I know someone who is a survivor. Although 95 years old, she still remembers the day she was put on a Kindertransport and saw her mother for the last time. Although she knows what her mother did made sense, and allowed her and her siblings to survive, she still yearns for the mother who perished in the Shoah.
I have family members who survived the Shoah, but their spouses and children were murdered. Their families destroyed. They carried that sadness for their entire lives. Two of them never remarried and never had other families. The Shoah, the loss of their children was never forgotten. How could you forget this?
So, when I see the photos of the children left behind when ICE agents raided the places where their parents worked, I think of these families. I have to say, how is our government better than those who were in cahoots with the Nazis? How can the ICE agents say they were just doing their jobs, just as the German soldiers did after the war was over, when they know that there are children being left behind with no one to care for them? How can that be right?
I am sorry, but what I see terrifies and disgusts me. For a government to do such acts and for the people to do these acts without thinking about the ramifications to the children, makes me sad for them. I think they will eventually be punished for crimes against humanity.
When people look at the ICE agents, they see terror. Is that what the ICE agents want to be known for? For scaring children and destroying their fragile sense of security?
There are much better ways to deal with immigrants. And those ways do not include cancelling all USA aid to other countries. It does not include terrorizing people at the borders. It does not include ripping children from their families and housing them in mass detention camps. It does not include leaving children unattended. It does not include calling people coming to our borders for help ‘an invasion.’ It does not include dehumanizing families, children, parents.
What it should include is finding a way for those who have been good citizens of this country, paying their taxes and doing their jobs, a way for them to become citizens. It allows those in refuge situations a way to find a safe haven.
It should not allow hateful speech and actions spewed at them by people in authority. It should not include secret cabals spreading hateful language on secret Facebook pages.
Shouldn’t we have learned from the 1930s and 40s when we denied safe haven to those fleeing Europe? My own family perish in the fires of the Shoah because they could not get visas.
It should include finding safe havens for the children, whose lives have been uprooted in so many ways. The United States is a country of the people, by the people and for the people, which includes liberty and justice for all. This administration seems to have forgotten our unique message to help the huddle masses and to be a safe haven.
Everyone should be horrified by what is happening. And if you are not, then I pity you, because you have lost your humanity.
zicharonot 
Beautifully done.
Thank you.