Wake up, America. It can happen here — it has
Iwas born 86 years ago on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For those unfamiliar with this area, it was, at that time, home to many Jewish immigrants, most of whom had fled Russia, Poland and other Eastern European countries. They fled to live where atrocities against minorities couldn’t happen.
I was only 10 years old when World War II ended. I hadn’t heard the word “Holocaust.” I lived in safety and security; I was an American citizen, born in this great country.
”It can’t happen here.”
The word “Holocaust” was not discussed in my home. It was too shocking, too horrific; best to shield the children from man’s inhumanity to man.
”It can’t happen here.”
As a child, I had no knowledge of the Japanese American citizens who found themselves torn from their homes and their lives, sent off to desolate, unknown places and put into camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed troops. The phrase “concentration camp” was never used when speaking of these camps; this is America. We don’t have concentration camps.
”It can’t happen here.”
Recently, I took a ride to Fort Sumner to visit the Bosque Redondo Memorial. I had read about the Long Walk of Native people to Bosque Redondo. As a child, I had been brainwashed by movies, books, television and other media to see these Native Americans as nonpeople. But I found humanity at Bosque Redondo in the stories of the Navajo and Apache people — men, women, children, young and old, healthy and sick, rounded up by the U.S. Army under Gen. James H. Carleton’s command.
Carleton had a vision — march the Navajo and Apache, real human beings, with little food or water, under armed troops, without mercy, all the miles to Bosque Redondo. Those too sick, old or pregnant women who couldn’t keep up were left to die, or were shot by Army soldiers. Some 3,000 died on the Long Walk.
When the survivors arrived at this new bleak reservation, they found no living structures, nonarable land and undrinkable water from the Pecos River.
This was a concentration camp, only it was made for Native Americans, by Americans. This was ethnic cleansing.
These were our government’s orders.
”It can’t happen here.”
With the rise of white supremacy and hate groups in this country and by the acceptance of far-right politicians’ race baiting, Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and dedicated followers’ rhetoric, we can repeat the sins of our past.
America must look to its history to see its future. It must learn that Americans are capable of doing those unimaginable, inhumane things to fellow Americans. That hate undermines our nation.
”It can’t happen here?”
It has happened here, and if we don’t stop it now, it will happen here again.