Chapter 10 When the State Says “Sorry” Jewish Refugees to Canada and the Politics of Apology

The MS St. Louis and Jewish Refugees

The transatlantic ocean liner set sail from Germany with more than nine hundred Jewish passengers, most of whom were fleeing Nazi Germany. It was owned by the Hamburg America Line and heading for Havana, Cuba, “a popular stopover for refugees seeking to immigrate to the United States” (Tikkanen 2019). Though the ship was known as a luxury liner, the passengers were hardly on a relaxing tour, as indicated in the following description:

The black and white ship with eight decks held room for four hundred first class passengers (800 Reichsmarks each) and five hundred tourist-class passengers (600 Reichsmarks each). The passengers were also required to pay an additional 230 Reichsmarks for the “customary contingency fee” which was supposed to cover the cost if there was an unplanned return voyage. As most Jews had been forced out of their jobs and had been charged high rents under the Nazi regime, most Jews did not have this kind of money. Some of these passengers had money sent to them from relatives outside of Germany and Europe while other families had to pool resources to send even one member to freedom. (Jewish Virtual Library 2020)1

Originally, passengers had obtained landing certificates to Cuba, where they anticipated entry while awaiting US visas. In early May (shortly before the ship departed on May 13), however, then Cuban president Federico Laredo Brú declared invalid previously issued landing certificates. The details of this reversal are unclear. However, rumours—“which some believe were spread by Nazi agents on the island”—circulated in Cuba “that the Jewish passengers were communists and criminals,” and a large antisemitic rally held in Havana on May 8 certainly fuelled the Cuban decision (Tikkanen 2019, 2). Ultimately, Cuba allowed entry for only twenty-seven passengers, with the remainder forced to depart. As Abella and Troper explain, “Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Panama were approached in vain, by various Jewish organizations. Within two days all the countries of Latin America had rejected entreaties to allow these Jews to land. On 2 June the St. Louis was forced to leave Havana harbor. The last hope seemed to be either Canada or the United States” (1979, 179).

The ship changed course for Florida, United States, but to no avail. The United States did not even send a reply to the desperate request for entry. Canada was the country of final hope for a safe destination, but the response from the government of the day was unequivocal. Notably, “On June 7, 1939, Prime Minister Mackenzie King was in Washington. His response mirrored America’s when he stated he was ‘emphatically opposed to the admission of the St. Louis passengers’” (R.W. 2007, 13).

This was not an aberrant response. The refusal to allow the MS St. Louis passengers fleeing Nazi Germany to enter Canada was not an exception but consistent with Canadian and global public policy, ideology, and practice. An international conference that had taken place earlier specifically to address the challenge of Jewish refugees—in Evian, France, in 1938—indicated that Canada’s position, along with those of the United States and every other major country, was clear. King had stated, “The admission of refugees perhaps posed a greater menace to Canada in 1938 than Hitler” (R. W. 2007, 13). The position was consistent with the advice of Charles Frederick Blair, then director of the Immigration Branch of the Department of Mines and Resources, who asserted the view of the Canadian state on the acceptable number of Jewish refugees was that “none is too many” (Abella and Troper 2012). Antisemitism was a recognized feature of border control, but it was also deeply entrenched in civil society and daily public life in both English Canada and Québec.

