As a young man, I had the privilege of having a grandfather who made me proud. He wasn’t the smartest or even the strongest. He was smart but not in an academic sort of way, more self taught. He loved his sports and won a couple of marathons and iron man competitions.
But what made me proud of my grandfather are the stories that were told. You’d have to prod him, because they wouldn’t come easy. Sometimes not at all. But others would wonder aloud how he even survived. The fact that he made it back through a prisoner exchange via the Swiss embassy was what movies are made of. An American citizen in a concentration camp.
He was a good German-American, who had lived in Germany for many years. He went to church, paid his taxes and was a standup kind of guy. That’s what got him in trouble. He stood up for some Jewish professionals in the town where he lived. A doctor, school teacher and an accountant. All good men, all stand up guys like grandpa.
When the Gestapo said for the three men to get ready for relocation on the pretext that they had now lost their jobs, everyone knew what that meant. So my grandfather filled out the appropriate papers and informed the Gestapo agent in the town, that it would no longer be necessary to relocate anybody. You see my grandfather hired all three men on the spot, so any pretext for sending any body, anywhere was no longer applicable. A week later, the three professionals and grandpa were gone.
Grandpa survived, barely. When the exchange was made, they said he weighed around 90 pounds. He would hide under the kitchen table every time a loud noise could be heard in the house. But through it all, he had survived, thanks to members of the RAF. The Brits would share their Red Cross rations through the chain link fence that separated grandpa from them. They said that they couldn’t just watch as grandpa dwindled away, eating only the grass in his pen and the scraps the guards threw him. But he was still luckier than most however, because as a political prisoner he was allowed to live, but barely. I can’t say the same for my grandfather’s three friends.
So every time someone starts telling me about how those “other people” who are taking our jobs, ruining our country and posing a threat, I think of grandpa. I think of his three friends, and the course of history. Then I say to myself, NO. Not again, never again. Not here, not ever.