The prime minister met with the country’s last surviving member of the MS St Louis to talk about how to fight antisemitism

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Justin Trudeau has formally apologized on behalf of Canada for turning away a ship full of Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi Germany in 1939.

The German liner MS St Louis was carrying 907 German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution and it also had been rejected by Cuba and the United States. The passengers were forced to return to Europe and more than 250 later died in the Holocaust.

Trudeau called the apology long overdue.

Hitler “watched on as we refused their visas, ignored their letters and denied them entry”, the prime minister said in parliament.

“There is little doubt that our silence permitted the Nazis to come up with their own, ‘final solution’ to the so-called Jewish problem.”

He said lawmakers at the time used Canadian laws to mask antisemitism.

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“We let antisemitism take hold in our communities and become our official policy,” Trudeau said. “To harbor such hatred and indifference toward the refugees was to share in the moral responsibility for their deaths.”

In the run-up to the second world war and the ensuing Holocaust, the government heeded antisemitic sentiment and severely restricted Jewish immigration. From 1933 to 1945, only about 5,000 Jewish refugees were accepted.

The ship arrived in Canada more than six months after the Nazis in Germany attacked Jewish homes and businesses, burned 250 synagogues and killed at least 91 people, on a night which came to be known as Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass.

Before the apology, Trudeau met with Ana Maria Gordon, a St Louis passenger who lives in Canada, to talk about how the country could fight antisemitism.

“We had a tragic reminder just a few weeks ago that we need to continue to work together,” Trudeau told reporters later, alluding to the massacre of 11 people at a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh.

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The attack was believed to be the deadliest antisemitic attack in recent American history.

In Canada, incidents of antisemitism – including harassment, vandalism and violence – reached a record high in 2017, doubling from the previous year to 1,752, according to the Jewish advocacy organization B’nai B’rith.

In parliament, Trudeau called on all Canadians to “stand up against xenophobic and antisemitic attitudes that still exist in our communities, in our schools, and in our places of work.”

“Holocaust deniers still exist. Antisemitism is still far too present,” he said. “Discrimination and violence against Jewish people in Canada and around the world continues at an alarming rate.

“Sadly, these evils did not end with the second world war.”