In its second successive editorial on the St. Louis refugees, the New York Times declared today that the exiles’ troubles stemmed from the fact that they had been “hounded into exile by a dictatorship which offers scapegoats as a substitute for justice.” “The cruise of the St. Louis,” the editorial concluded, “cries to high heaven of man’s inhumanity to man.”
Heywood Broun’s syndicated column in the New York World-Telegram today was devoted entirely to the plight of the St. Louis passengers.
“If suddenly the vessel flashed an S.O.S. to indicate that the crew and the 900 passengers were in danger every other steamer within call would go hurrying to the rescue,” Broun said. “That is the rule of the sea….It would be better for them by far if the St. Louis had ripped its plates in a collision with some other craft, or if an impersonal iceberg had slashed the hull below the water line….But this is not an iceberg or a plate which has been ripped away. The passengers–men, women and children–are Jewish. It is not an accident of nature but an inhuman equation which has put them in deadly peril…And so the whole world stuffs its ears and pays no attention to any wireless.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
