FOLLOWING THE THOUGHT

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "HERE'S A THOUGHT !!!!":

18:27
No one asked that after the World Wars. As kids from that exodus, we were called DP's but there wasn't the rancour and just plain meanness that I am seeing today. And it all seems to stem from a single passport found [ left ? ] on the scene
in Paris. There are thousands fleeing the same sort of terror.
If you must nit-pick, start re-uniting families with folks already here.

Posted by Anonymous to  Our Town and Its Business at 16 November 2015 at 20:17

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 At the end of the second world  war, most Europeans were exhausted and thankful to have survived. Hundreds  of thousands  were " displaced persons"... people without statehood.

So much horror was revealed at war's end, it seems no-one asked how did this group 

become "Displaced"

Displaced persons were not the only ones with the need to pick up the pieces and get back to the business of normal living. It was a long war. Everything normal was suspended throughout

There was no permanence.

We thought the war was over. 

The  beginning  had a different perspective. I was twelve years old. My re-call seems clear but it may be faulty. 

When Italy joined the axis, Italian males without British status, were rounded up and transported to interment camps in Canada. 

Unlike Japanese in Western Canada ,women and children were allowed to stay and continue to operate the family business. In Scotland,  that was fish and chips, coffee shops and ice cream parlours mostly in seaside resorts. 

Pieroni's had a billiard hall. 

Italians in business,  British subjects, were required to post a sign declaring themselves to be "British Subjects".  That term was not familiar. 

There was no public debate about husbands,fathers and brothers being taken from their families and transported to Canada. No discussion of  the merits

.

Able-bodied Brits were also conscripted but they had to wear a uniform and go off in a different direction.....to fight. 

In a number of ways, Italians had pretty much formed their own community. When a boy or girl reached marrying age, somebody else went off to Italy to find a spouse. 

It may have been cultural. It may have been financial. No offence was taken. I never heard any talk. It was just a given. One of those things taken for granted.

Like rounding up men who were not British subjects and taking them to a place where they could not possibly communicate with their country of origin which was now the enemy. 

At one point during the war, an Italian prisoner-of-war camp was established in the sandy hills on the edge of town. It bore no resemblance to P.O.W. Camps we saw in movies. 

The prisoners  worked on farms during the day. In the evening they sat on the hills at the side of the road and sang songs accompanied by an accordion. Local girls promenaded on the other side of the road. Pretty much like boys and girls the world over. 

Clearly no-one thought of the prisoners as a threat to national security. No barbed wire fences  kept them contained. They wore dark, distinctive uniforms and they certainly were not free to walk about in the town. But they weren't suffering any great discomfort either.

So why am I writing about that now?

Well I think it is irresponsible of our government to deny that hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to escape from genocide because they are Christian, do not provide easy access cover for terrorists to obtain entry into our country.     

The terrible events in Paris last week-end were not anticipated. 

It makes sense to me that government should take a second to think before re-assuring the country that new circumstance has been considered before offering reassurance previous plans are adequate to ensure national security.

It may just be optics

In a crisis of war, sometimes, optics are all there is. 

That's another story .