Dick Durbin: “the year was 1939, the Nazis were in control of Germany, and Kristallnacht had occurred. It was the night of broken…”

“the year was 1939, the Nazis were in control of Germany, and Kristallnacht had occurred. It was the night of broken glass. It was the night when the Nazi storm troopers literally invaded the shops and homes of the Jewish citizens who were living in Germany. They harassed, beat, and killed them. It was pretty clear where this was headed. The Nazis had targeted Jewish people and those Jewish people-- innocent people--were going to be their victims. Some of them decided the only place to go was to leave Germany and to come to the United States of America. They boarded a ship called the SS St. Louis and set sail for the United States. First, they arrived in Havana, Cuba, seeking refuge to escape the Nazis. The Cubans turned them away. They next came to Miami, FL, and asked the United States of America if these 900 innocent Jewish citizens of Germany could seek refuge and become refugees in the United States. They were turned away. With no other alternative, they went back to Germany. The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, kept track of what happened to those passengers on the SS St. Louis--those people seeking refuge in the United States. At least one-third of them died in the Holocaust, killed by the Nazis. At that time, Senator Robert Wagner of New York came to the floor and asked: Couldn't we--at least as a nation--agree to allow 10,000 Jewish children to come to safety in the United States to escape the Nazis in Germany?…”