OTTAWA — It started as an apology for a shameful chapter in Canadian history and ended with an urgent call to fight anti-Semitism here and now.
On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a long-planned apology for the government’s 1939 decision to turn away the M.S. St. Louis, an ocean liner carrying more than 900 German Jews fleeing Europe.
His speech, just over a week after the massacre at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, showed how anti-Semitism shaped Canada’s response to Jewish refugees fleeing Germany.
“Today, I rise in this House of Commons to issue a long overdue apology to the Jewish refugees Canada turned away,” he said in Ottawa.
“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.”
Since taking office, Trudeau has delivered several high-profile apologies, so many that he’s faced the very Canadian charge of apologizing too much. Critics wonder what work it does, who benefits and whether saying “sorry” is ever really enough.
But coming in the wake of what may be the deadliest attack on Jews in American history, at a time when anti-Semitic memes and conspiracy theories are bursting into the populist mainstream, his remarks felt urgent.
The apology connected past to present, showing how the hate that animated Canada’s treatment of Jewish refugees is still ingrained in contemporary politics Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.
Trudeau said 17 percent of all hate crimes in Canada target Jewish people.
He condemned the attacks in Pittsburgh as a “heinous anti-Semitic act of violence.”
