I’m pissed off, but we’re all being pissed on.

A United States Senator said, “Shall we first take care of our own children, our citizens, our country, or shall we bestow our charity on children imported from abroad?”  No, this wasn’t last year or last month but in March, 1939, in response to efforts to bring Jewish children to America to save them from the Nazis.

If you are unfamiliar with the anti-Semitic and anti-immigration position of a majority of Americans in the 1930’s, read the book or watch the HBO documentary entitled 50 Children: One Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany, by Steven Pressman, from which the above quote is taken.  Another excellent reference which illuminates the complicity of the German public with Nazi anti-Semitism and the ensuing Holocaust is the book entitled Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.

Until the past few years, when I was researching my ancestral roots, I was unaware of my familial connection to the Holocaust.  My maternal grandfather and his siblings immigrated to the United States in the late 1800’s from a small town in what was then Austria but through most of history has been part of Poland.  Much of the rest of his extended family remained in the town in which Jews had been forbidden to live during the 16^th to 18^th century.  During Austrian rule in the 19^th century, the Jewish population grew but was at best a poor community and eventually began to decline.  My family, however, represented over 10% of the Jewish population of the town in the 1930’s.  Those who were left continued to live there under German occupation, until August 13, 1942.  On that day, the Jews were ordered to assemble in the city square.  The children, the old and the sick, including at least 25 members of my family, were taken to a forest and shot.  The few who were able to work were used as slave labor until they were eventually exterminated at the Belzec Concentration Camp.  I have in my possession the Holocaust Center records of my family victims.

Had my grandfather not been an immigrant, I would not be here to write this.

And so, until my last breath, I will continue to fight the creeping intolerance, racism, fear-mongering and fascism of Trumpism.  The lives of my children and grandchildren depend on it.