The immigrant-banning executive order was signed on Holocaust Remembrance Day, on which the President failed to mention Jews.

I am the descendant of immigrants; I am the survivor of relatives who never escaped.  All of my grandparents, and two sets of great-grandparents immigrated to the United States in the 1880’s and 1890’s from Russia, Poland and Austria.  The stringent restrictions and pogroms in Eastern Europe directed at the Jews at that time in history persuaded millions to leave everything they had ever known for the promise of America.

So, were they welcomed with open arms into the American melting pot?  Not exactly.  William Jennings Bryan, presidential nominee, spoke in anti-Semitic metaphors of crucifixion on a cross of gold.  Anti-Semitic cartoons abounded.  President Cleveland was accused of being in the pockets of international Jewish banking houses.  Fortunately, he vetoed a bill pushed by the Immigration Restriction League, which would have required a literacy requisite for entry into the country.  I say fortunately, because one of my grandmothers could neither read nor write.  As the eldest child, she had to go to work instead of school to help provide for her family.

Jews were discriminated against in employment, housing, clubs, resorts, and perhaps most egregiously, quotas for Jews were instituted in teaching positions and student enrollment in many colleges and universities.  In the 1920s, laws were enacted restricting all immigration.  The 1930s and 40s saw demands to exclude American Jews from social interactions and polls overwhelmingly favored the idea that Jews shouldn’t be treated like other people.  One comment suggested, “Send Jews back where they came from – in a leaky boat.”

Then came the horrors of Nazi Germany – which didn’t change people’s minds much.  In a 1938 Fortune poll, 67.4% of Americans said, “with conditions the way they are, we should try to keep political refugees out.”  In 1939, which was after the Krystallnacht attacks and destruction had occurred, an American Institute of Public Opinion poll showed that 61% believed we should not take 10,000 Jewish refugee children from Germany to be cared for in American homes.

And now to the ones that didn’t make it.  I didn’t even know they existed until I began to do genealogy research.  Along with my maternal grandfather, his 3 brothers and a sister emigrated in the late 1800s to the U.S. from a small town called Jasliska, now part of Poland but then Austria.  What I never knew was that a significant number of extended relatives remained.  In 1942, the approximately 330 Jews in the town were rounded up, and the elderly, women and children were executed by firing squad in the forest.  The story is documented in a book called “Symbiosis and Ambivalence, Poles and Jews in a Small Galician Town,” by Rosa Lehmann, Berghahn Books, ©2001.  This book was actually written about the town of my ancestors and the fate of those relatives who stayed behind, and it is one of my prized possessions.  Here is the account:

“Jews were taken in lorries to the ghetto in Dukla (20 km from Jasliska), where they spent some four to eight weeks.  In Dukla, the old were separated from the young and the healthy from the weak.  Jewish men dug a hole and they poured petrol into it.  Not the old ones, but the young ones had to jump over it.  Those who dirtied themselves with petrol were put on one side.  Those who jumped over were put on the other side.  The strong and the healthy joined the ghetto in Dukla, where they were put to work in the stone quarry.  Or, they were deported to labor camps.  Traces of the old and weak were not lost.  On 13 August 1942, an estimated 500 Jews from Jaslika and surrounds were made to walk to Barwinek, a village 14 kilometers from Jasliska.  From Barwinek, they were taken a few hundred meters into the Bludna forest to an empty clearing.  There they were shot and buried in a mass grave.”

In further research at the Yad Vashem site, which is the central database of Holocaust victims, I found 29 victims from Jaslizka with the surname of my grandfather.  There are only a very few notations of their fate, but two records revealed the final destiny of those not shot in the forest.  They perished in Belzec concentration camp.

This is my testament to my ancestors who were immigrants and to my relatives who never made it:

I am a survivor, and I will fight for what’s right!