A Holocaust survivor known for speaking to schools about his experiences confronted federal and local officials about immigration arrests.
Bernard Marks earned loud cheers on Tuesday after he confronted the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thomas Homan, at a public forum in Sacramento, California.
“When I was a little boy in Poland, for no other reason but for being Jewish, I was hauled off by the Nazis,” Marks said, according to video posted by the Huffington Post. “And for no other reason I was picked up and separated from my family who was exterminated in Auschwitz. And I am a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau.”
Marks was interrupted by loud cheers, in what the Sacramento Bee described as a room packed with hundreds of people protesting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal officials seeking to arrest and deport undocumented workers convicted of crimes.
Convening the forum was Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, a backer of Donald Trump, according to the Bee, and Homan.
“I spent five and a half years in concentration camps, for one reason and one reason only: Because we picked on people,” Marks continued after the cheers. “And you, as the sheriff, who we elected as sheriff of this county, we did not elect you for sheriff of Washington, D.C. It’s about time you side with the people here.”
Marks challenged claims by Homan and Jones that they solely went after convicted criminals, noting that California state courts had ordered federal officials to keep away from courthouses, where there have been reports of arrests of non-criminals.
“Don’t tell me that this is a lie,” Marks said. “We stand up here, Mr. Jones, don’t forget. History is not on your side.”
Marks sat down to another eruption of applause and cheers.
In response, Homan said his agents only arrest convicted criminals at courthouses and leave alone witnesses and victims.
Trump administration officials have said that the main goal of the sweeps is to arrest convicted criminals, but they have also said they will not instruct ICE agents not to arrest non-criminals.
Marks, 87, is known in the region for the talks he gives at schools and other venues about his Holocaust experience.
Also attending the meeting was Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is Jewish. Steinberg has taken a lead in the movement of sanctuary cities, which use legal means to keep federal officials from arresting undocumented immigrants. Trump has said he will cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities.
If Marks believes the US is underpopulated, or that the natural place to help war refugees is halfway around the planet, or that America should not enforce its own laws, he’s welcome to make that case.
But what he’s doing dishonors the memory of the holocaust. Mexico is not Auschwitz. The US did not invade Mexico and force Mexicans into the “Reich” as slaves, the Mexicans came to us, and uninvited. The 10-20-30 million people in the US illegally are citizens of some other country, they’re not stateless homeless German Jews. Muslim Syrians are their country’s majority population, not a small helpless and persecuted minority. And if they don’t like it in Syria, let them apply to another one of the world’s twenty Arab countries (which is twenty more than there were Jewish countries in the 1930s).
They’re coming to the US where they will be safe as opposed to assault and the drug wars, as we have a history of supporting those who are in danger so they can be free, where they pay taxes and own homes/ businesses and contribute honor to their communities. Some of them are highly skilled and we could benefit from their expertise as their schools are superior to ours and they’re devoted.
Your argument would apply to every single person in Mexico. On your theory the entire population of Mexico should move to the US with no immigration controls whatever. Mexico has 120 million people. Are you sure you have thought this through?
I was mugged in Oakland once. Does that entitle me to emigrate to Canada in disregard of their immigration laws? I don’t think so. Nor do the Canadians.
I’m so sorry to learn of your mugging, which should not happen to anyone.
However, nothing suggests we are looking to open our doors to every single inhabitant of Mexico or any other country…I’m quite certain the majority of people would stay there.
We’re admitting plenty of the Central American gang members themselves. If we had a refugee policy in 1940 like the one we have now, we would have been admitting as many Nazis as Jews.
While one has no end of respect for Mr. Marks and his experience, it is simply wrong to equate ICE sending people back to their home countries with the Nazis sending people to crematoria. Genocide is a monstrous crime. Repatriation is not. To conflate them by calling them both “picking on people” is to deliberately choose not to think clearly, and to urge other people not to.
The similarity between Trump’s goal of sending back undocumented immigrants and the NAZI’s is both were deliberately exposing the people to danger likely to result in assault and/or death. It is not too far fetched to compare them.
You are confusing undocumented immigrants with refugees. Repatriated Mexicans in Mexico are not in any greater danger than other Mexicans in Mexico. People who are in danger in their home countries, refugees, are not being sent back.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying although sending German Jews to Israel prior to/ during/ after the war would have saved their lives.