The context for refugees seeking humanity included the flight from inhumanity. The fate of the Jewish refugees was not in doubt. The ship departed from Germany on May 13, 1939, approximately six months after Kristallnacht (November 9–10, 1939), the Nazi massacre of Jewish persons and property—or pogrom—organized by the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria. The event left 1,400 synagogues and 7,000 businesses destroyed, 30,000 Jews arrested and taken to concentration camps, and almost 100 Jews killed (USC Shoah Foundation 2013). This was also two months before the official start of World War II (September 1, 1939). The experience of the MS St. Louis passengers became known as the Voyage of the Damned, popularized in a 1974 book and 1976 film with this title (Thomas and Morgan-Witts [1974] 2010; Rosenberg 1976). The events took place in a context when antisemitism was widely legitimated in state policy and practice as well as among civil society. In the lead-up to and outbreak of World War II, Germany was an extreme version of state-sponsored antisemitism, but liberal democratic states were not innocent in the process, forwarding eugenic conceptions of the “nation” and various stereotypes and practices expressed in bordered restrictions. These were policies that often led to death. There is now an extensive literature documenting Canada’s normalized antisemitism, including a text cited in Trudeau’s apology, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948 (Abella and Troper 2012; also see Bialystok 2000; Cassara 2017; Vincent 2011; Ogilvie and Miller 2006; Klein 2012). Abella and Troper (2012, i) summarize the global context:

One fact transcends them all. The Jews of Europe were not so much trapped in a whirlwind of systemic mass murder as they were abandoned to it. The Nazis planned and executed the Holocaust, but it was made possible by an indifference to the suffering of the victims which sometimes bordered on contempt. Not one nation showed generosity of heart to those who were doomed, not one made the Jewish plight a national priority and not one willingly opened its doors after the war to the surviving remnant of the once thriving Jewish community. Rescue required sanctuary, and there was none.

The Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany on the MS St. Louis returned across the ocean to Europe, landing in Antwerp on June 17, 1939. After three days of negotiations, carried out with the intervention of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a Jewish advocacy organization, the passengers were allowed to disembark and resettle variously in England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Of the 907 passengers who were on the ship as it docked in Europe, 255 were killed, the majority in Nazi concentration camps. It is in this context that the apology from the government of Canada needs to be considered.

The Apology: Justin Trudeau’s Discursive Message

The 2018 state apology for the treatment of Jewish refugees in Canada in general and the passengers of the MS St. Louis in particular was, arguably, long overdue. The conditions surrounding the exact timing of the apology are hard to determine. It was presented to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. The statement also followed the October 27, 2018, violent attack on Jewish community members at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where an armed man shot and killed eleven and injured six (Ortiz 2019). However, there is little doubt that the exposure of the details of the voyage and Canada’s response is significant, largely the result of the 1983 publication of None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948, by historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper.

The apology was stated and elaborated extensively. Trudeau apologized with compassion and a sense of deep sincerity. This merits citing the text at length:

Today I rise in the House of Commons to issue a long overdue apology to the Jewish refugees Canada turned away. We apologize to the 907 German Jews aboard the MS St. Louis, as well as their families. We also apologize to others who paid the price of our inaction, whom we doomed to the ultimate horror of the death camps. We used our laws to mask our anti-Semitism, our antipathy, our resentment. We are sorry for the callousness of Canada’s response, and we are sorry for not apologizing sooner. We apologize to the mothers and fathers whose children we did not save, and to the daughters and sons whose parents we did not help. We apologize to the imprisoned Jewish refugees who were forced to relive their trauma next to their tormentors. To the scientists, artists, engineers, lawyers, businessmen, nurses, doctors, mathematicians, pharmacists, poets and students, to every Jew who sought safe haven in Canada, who stood in line for hours and wrote countless letters, we refused to help them when we could have. We contributed to sealing the cruel fates of far too many at places like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belzec. We failed them and for that we are sorry. Finally, we apologize to the members of Canada’s Jewish community whose voices were ignored, whose calls went unanswered. We were quick to forget the ways in which they had helped build this country since its inception, quick to forget that they were our friends and neighbours, that they had educated our youth, cared for our sick and clothed our poor. Instead, we let anti-Semitism take hold in our communities and become our official policy. We did not hesitate to circumvent their participation, limit their opportunities and discredit their talent. They were meant to feel like strangers in their own homes, aliens in their own land. We denied them the respect that every Canadian, every human being, regardless of origin, regardless of faith is owed by their government and by their fellow citizens. When Canada turned its back on the Jews of Europe, we turned our back on Jewish Canadians as well. It was unacceptable then and it is unacceptable now. The country failed them, and for that we are sorry. (Canada 2018b)

