Back in the 1930’s Germany, Jews were abducted on the street and whisked away by plain-clothed Gestapo agents in unmarked cars. All without due process of law. Many ended up in secret inaccessible prisons and were subjected to torture and other hideous conditions by guards accountable to nobody. And there was little, if any, outcry by the German populace.
History seems to be repeating itself. Except now the victims are not Jews, but undocumented Hispanics from Central and South America and Mexico, irrespective of how long they have been here, irrespective of how productive they have become and, sadly, irrespective of lack of evidence or even suggestion of criminal activity. And the perpetrators are not Nazis but our own federal and state governments.
The vast majority of the letters to the Editor of “The Israelite” have focused on antisemitism and the challenges facing Israel, and properly so. But what is profoundly saddening is the relative lack of published concern from Jews in Cincinnati either individually or communally over the plight of these immigrants. Jewish apathy cuts across the ideological and political spectrum. Why must this be the case? Why our lack of empathy, especially in the wake of what we ourselves have gone through over the last 2,000 years?
Whatever the shortcomings of our nation’s immigration policies of the past decades — and these are many — there is no excuse for the across-the-board stereotypical labelling of all Hispanic immigrants as “rapists,” “murderers,” “drug dealers,” “pet eaters” or “poisoners of our national blood.” (We Jews know all about that one.) This dehumanizing language makes their roundups more palatable. If you just look Hispanic, you are a target. However, the vast majority of these people who have entered or are trying to enter the U.S. are regular folks desperately trying to flee from violent and repressive regimes just as our ancestors fled from Czarist and Communist Russia and Nazi Germany. Are there some bad actors included among them? Of course there are. And an informed conversation can be had about whether they may be detained subject to being afforded a modicum of due process. But you can’t demonize an entire ethnic group just because a few of them are undesirable. (As it turns out, the per capita instances of crime committed by undocumented immigrants are far less than for the American population at large.) There was a great deal of prejudice directed towards Italian immigrants 150 years ago based on the fear that gangsters would infiltrate this county. The strict quotas imposed by our government on Jews in the 1930s was based on the canard that all Jews were anarchists or communists. That kind of attitude was wrongheaded then, and is wrongheaded now.
Many Jews in Cincinnati and elsewhere will respond that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents came here “the legal way,” so why can’t today’s immigrants play by the same rules? However, advocates of this argument have a short memory. Did German and other European Jews enter this country illegally in the 1930s and early 1940s? Did they “break the rules”? You bet they did. They bribed border guards and immigration officials with hidden cash and jewelry secreted in their clothes and bodies. They obtained fake and forged visas and passports from sympathetic diplomats. And why not? When you and your family’s very survival is at stake, you will resort to anything. Mindful of what we have been through, we Jews should be keenly sensitive to and supportive of our brothers and sisters who now find themselves in the same desperate situation, especially those from dystopian death squad countries like El Salvador and Venezuela, who face the same levels of physical peril as did European Jews if they are forcibly repatriated. As the Torah constantly reminds us, “We were once strangers is the land of Egypt.”
Anybody who has visited our Holocaust Center is constantly reminded of another abiding principle — “Be an upstander, not a bystander.” This call to action has never been so relevant as it is today. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be upstanders, just like the righteous gentiles of Europe during World War II, whether it is writing letters to newspapers, lobbying our governor our mayors and our state and federal representatives, publicizing gut-wrenching family separations, advising vulnerable immigrants of their legal rights or channeling them into non-profit agencies that are in a position to do so. Synagogues and Temples can step up too by tasking their social action committees with placing the immigration issue on their agendas.
Idealism aside, taking action is a matter of self-interest. Many of us think that Jews are safe in today’s climate, pointing to the number of Jews occupying prominent positions in government, politics, the media and business. Think again. Those who oppose immigration from south of the border (as opposed to white immigrants from South Africa) include a significant number of people who are, not surprisingly, also virulently antisemitic and holocaust deniers. Many of them are prominent and influential in federal and state decision-making circles. If today’s anti-immigrant mindset had held sway in the late 1800s and early 1900s, most of us reading this newspaper would never have ever been born as our grandparents and great-grandparents would have gone up a chimney in smoke.
Don Hordes
Cincinnati, Ohio