○  the perils of indifference  ○

the depressing tale of the st. louis is a case in point. sixty years ago, its human cargo -- nearly 1,000 jews -- was turned back to nazi germany. and that happened after the kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. and that ship, which was already in the shores of the united states, was sent back. i don't understand. roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. he understood those who needed help. why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? a thousand people -- in america, the great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. what happened? i don't understand. why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?

but then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. those non-jews, those christians, that we call the "righteous gentiles," whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. why were they so few? why was there a greater effort to save ss murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war? why did some of america's largest corporations continue to do business with hitler's germany until 1942? it has been suggested, and it was documented, that the wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of france without oil obtained from american sources. how is one to explain their indifference?

and yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, israel's peace treaty with egypt, the peace accord in ireland. and let us remember the meetin

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