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Berlin, early 1933: The Nazis are on the verge of their projected election victory, the Reichstag is burning, and mass madness is shown everywhere. Then a phone call! Her father leaves Berlin the next day shortly afterward the girl Anna travels to Switzerland with her family.
I wish for peace and find myself torn
I am always with the children of the lesser god
because let’s face it, that’s what we think they are.
Less important.
Israel, oh Israel, how I cried with you when the attack happened.
How I feared for the hostages.
People who have themselves fled a war zone cannot fully support a war. For them, it’s not just news or a headline, they know what war means for those affected.
…
“If one more person shows me their prisoner number, I will punch a holocaust survivor.” I didn’t mean it, not even close, but hoped that somehow it would explain how helpless I felt. The situation was too much for me to handle. The sins of our fathers had been transferred to me, and I felt treated unfairly. It made me angry and so sad.
I was raised by my Grandmother, the wonderful woman who happened to be part Jewish. My Grandfather, the man I never met, died 1963, a few months before I was born. He had been sent to the concentration camps Dachau and Auschwitz; he had to wear the red triangle – like all the other political prisoners during World War II.
I remember the time when I was still struggling to learn English, and how hard I tried to learn quickly. Back then the people around me didn’t dare to ask me what I wanted to do because they always got the same answer. “Read with me, please.”
Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback of the San Francisco 49’ers, decided -all of a sudden- that he would not get up during the national anthem, but instead he would sit there in silent protest.
I read Anne Frank’s diary for the first time when I was 13. It was a reading project in school and it totally overwhelmed me. I had just found out that I was part Jewish as well, a fact that had not been mentioned before by Grandmother or my family.