Apart from being an epochal tragedy on an unprecedented and unequalled scale, the Holocaust is often remembered as a lesson. Never again, goes the refrain, would the world look away from mass suffering.

Of course, this pledge has been broken repeatedly around the world basically before the guns of World War II had even cooled. The most recent example can be seen in the ongoing tragedy of Syrian refugees. The refugee crisis reached perhaps its most appalling nadir recently as President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts as president, signed an executive order banning Syrian refugees from the United States, upending the fates of those already cleared to come into the country and dashing the hopes of others who dreamed of escaping to the United States.

Trump’s order has suffered several high-profile defeats in court. But the order is yet to be tested by the Supreme Court, and it remains unclear if a future, similar order may be allowed to stand if rewritten to be more legally acceptable. So it’s likely a ban will continue to hang over the heads of desperate Syrians hoping to escape the squalid conditions they’re trapped in. These court decisions also don’t change the woefully inadequate job done by various Western governments (with some exceptions) to take in and resettle refugees.