive. How are the Syrians the wrong religious group in the wrong city, if it was their city in the first place and their religion being defiled by radical extremists? If anything, every single one of those four parties is wrong, not the innocent refugees fleeing for their lives.
Yes, history analogies are not and have never been perfect. However, the comparisons drawn by President Obama and social media aren’t so much parallels in as many aspects for them to be considered similar. I won’t go so far as to say there aren’t any parallels at all; there definitely are some that makes the saying “history repeats itself” resonate. However, something that everyone can agree on is that both Jews and Syrians were and are being subjected to inhumane cruelty and losing their homes and livelihoods in the process of fleeing that cruelty. That is something that we can react to.