June 28, 1943 — As Nazis had been murdering Jews on an industrial scale for two years & operating gas chambers for over a year — with millions already dead — Britain’s Home Secretary Herbert Morrison blocked the remaining life-saving immigration certificates to Mandate Palestine.
His claimed reason? The Allies must not “negotiate with the Nazis.” Ok — let’s consider the context.
By then, the Final Solution was in full operation. Yet Britain had slammed the gates shut years earlier. The 1939 White Paper gutted the legally-binding Mandate for Palestine, capping Jewish immigration to a tiny quota and requiring Arab consent for anything more (which was never coming).
And the British enforced the White Paper viciously and sometimes violently.
The Royal Navy actively intercepted refugee ships, fired on some, arrested survivors, and interned them in Cyprus or Mauritius — or turned them back toward certain death in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Struma tragedy was the direct result: nearly 800 Jews fleeing Romania were refused entry, towed out to sea, and sunk in the Mediterranean — with only one survivor (see image).
Britain was a supposed ally fighting Hitler. And in doing so, they most certainly were an ally of all humanity.
Also true: as of the 1939 White Paper, Britain became an active obstacle to Jewish survival — prioritizing Arab relations and oil interests as another appeasement of aggression after Munich.
Jews were trapped between the Nazi murder machine and a British blockade on the one place ready and legally obligated to take them in.
When Jews had no state of their own, even their supposed allies treated their survival as a diplomatic inconvenience to be managed.
@CptAllenHistory
