Shocked by Trump? Churchill wanted to “Collar them all”
We’re outraged by Donald Trump’s demand to clamp down on all Muslim Immigration and his assertions that America’s Muslim communities must know about the radical jihadis in their midst. We’re ashamed by the memory of Roosevelt’s interning more than 100,000 Japanese American residents and citizens during World War II. But Winston Churchill went even farther. He ordered the interment of tens of thousands of Jewish refugees in England, labeling them dangerous enemy aliens.
I originally posted this blog November, 2015–but feel it’s even more relevant now. It’s a “distant mirror” to the mounting hysteria in the United States and Europe today.
Nationals from Germany and Austria who were living in England when World War II broke out, had already been assigned to different groupings based on their apparent threat to the UK. Category A were the “high security risks.” All 600 of them were immediately interned. Those deemed “no-security risk” in Class C, included 55,000 refugees from Nazi oppression. The great majority of them were Jewish. They were left free–at first.