Welcome/Not Welcome

Welcome

In 1938, Germany welcomed the world. As the travel advert below advises us, “Here you will find 20th Century progress” (perhaps signaled by the swastikas flapping in the background). 

Passengers were welcomed aboard Hapag German ships to England, France, and Germany. Among the ships was the Bremen, which, interestingly enough, served kosher food to Jewish passengers. Officials of the steamship line said that

there are usually thirty or forty Jews aboard on a trip and that about a dozen of these want kosher meals. On a recent westward crossing, the Bremen carried two rabbis.

The officials of the German line are by no means astonished at the extent of their Jewish trade. "There are a lot of American Jews who are regular customers," Mr. Weickum told us.

"And Jews sailing from Germany probably feel that they ought to take a German ship.” (1)

Another of the Hapag ships was the St. Louis, which offered a round trip to England or Ireland in Third Class for a mere $136.

Not Welcome 

Less than a year later, the same MS St. Louis was involved in one of the most outrageous episodes of the pre-war years:

In May 1939, the German liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to Havana, Cuba. The 937 passengers were almost all Jewish refugees. Cuba's government refused to allow the ship to land. The United States and Canada were unwilling to admit the passengers. The St. Louis passengers were finally permitted to land in western European countries rather than return to Nazi Germany. Ultimately, 254 St. Louis passengers were killed in the Holocaust. (2)

Welcome

 The year 1938 saw the introduction of the Kindertransport program, which transferred Jewish children from Germany and elsewhere in Europe to safety in Great Britain. Here’s The New Yorker’s take on it:

(3)

Not Welcome

While Jews were (allegedly) enjoying kosher cuisine aboard German ships and welcomed aboard German railroad trains which would later serve to transport their fellow religionists to the death camps in Eastern Europe, there were places in the United States where one could not conceivably obtain a knish or a piece of matzo. Here are just a few resorts in the Northeastern United States advising in their advertisements in The New Yorker in 1938 that they catered to a “restricted clientele,” a coded term for "no Yids allowed":

Welcome  

Headline in The Guardian:

White Afrikaner brought to US by Trump administration has history of antisemitic posts

Charl Kleinhaus posted on X in 2023 that “Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group.” In another post last fall, he shared a rightwing, nationalist YouTube video that was later removed, titled: “‘We’ll shoot ILLEGAL Immigrants!’ – Poland’s Illegal Islamic immigrant solution,” with clapping emojis. (4)

Not Welcome

Over the past several months, Mr. Trump has revoked the legal status afforded to some Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion and Afghan citizens who helped the American war effort in their country. He has also canceled the protected status of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who fled instability and political violence back home — potentially leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

Perhaps most prominent has been Mr. Trump’s targeting of nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to stay under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. (5)

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To sum up the year 1938:

*

It’s too early to sum up the year 2025—and it’s only going to get worse. 

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Coda

Morris Cohen decided to retire from the schmatte trade. 

"What are you going to do with yourself?" his friend Irving inquired. 

"I'm going to join the New York Athletic Club," Morris replied.

"But they don't admit Jews."

"However, I'm going to become a member!" Morris was emphatic.

For the next two years he worked on his project. He had his name legally changed. He moved from the Bronx to Fairfield, Connecticut. He took elocution lessons to sound like a lockjawed Yankee. And he got a new wardrobe from Brooks Brothers.

On the day of his appointment for an interview at the NYAC, he was dressed in a blue blazer, white button-down shirt, striped tie, gray slacks, and penny loafers.

"Thank you, for coming in, Mr. Maurice Cabot," said the club manager. "I see that your application is all filled out. You reside in Fairfield and are retired. May I ask what business you were in before retiring?"

"I was an entrepreneur in women's couture."

"It says here that you are married . . ."

"With one daughter--Muffy--who attends Bryn Mawr."

"Very good school. What sport are you interested in?"

"I thought I'd take a swing at squash racquets, if you don't mind a pun." 

"You would be very welcome. Now, you must excuse me, but I must ask a personal question. What is your family's religious affiliation?"

"Goyim."

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 (1)  The New Yorker, May 14, 1938

(2)  https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis

  Also, see my blog: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2018/06/spirits-of-st-louis.html 

(3)  December 10, 1938.

(4)  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/south-african-refugee-antisemitic-posts

(5)  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/trump-deportation-protections-venezuelans-refugees.html?searchResultPosition=2

Special Cover-up

George Orwell’s most famous essay is “Politics and the English Language,” written in 1946.* He wrote out of concern that “the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language” and in hope that “one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. . . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. 

The workings of euphemism are wonderful: “pacification” has the root meaning “making peaceful”; “rectification” has the root meaning “making right.” Who can oppose such claims? And surely “elimination” of the “unreliable” has to be beneficial.

Euphemism is from a Greek word meaning "good speech.” The substitution of nice terms to cover up nasty deeds (as exemplified above) is one way to accomplish that mind trickery. Another way is the use of very general and/or abstract words to deflect audience’s attention from the dirty specifics.** 

Putin’s war against Ukraine can serve as an object lesson in euphemism. For one thing, the word “war” has been outlawed in Russia; Putin has called his invasion a “special operation.” What can be vaguer than something called “an operation”? What exactly goes on in “an operation”? The use of the term when applied to a surgical practice (probably the most used application of the term), although describing an action that is designed to have a beneficial outcome, is still a cover-up of the nasty work of cutting into a patient’s body. Beyond medicine, the vagueness of “operation” can denote any kind of action: the “operation” of a motor vehicle, for example. 

And the modifier “special”: the “operation” is not indiscriminate or ordinary, but purposely focused, like a “special” gift for a “special” person.

Meanwhile, shells are landing on civilian targets, millions are fleeing their homes, or hiding out in improvised shelters—and the death toll mounts.

*

Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB man, may be an expert in spycraft, but he is no historian. His arguments about the relationship of Russia and Ukraine (and Russians and Ukrainians) is fraught with error. In a speech in February, Putin asserted that 

Ukraine and Russia are, in historical terms, essentially inseparable.

“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said. . . . “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians.”***

Ok, let’s for the moment forget that what Putin said is not historically correct. Let’s instead consider that that is what Putin sincerely believes. Which is the real interesting thing. If Putin can unleash a war against a populace he believes to be his own people—that is native Russians—what carnage and destruction would he unleash against the natives of Ukraine if he believed that they were really Ukrainians?

***

* https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

** Consider here these two examples of Nazi euphemism:

“As part of the final solution…Jews fit for work” would be separated by sex and forced to do road construction, “in the course of which the majority will doubtless succumb to natural wastage.”

Dear Party Comrade Rademacher! On my return trip from Berlin I met an old party comrade, who works in the east on the settlement of the Jewish question. In the near future many of the Jewish vermin will be exterminated through special measures.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/03/24/wannsee-the-road-to-the-final-solution-peter-longerich/

*** https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/2/23/22945781/russia-ukraine-putin-speech-transcript-february-22

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End Note:

"The war is framed in Russia in terms of forcing peace upon Ukraine."

Masha Gessen

The New Yorker