The pictures of refugees— children, adults, or elderly persons—walking along the railway tracks or the roads, carrying a bundle on their backs, crawling under barbed wires to cross borders, and those, even more tragic, of people packed into makeshift boats, drifting on sea, have finally awakened consciences. The image of Aylan, the drowned Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach, putting a face to the thousands of children and adults disappeared at sea in the summer indifference, has become the symbol of that tragedy.
While European leaders writing a term paper try to draw up a solution in order to face this challenge, undoubtedly one of the major ones at the turn of this new century, we cannot help but recall other images, those of the millions of Jews fleeing Nazism, who could not find, a few exceptions aside, a single port to accept them. The names of these boats, like the St Louis or the Patria which plied the seas in search of safety, or of the ships which, like the Struma, were lost with all hands, reveal the historical indifference of the world of that time to the incoming tragedy.
For this reason, we must be among the first to gather our forces and demand from our governments to open the borders of Europe to these refugees who, if they want to survive, have no choice other than to flee their country in war where many of them are persecuted.
Let us gather our forces and join the cortège of demonstrations just starting.