While Jewish organizational advocacy for the original refugees has been consistent, the motivations of such advocacy have changed significantly over time. Since the 1930s, Jewish advocacy organizations have evolved and changed. Most significantly, these organizations have increasingly linked domestic Jewish interests to foreign policy aims specifically associated with defending the practices of the state of Israel. This has not been a simple or linear process (Freeman-Maloy 2006). Originating as movements grounded in advocating for Jewish rights and equality, often as aspiring or recent immigrants or refugees, the most established Jewish advocacy organizations have over time transformed into apparatuses closely linked politically and financially to the interests of the Israeli state. Relatedly, these organizations have become closely embedded in Canadian foreign and domestic policies that advance Israeli interests in the Middle East. While this is a global phenomenon, organizations in Canada have been major players in both the national and international arenas (see Freeman-Maloy 2006; Abu-Laban and Bakan 2020, 81–108).

Each state apology has its own history, context, and implications. Though the tragedy of the MS St. Louis took place many years ago, the calls by MPs have moved relatively swiftly over recent years. Both Conservative and Liberal MPs have advocated for an apology for those turned away on the MS St. Louis. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention to apologize on behalf of the Canadian state in May 2018 at a fundraising event for the March of the Living program’s thirtieth anniversary gala (Canada 2018a). The March of the Living is a highly contested program, where the experience of the Holocaust in Poland is explicitly linked physically and emotionally to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and related interests (Peto 2010).

On September 7, 2018, Trudeau forwarded in the House of Commons the date of November 7, 2018, for the apology (Dangerfield 2018). Tories and Liberals have competed for favour among multiple constituencies, and the demonstration of a willingness to apologize for the MS St. Louis tragedy was not exempt from political claims. The recent calls for apology were first led by the late Deepak Obhrai, Tory MP for Calgary Forest Lawn, Alberta. In June 2016, Obhrai made his first call for a state apology at a World Refugee fundraising event addressing the Canadian Humanitarian Coalition on Parliament Hill. Speaking to the Canadian Jewish News, Obhrai stated that while an exhibit about the MS St. Louis had been established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the Canadian Museum of Immigration, the need for an apology remained (Lungen 2016). A long-standing conservative MP with roots in the far-right Reform Party, Obhrai was first elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2015; he failed to secure leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2017 and died suddenly in 2019. Obhrai served in Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party government as parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs for international human rights.2 His advocacy for an apology was consistent with the Tories’ ongoing efforts to align with the most pro-Israel and conservative wing of the Jewish advocacy community in Canada. The call for a state apology was later taken up in January 2017, however, and now by a Liberal MP, Anthony Housefather. This was during an emergency debate in the House of Commons regarding the US suspension of immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries (Arnold 2017). Housefather, MP for Mount Royal, Montréal, was elected in 2015 and 2019. From 2015 to 2019, Housefather served as chair of the Justice and Human Rights Committee; he has a background in law and business, mayoral politics, and advocacy for English-speaking rights in Québec. He also self-identifies as Jewish and boasts of being a competitive swim champion in the Israeli Maccabiah Games (2013; see Housefather 2021).

Trudeau’s apology was forwarded explicitly not only to remedy a past wrong but also to indicate a present promise to eradicate antisemitism as he chose to define it. The linking of the apology to a very specific association with the state of Israel is explicit. Moreover, the apology makes a point to condemn the BDS campaign, which has been advanced to recognize international law as applied to the Palestinian population (see Abu-Laban and Bakan 2020, 147–76).

