Last night, I had the opportunity to see Christopher Nolan's new film, Dunkirk, in the Netherlands–where it was filmed. This movie and the event itself celebrates a country banding together to rescue about 300,000 soldiers from certain death. A war zone. The German army had plowed through Belgium and now France, trapping the British and French soldiers on an ever-shrinking plot of land on a beach just across the English Channel. England was so close, "you can practically see it," they repeat in the film. Yet, the ocean is too shallow and too dangerous where the soldiers were trapped to mount any rescue mission. Of the 346,000 soldiers there, Churchill expected to save 30,000–all British and none French.
One of the strengths of the movie is the theme of anonymity–it could have been anyone
*Spoilers*
Civilians from all over the UK saved the day by sailing their own personal boats into a war zone and rescuing thousands of soldiers. The soldiers were applauded upon their return–at the end of the film, a man even chases down a train carrying two beers for the protagonists. They did this risking their own lives, and indeed some died in the rescue effort. But these are the lengths humans are willing to go to for each other.
Right?
This movie came out during the biggest displacement crisis the world has ever seen. Today around 70,000,000 people (~1% of Earth's population) are displaced. Most of these people are fleeing from conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, and Afghanistan. That's as many as total deaths from all theaters and years of World War II. In the wake of peace, efforts like the Marshall Plan were put in place to rebuild and resettle those who fled the war. Today, none of the above refugee-producing conflicts are over and the efforts put in place for victims are pitiful.
The statistics are staggering, and these are just from the end of 2015
We call the situation in Europe a crisis because 1 million Syrian refugees have been dispersed across the whole continent, a continent of over a half billion people. Meanwhile Lebanon, a country with a population of just 4-5 million, hosts 1 million Syrian refugees on its own. I have not heard of a 'Lebanese' refugee crisis in the media. Today, these displaced people are labeled not as victims, but rather as potential terrorists or the cause of economic and social havoc. How is this any different? Do we forget Europe and the United Stated are involved in these conflicts, too?
What struck me most was the "what if?" that lingers during the movie, "What if the Germans were more successful and invaded the UK?" Well, they would probably be out of luck. During World War II, the US sent back boats full of refugees, mostly Jewish. If this didn't already have enough parallels to the current state of affairs in the US, guess what the slogan was that some used to argue (successfully) against accepting these Jewish refugees?
"America First."
Published October 1, 1941
The logic was the same, too; Americans feared the Germans would hide Nazi spies among the refugees. The result was that many Jewish people, including Anne Frank and her family, were denied entry and died at the hands of the Nazis. Callous suspicion and prejudice held by Americans during World War II changed a humble store in Amsterdam into the most morbid and horrifying place in the Netherlands: the Anne Frank house. Tickets to visit the house and learn of the calamity of the Holocaust are sold out for months in advance.
The line usually stretches around the block
We know today that Anne Frank was not a Nazi spy. She was a 14-year-old girl who had a crush on a boy she was hiding with. She wrote about getting up to the attic every morning to get some fresh air and her posters of movie stars. She kept track of the war's pace and thought she would survive. I wonder, could a name reach the popularity of Anne Frank's if it were Arabic?
I fear we are on the wrong side of history.
