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From Workers’ International News, Vol.2 No.8, August 1939, p.5.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
While Nazi Germany continues in its policy of hounding out the Jews by every means in its power, pogroms, beatings, and organised terror, cargo upon cargo of refugees are forced to sail the seas in search for a place to land and live. While all the “democratic” countries keep barred their doors, denouncing the Nazis for their inhuman treatment of the terrified refugees, news came of a cargo boat with 900 men, women and children who arrived at Cuba with landing permits issued to them by Cuban consular officials in Europe. But the Cuban authorities refused to allow them to land and turned them back again to wander the seas.
We publish below an editorial which appeared in the official paper of the Communist Party Hoy (28/5/39) in order to lay bare the true role of the Stalinists whose hearts “bleeds” for the poor Jews in the pages of their press, but who close the doors just as fast as do the capitalist class. It is high time for socialist and anti-fascist public opinion to call to account and expose these Stalinist hypocrites and double-dealers.
“But we now consider as very just, very Cuban and very patriotic, the tendency of our people to demand the prohibition of excess immigration, because the miserable condition of our country and the great increase of unemployment do not permit the addition of new masses of immigrants. It is most correct that the Cuban should demand not only protection and the right to work on our island, but also the greatest vigilance so that workers, no more than employers from foreign countries, do not penetrate and consume our meagre capacities for production, labour, commerce and employment. For this reason we have supported and now support all possible methods for limiting immigration of any class whatever. Basing ourselves on this premise, we hold that in general the government should close the doors of Cuba against any sort of immigration coming to Cuba.”
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Last updated on 11.9.2005