Consideration of the text of the apology in further detail is helpful in explaining this context. The story Trudeau relayed aloud on November 7, 2018, drawn from a carefully prepared text to the House of Commons, was compelling and delivered with appropriate sincerity. First, Trudeau set the stage for the refugees’ departure from Germany on the MS St. Louis:

On May 15, 1939, more than 900 German Jews boarded an ocean liner known as the St. Louis. The passengers had been stripped of their possessions, chased out of their homes, forced out of their schools and banned from their professions by their own government. Their synagogues had been burnt. Their stores raided. Their clothing scarred with yellow stars, they had been forced to add “Israel” or “Sarah” to the names they had known their whole lives. Women and men who had once contributed so much to their country had been labelled as aliens, traitors and enemies—and treated as such. Persecuted, robbed, jailed and killed because of who they were. Nazi Germany had denied them their citizenship and their fundamental rights. And yet, when the St. Louis set sail from Hamburg that fateful Monday, the more than 900 stateless passengers onboard considered themselves lucky. Lucky because they each carried on board an entrance visa to Cuba, a rare chance to escape the tyranny of the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler. (Canada 2018b)

Then, Trudeau listed the failures of the Cuban and American governments to allow the refugees to disembark and the plan to seek permission to land in Canada. Trudeau did not shy away from the implications of the consequences:

But by the time the ship docked in Havana Harbour, things would take a turn for the worse. The Cuban government refused to recognize their entrance visas and only a few passengers were allowed to disembark. Even after men, women and children threatened mass suicide, entry was denied. And so continued their long and tragic quest for safety. They would request asylum from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Panama. Each said no. On June 2, the MS St. Louis was forced to leave Havana with no guarantee that they would be welcomed elsewhere. And after the Americans had denied their appeals, they sought refuge in Canada. But the Liberal government of Mackenzie King was unmoved by the plight of these refugees. Despite the desperate plea of the Canadian Jewish community, despite the repeated calls by the government’s two Jewish caucus members, despite the many letters from concerned Canadians of different faiths, the government chose to turn its back on these innocent victims of Hitler’s regime. At the time, Canada was home to just 11 million people, of whom only 160,000 were Jews. Not a single Jewish refugee was to set foot—let alone settle—on Canadian soil. The MS St. Louis and its passengers had no choice but to return to Europe, where the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and Holland agreed to take in the refugees. And then when the Nazis conquered Belgium, France and Holland, many of them would be murdered in the gruesome camps and gas chambers of the Third Reich. (Canada 2018b)

Trudeau went further, indicating that the refusal was “not an isolated incident.” He elaborated on the historical context, asserting that “Jews were viewed as a threat to be avoided, rather than the victims of a humanitarian crisis” (Canada 2018b).

All this, notably, is about history. But it is history viewed from the standpoint of a different present. The refusal to admit Jewish refugees fleeing almost certain death was perceived as something that merits shame—a political expression of an emotion commonly associated with state apologies (Ahmed 2004). As Trudeau noted, “The story of the St. Louis and the ill-treatment of Jews before, during and after the Second World War should fill us with shame. Shame because these actions run counter to the promise of our country. That’s not the Canada we know today—a Canada far more generous, accepting and compassionate than it once was” (Canada 2018b).

Trudeau’s contemporary iteration of Canadian multiculturalism, we are informed, includes Jewish refugees. Here, however, the poison in the gift of the apology is made clear.

The Poisoned Gift: History Reframed

The distinction between then and now is a point the prime minister forcefully and clearly reiterated:

Of all the allied countries, Canada would admit the fewest Jews between 1933 and 1945. Far fewer than the United Kingdom and significantly less per capita than the United States. And of those it let in, as many as 7,000 of them were labelled as prisoners of war and unjustly imprisoned alongside Nazis. As far as Jews were concerned, none was too many. (Canada 2018b)

The distance between then and now is a point of emphasis in Trudeau’s apology. He condemned the Canadian government’s knowledge of Jewish victimization during the war:

The plight of the St. Louis did not lead to a significant change in policy, nor did alarming reports from across Europe or the gruesome details of a coordinated effort to eliminate Jews. When the Allies caught wind of the concentration camps, they did not bomb the rail lines that led to Auschwitz, nor did they take concrete action to rescue the remnants of Europe’s Jewish community.

