Who would ever have imagined it! When we look at history we should not have been surprised. The word, diaspora, dates back to the return of the Jewish people from Babylon. All but a few thousand Jews had been killed by King Nebuchadnezzar when the Babylonians destroyed the Kingdom of Judah in 587 BCE and this remnant of what had once numbered several million was taken in exile to what is now Iraq.
When Cyrus II became conquered Babylonia, he allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem; many did, and some set about rebuilding the Temple, but many others kept on moving westward and settled in what is now the Near East. That’s where the word diaspora first appears: It originally applied to the Jews and now the definition has been broadened to include an ancestral people who, for a variety of reasons, pick up and leave their native land.
At the end of World War II, six million Jews had been eliminated and nearly an equal number had been displaced from their homeland, more than a dozen countries ravaged by the war. For a while they were interned in camps, each wearing a shirt with DP stamped on the back. It stood for Displaced Person.
Ever since the first Zionist Conference in Vienna in 1848 there had been a gradual immigration of Jews back to the Promised Land but it was not until the establishment of the state of Israel by the United Nations in 1948 that the diaspora began to reverse itself as the Displaced Persons began to return to what they regarded as their ancestral home.
As anyone who has watched this unfold over the last 67 years realizes the problem of resettlement has not been resolved, only intensified into a continuing international issue. If anyone saw a repeat of this coming, it was under the radar of most of us.
It has been impossible, however, to ignore the horrific price the Syrians and others have paid under Bashar el Assad. Now internecine warfare has erupted with the ascendancy of ISIL or ISSIS; no one seems quite sure what to call them, but there is little doubt as to their goal.
People living under the threat have finally had enough. They seem to have despaired of meaningful help coming from any outside source, let alone their own government, so they are, en mass, following the path of the original Jewish Diaspora and heading to the west.
No nation has been prepared from this. Perhaps as many as six million refugees (that’s what they are . . . not immigrants) are involved. The nightly horrors are displayed on any news station and unlike the Displaced Persons of post-World War II we cannot take the view of ignoring it.
For those who recall the camps, the trains, and the breadth of the Holocaust, it has been mind boggling to see it all playing out, live in our homes, as the concertina wire barriers are rolled into place in Hungary, as middle European nations struggle with the humanitarian crisis that is rolling westward.
In 1948, the United Nations designated a place for the Displaced Persons to go. There was, at least, a three thousand year history of their relation to that geography; never mind there were millions of other people who felt similar attachment to the same homeland.
In today’s crisis the situation is much more complex. Several things should be apparent. Despite the endless news cycle, who among us can imagine the horror of what these people are suffering? No one, unless they have experienced it themselves. Secondly, fences, barbed wire, military border enforcement, and other restrictive measures will only heighten the horror.
This is not a European problem any more than the Holocaust was. If we are to resolve this tragedy it will take decades and a capacity for human concern and kindness that has, so far, been sadly scant. Another Diaspora . . . what else could it be called?
Hayden Hollingsworth
