In October 1938, Polish Jews who had immigrated into Germany were rounded up and deported back to Poland. The Polish government, being equally anti-Semitic, didn’t want them. 17,000 people huddled for weeks in makeshift encampments on the border as winter came. This barbaric act was a transitional step in the larger movement in many European countries to deny citizenship to certain groups of people that they labeled as undesirables. A year later, Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. Two years after that, they began the process of mass extermination known as the Holocaust or Shoah.
I think if we were to ask Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, or President Trump if they know that they are repeating history, they would say, no. They view their actions as patriotic, not demonic. They say we are anti-immigrant, not antisemitic. It’s not racist to believe in (white) America first. “Besides, we are doing what is best for the economy.” The economic depression of the 1930s in Europe was one of the key factors in the rise of the Nazis. We should never forget such things.
As long as I am naming names, let me share one more, Abraham Joshua Heschel. He was a Polish Jew, one of the 17,000 deported in October 1938. A year later, he immigrated, first to England, and then to the United States, where he became the leading Jewish scholar of the twentieth century. His faith led him to join the civil rights movement in the 1960s, for the prophets of the Old Testament speak to us today about the need to do justice. He became friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and marched with John Lewis across the bridge in Selma.
Today, we dare not separate our faith from our political action.