The distinction between a historic wrong and a contemporary right regarding Jewish citizenship in Canada is important in explaining the nature of the apology. It marks a transformation of Jewish experience and related targeted racism from the late 1930s to the early twenty-first century and is one of the most significant and dramatic examples of minority integration in modern history. Again, on this point, Trudeau is explicit. These were “good” refugees, but a prior governmental regime conceived of them, wrongly, as “bad” refugees (regarding the political and social construction of “good” versus “bad” Muslims, see Mamdani 2004). To the government of the day, Jews were among the least desirable immigrants; their presence on Canadian soil had to be limited. The government imposed strict quotas and an ever-growing list of requirements designed to deter Jewish immigration. Trudeau outlined the government’s response:

As the Nazis escalated their attacks on the Jews of Europe, the number of visa applications surged. Canadian relatives, embassy officials, immigration officers, political leaders—all were flooded with calls for help. Wealthy businessmen promising job creation. Aging parents vowing to take up farming. Pregnant women begging for clemency. Doctors, lawyers, academics, engineers, scientists imploring officials and the government to let them serve our country. They offered everything they owned, promising to comply with Canada’s every request. These refugees would have made this country stronger, and its people proud. But the government went to great lengths to ensure that their appeals went nowhere. (Canada 2018a)

The details of this transition in the status of Jews in the post-war period are significant, especially notable in the case of the United States, but take us beyond the scope of the current discussion (see, for example, Brodkin 1998; Bakan 2014). The specific relevance here can be summarized briefly, exemplified in a change in the racialization of Ashkenazi (or European) Jews in North America, moving from a condition of “less than white” (Brodkin 1998) to what I term “whiteness by permission” (Bakan 2014). Such permission is granted from a hegemonic, or dominant, Anglo-Christian state, where a new “Judeo-Christianity” is incorporated into the state multicultural project. The text of the apology indicates the explicit logic. Regarding the experience of Jews at home and abroad, the Canada of today, we are told, is different from the Canada of the past. Canada today is a different place: a place where citizenship is first defined, apparently, by principles and ideals, not by race or faith (Canada 2018b). Moreover, Jewish Canadians and Jews internationally are credited with helping advance Canadian multiculturalism. Trudeau stated,

This change in attitudes, this shift in policy was no accident. It was the work of Canadian men and women who dedicated their lives to making this country more equal and more just. Men and women who were children of the Holocaust, Jewish refugees, or descendants of the oppressed. These Jewish men and women took part in social struggles for fairness, justice, and human rights. At home, they furthered the great Canadian causes that shaped this country—causes that benefitted all Canadians. Abroad, they fought for democracy and the rule of law, for equality and liberty. The scope of their impact should not only be recognized, but celebrated. They were scientists and activists; ministers and singers; physicists and philanthropists. They were and continue to be proudly Jewish—and proudly Canadian. They helped open up Canada’s eyes and ears to the plight of the most vulnerable. They taught us Tikkun olam—our responsibility to heal the world. (Canada 2018a)

This marks a new “true patriot love,” as the Canadian national anthem, “O Canada,” so clearly identifies.3 Importantly, however, this is not an unconditional love; instead, it is given on certain terms and can therefore also be withdrawn. Enter Canada’s close relationship with Israel, a state where all the major political parties are committed to the politics of Zionism.4

The relationship to the state of Israel is identified and named in the apology as a key factor in changing Canada’s relationship to its Jewish immigrants and citizens. Trudeau noted, “It would take new leadership, a new world order, and the creation of the State of Israel, a homeland for the Jewish people, for Canada to amend its laws and begin to dismantle the policies that had legitimized and propagated anti-Semitism” (Canada 2018b).

