If you had lived this life before

For instance, through the last World War

Would you have slammed the nation's door

And flown, as now, your Union Jack

To threaten Jews you'd send them back?

 

Would you've pushed boats from England's shore

When writing on the wall we saw

As early as in '34

(The start was when they killed Ernst Rohm)

Would you have sent the Jews back home?

 

And who'd have thought that yet again

You'd cast them out like last time when

You turned your back in Bethlehem

And then blind-eyeing Kristallnacht

Condemned them to that Final Act?

 

I find it hard to think that you

Would have welcomed Hitler's Jews

But rather looked away from queues

Where suffering millions died en masse

By beating, gun and Zyklon gas.

 

“But nowadays they're black or brown

Who really cares if they should drown

Anything but not my town”

You mouth your propaganda quotes

“We'll turn them back. We'll stop the boats”.

 

Yes, once we were a kinder nation

Extending arms in warm salvation

To those who fled from persecution

Our forebears they did not refuse

Those refugees of Europe's Jews.