Childs at the SS Winipeg in 1939. All rights: Agrupación Winnipeg. CC BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons
European countries seem to have forgotten their not so distant past. Political persecution and ethnic cleansing by totalitarian regimes and the devastation of a continent-wide war led to the displacement of millions in the late 30’s and 40´s. Many had to flee the continent, and seek asylum in the New World.
Thus today's movement of people across the Mediterranean is by no means unprecedented. Migration pressure has been increasingly felt in Europe in recent years. But there has been a change of scale. The number of those who have made their way into Europe in 2015, approximately 350.000, with at least 2.500 tragically dying in the attempt is the biggest in decades.