Other refugee groups, then as now, have not been offered such a warm welcome to Canada, even retroactively. And significantly, neither have Palestinian refugees to Israel or to Canada ever been afforded such humanitarian praise and recognition. Indeed, Canada has a long-standing alliance with Israel. And even in terms of minimal recognition of the rights of Palestinians regarding the land from which they have been exiled since 1948, there is at best a checkered and inconsistent history (see Abu-Laban and Bakan 2020; Freeman-Maloy 2011).

Trudeau quite rightly and legitimately stated in the apology that antisemitism, while differing historically, is a thing not only of the past but of the present. But in referencing Canada’s close alliance with Israel, there is a nearly explicit assumption that criticism of Israel is equivalent to antisemitism. This is not only inaccurate; it is dangerously misleading and carries serious and contemporary political consequences. The apology targeted the BDS movement, adding poison to the gift of the apology. Trudeau said, “Holocaust deniers still exist. Anti-Semitism is still far too present. Jewish institutions and neighbourhoods are still being vandalized with swastikas. Jewish students still feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable on some of our college and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation” (Canada 2018a).

The BDS movement is based on a call for the implementation of three demands regarding the rights of Palestinians, all of which are named in United Nations policies (Masri 2017). It was originally advanced in 2005 following a unified call of 170 diverse Palestinian organizations and has widely resonated in Canada and internationally, including among many Jewish organizations. The call is based on three central demands of the state of Israel, as follows:

1. 1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. 2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194. (BDS 2005)

The conflation of a movement for Palestinian rights with contemporary and historic antisemitism marks a dangerous minimization of Nazi terror and exposes the selective humanitarianism of the apology for the refusal to accept refugees on the MS St. Louis.

Moreover, there is a significant presence of Jewish Canadians in the BDS movement, whose presence is also obfuscated in the apology. For example, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a pan-Canadian Jewish organization, has explicitly adopted and campaigns to support the BDS call (IJV 2021). However, such Jewish Canadians were apparently to be written out of the apology for the antisemitic crimes of Canada’s past and present. Indeed, upon the announcement of the apology, IJV released a statement challenging the manipulation of historic injustice against Jewish refugees while Canada continued to deny refuge to others in desperate need of humanitarian asylum:

While Trudeau’s apology is a welcome step towards righting a historic wrong, such words ring hollow in light of Canada’s continued harmful practices toward migrants, refugees and asylum seekers and its active role in perpetuating mass forced migration in the first place. This apology comes within a week of an announcement by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) of plans to substantially increase deportations of migrants by 25–35%. IJV is dismayed that the Liberal government would apologize for wrongs committed in the past, yet commit to increasing such practices today, many of which have resulted in torture and sometimes death in recent years. (IJV 2018)

The IJV statement also challenged Trudeau’s claimed adherence to Jewish spiritual and moral tradition and the associated hypocrisy:

Within the Jewish Tradition, there is a concept called T’shuvah, or “making amends.” This concept is prefaced on the immediate halting of the harmful action followed by concrete, tangible steps to rectify it, including a steadfast commitment not to repeat such harms in the future. For Trudeau’s apology to be meaningful, he must commit to ending the ongoing detention of migrants, that sees thousands of people—including children—jailed in immigrant detention centers each year, at times indefinitely, on stolen Indigenous land. (IJV 2018)

Other statements similarly objected to the way the apology was framed and forwarded by the Trudeau government. One of these was offered by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), a national organization that also supports BDS among multiple justice campaigns. While delivering this long-overdue apology, Trudeau shifted the conversation to condemn Canadians who support BDS and legitimate criticism of Israel. CJPME stated, “BDS is a legitimate non-violent movement designed to put economic pressure on the Israeli government until it respects Palestinian human rights. [. . .] Indeed, the objectives of BDS are fully aligned with official Canadian foreign policy and international law and condemn unjust behavior” (2018).

