To the editor:
My parents were Holocaust survivors. After the war, they smuggled my brother and me across many borders, to escape anti-semitism. Eventually the Truman administration granted us entry to the United States, on a military vessel.
As a non-Christian naturalized citizen, Jeff Session’s reasoning (?) for separating mothers and children at the border, makes me feel like less of a citizen. My parents came to the United States believing there was separation of church and state, as stated in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of this once great nation. This current group of hooligans in the White House are making a mockery of our democracy. Are we now living in a Church/Christian-ruled nation?
Why when people seek asylum in churches does the government not take the side of the church in granting it? Why only when it suits their purpose? The hardships endured by all, but especially by the current surge of mothers and children making their way to the southern border is something I can well imagine. My parents climbed mountains and waded across rivers in search of a better life for us. Sadly, they are now deceased. If they were alive, what has been going on since 2016 would either kill them or literally break their hearts.
After the Japanese were released from their internment camps, we said “Never Again”. After prisoners were liberated from the concentration camps in Europe, we said “Never again.” Where are the good citizens of this nation? Why are they not screaming and demanding an end to the chicanery in Washington, D.C.? Is the phrase “Never again” mere rhetoric? have these words lost all meaning? Even the Nazi’s didn’t separate children from their mothers when they were sent to the extermination chambers. Will we wait to say “Never again” when Session’s decides to lynch immigrants at the border?
What’s it going to take for the good citizens of the United States to realize/remember that with exception of the peoples of the first nations, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. People are people.
LILY DIAMENT-HANSEN
Bainbridge Island
