A fine essay. Possibly the best ever posted on this forum.
Congruent with what Jeremy wrote I recommend two references:
The new book by Keith Lowe titled The Savage Continent, and The European Atrocity at
http://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-You/132123

Although Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence's comments are all very nice, much of it entirely misses the point of much of the recent immigration debate.

It is not a matter of accepting or not accepting refugees. Australia has an historically high immigration quota of about 180,000 a year, last time I looked, of which 13,000 or so are supposed to be refugees as Rabbi Lawrence would define the term. If one of these refugees arrives illegially in a boat and is accepted, then that is one less that can be accepted from the many often far more deserving applicants in refugee camps.

If the boats are discouraged altogether we still get exactly the same number of refrugees but we get to choose the more deserving cases, and no-one dies making the trip. That is the basic conundrum facing planners now. If they don't discourage the boats then people, organised by smugglers, get into anything that floats and try to cross a major body of water.

In other words, people like Rabbi Lawrence and those who launch high court challenges to government policy are encouraging foolhardy behaviour without adding a soul to the refugee count. If they want to make a difference they should ask for an increase in the refugee quota, and insist on offshore processing.

Well said Curmudgeon.

Of course we should have full control over our borders.

It is just simply completely wrong to continue to encourage / facilitate / offer strong pull factors without strong deterrence measures to onshore asylum seeking.

We CAN have a significant refugee program, both in terms of the number of people that come to this country and in the aid directed at supporting them staying at home. And we can do this at a fraction of the cost that is now being spent on onshore asylum seeking. And… we can do it without the social and political tension that onshore asylum seeking is causing.

It is crystal clear – we should be moving decisively to shut down onshore asylum seeking forthwith.

Basically I agree with Curmudgeon. I have 8 convict forebears, plus others who came to Australia by paying a legal fare. My husband came to Australia from Germany in 1950 under a bond that required him to work two years for an employer. I have a Chinese daughter-in-law. When becoming Australian they were all seeking a better life.

It is not a matter of not accepting refugees. Australia has an historically high immigration quota of which 13,000 or so are supposed to be refugees. If one of these refugees arrives in a boat and is accepted, then they have jumped the queue.

Despite the fact that so many Australians have forebears with criminal convictions we are one of the most law abiding nations in the world. We believe in giving people a fair go. So, the genuine refugees who have applied to come to Australia should be accepted ahead of any 'boat people'.

Rabbi, your article was touching. The refugees fleeing to Australia need your sympathy and help.

Then, in the Middle East, there are a whole people, ones called Palestinians, who are under brutal occupation thanks to the Jewish Israelis and have been since 1947.

They need your help too! Desperately.

Do you have room in your heart for them?

Sorry, but I don't find that little memoir on page one either plausible or relevant, it's a cute story but it's full of holes or perhaps has grown somewhat in the telling and hardly enhances the sentimental, nay mushy prose on the succeeding page.
Blackshirts operated in Italy, not Germany, a boatload of "Nazis" being shipped to Canada is improbable since Nazis were not allowed to join the Wehrmacht, I'm sure the Rabbi means prisoners of war but since his relative would certainly have been in the "Class C" category of internee even that explanation is a bit thin. As far as I know Australia did not welcome Jewish refugees after the war, their supporters had to fight tooth and nail to have them allowed in and Jewish charities did all the heavy lifting in re-settling them. Refugees and transportees have never been welcomed here by ordinary folk, any glossing over that fact would be a misrepresentation of history, the only question would be whether it's a regrettable national trait, most would honestly say it's not.
There is no analogy in this tale with today's issues , the guilt tripping over WW2 doesn't work anymore, our grandparents found out what was going on in Poland at the same time as everyone else, when the Soviets threw open the gates of Auschwitz on January 27 1945.