Further, a letter was sent to Trudeau by over two hundred university and college faculty in Canada:

This letter concerns Canada’s recent apology for turning away the MS St. Louis in 1939. First, thank you for acknowledging Canada’s complicity in the murder of hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. On the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and after the recent terrorist attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue, it is more important than ever to pay close heed to Canada’s own history of bigotry and to recommit to preventing such tragedies from ever happening again. For this reason, we must register our deep disappointment with your apology’s inclusion of condemnation for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) and your equation of BDS with the worst kind of hate crimes. (Ghabrial and Raziogova 2018)

The letter continues to note that actual antisemitism remains unabated, while the apology misrepresents as a threat “peaceful advocacy for Palestinian human rights.” The signatories identify how the prime minister has in fact helped “perpetuate a chilling, anti-democratic climate on campuses, one in which dissenting voices and peaceful protest are not welcome” (Ghabrial and Raziogova 2018). These challenges to the apology indicate a perception that it was insincere and inauthentic in both content and tone. These challenges also indicate that the apology suggested the Liberal administration used the opportunity to advance its own political aims. This was indicated by associating the tragedy of the MS St. Louis incident—for which the Canadian state was directly complicit—with contemporary alliances and interests in the Middle East.

Conclusion

In concluding, a note on my positionality is in order. I am Jewish. Both of my late parents were born and raised in New York City and were the children of Polish and Russian refugees who fled violent racist programs in their home countries. Our relatives who were unable to leave Eastern Europe are unaccounted for, assumed to have died in the camps. My namesake, my aunt Basha, is only known to me as someone who died in Hitler’s gas chambers. My parents changed their last name—from Bakanofsky to Bakan—and spoke Yiddish to each other as a secret form of communication. We understood that Yiddish was a kind of special code between our parents, a way to keep their six children from understanding private conversations. However, on reflection, the fact that as children we did not learn to speak fluent Yiddish served to limit the visible and audible markers of our Jewish family in public life. My parents hoped we would grow up in a world where we could avoid the daily experiences of antisemitism with which they and their parents were painfully familiar.

I am also an active supporter of the BDS movement. I supported in 2005 the founding in Toronto of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, an organization that advanced the BDS call in Canada. Trudeau’s apology, for those of us who support the BDS movement, is no comfort. Instead, it comes as a poisoned gift, a dangerous endorsement of the dehumanization of Palestinian and other refugees wrapped in the sorrows and tears of past injustices of those close to my own history, cynically manipulated to provide a shiny exterior. There is a context of poisoned gifts—from the biblical story of Adam and Eve to the fairy tale of Snow White. There are, however, few lessons inspired by the endings that emerge from religious texts or mythical tales. There is no Almighty God or the kiss of a prince that will reverse or redress either the historical or the present realities of Canada’s denial of the rights and claims of refugees for humanity, compassion, and solidarity.

State apologies generally, and the apology for refusing to grant asylum to the passengers of the MS St. Louis specifically, remain an important part of the current political landscape. We need to study them collectively and separately but in so doing attend to the details of context. Such apologies have important implications beyond the specific historical events and the painful experiences of the harmed populations. If offered with sincerity and authenticity, state apologies can serve, at least theoretically, to warn against harmful actions toward vulnerable populations in the present and future. These vulnerable groups include refugees and those living with precarious immigration status—groups deserving of and demanding human rights. But tragically, with each step forward, there can also be a step back.

In the case of the Jewish question, the complexities of Israel/Palestine need to be addressed and named. The BDS movement, condemned widely by Liberals and Tories alike (see Abu-Laban and Bakan 2020) and so dangerously targeted by Trudeau in this apology, is not only in no way antisemitic—it is an inspiring movement of solidarity. The movement, grounded among and led by Palestinians, has successfully forged a broad, diverse, and effective international campaign to advance the human rights of Palestinians. The BDS movement also has the potential to inspire real and lasting peace in a newly imagined Middle East. The threat to the existing powers that this social movement has garnered, forged from grassroots organizing and public education, can be read perhaps as a tribute to its effectiveness. We can learn from these moments of apology, even in the form of a poisoned gift, to find inspiration in the words unspoken and search for hope of some real redress.

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