You compose a different question and answer that instead."
Because, FRiend, the issue here is a definition of your word "deserved", which I have been trying at length to explain to your deliberately obtuse mind.
A synonym of "deserve" is "merit", so we might ask, did those MS St. Louis passengers "merit" entry to the USA?
The answer is clearly, by US laws which President Roosevelt was charged to enforce: no.
But they certainly deserved better treatment than the Cuban government gave them, which first offered, then revoke permission to land.
In that context, we might note that the Dominican Republic had expressed its willingness to take more Jewish refugees, but for some reason, the ship's captain never went there.
Of course, today we would look at it much differently.
Today, with perfect 20-20 hindsight we'd see a very different situation.
Indeed, FRiend, if you and I could go back in Mr. Peabody's WABAC machine and design President Roosevelt's immigration policies for him, we would have a much different sense of urgency and priorities.
We would grasp that the real issue was not a few hundred Jewish passengers, but hundreds of thousands in Western Europe and millions in Eastern Europe.
We would design programs to allow escape of millions to... somewhere... including the United States.
And for our troubles, Mr. Peabody's brilliance not withstanding, we would be tarred, feathered and road out of town on a rail by an outraged American citizenry which in no way wished to become deeply involved in European insanity.
Americans of 1939 would not believe what you and I told them was coming, and would not accept that it was their responsibility to make right all the world's evils.
Of course, we know where history went, and they would be proven wrong, but I don't so harshly condemn them, or President Roosevelt, for their desire to stay out of the world's insanities.
So, who "deserved" or "merited" what?
Well, let me ponder that some more, while I pluck these feathers out of the tar all over me...
;-)
