Saying “Never Again” is not enough!

Recently, a news report on TV showed Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officers going on a raid and rounding up illegal immigrants. This was all too reminiscent of Hitler sending out storm troopers to round up the Jews. The fate of these immigrants is either they will be deported to Guatemala or placed in US Detention Centers (aka concentration camps).

Separating children from their parents is something only the Nazis did. However, not even the Nazis made the Jews sleep on concrete floors in cages with the lights on all night long. Recently a federal judge ruled this action as “torture.”

Jewish people are taught to bring light to dark places (i.e., bring justice where there is injustice). We know better than anyone, what it is like to be persecuted and lose freedom and human rights. 

It is time for Jews to put aside their political differences and fight for human rights. Many liberal Jews are highly critical of President Trump and that is their right (so far). But the government has awesome powers with the National Security Act and Patriot Act and the day could come, G-d forbid, when the government decides that liberal Jews are a threat and decides to round them up and place them in detention centers or military prisons. Impossible, you say? Well, two years ago who would have thought that we’d be separating children from their parents and placing them in cages!  Remember the saying:  First they came for one group and I did nothing. Then they came for another group and I did nothing. Then they came for me and there was no one to help.

We keep saying “Never Again,” but history does repeat itself! 

Bob Schoenberg

Cranston, R.I.