Watching heart-rending footage of Syrian refugees walking down a railroad track in Hungary, my eye stopped on an old man with a pack on his shoulder. As I stared, a childhood memory of my grandfather was superimposed upon, but not quite lined up with, the refugee’s image. It was like viewing a 3-D movie without the glasses.
My paternal grandfather was a pack peddler who carried his goods from town to town in Eastern Europe, before hawking them in Chicago neighborhoods. He took one of the options Czar Alexander III offered Jews. The 19th century Russian emperor aimed to convert a third of his Jewish subjects, starve another third and force the rest to leave.
He’s not my only relative who came to mind as I watched images of refugees desperate to find safety.
When I saw refugee children, my mind’s eye saw my maternal grandfather, his brothers and a sister. They were sent to America as 11- and 12-year-olds. They must have arrived bearing the same expression as today’s refugee children do when greeted with applause and candy upon reaching Austria and Germany: the look of cautious expectation of those who can scarcely believe their ordeal is over.
Then came an image almost unbearable to watch: refugees confined behind barbed wire. My great-grandmother was interned in the Treblinka extermination camp, where she was murdered. Having sent her children to safety, she stayed in Poland until it was impossible to get out.
Thinking about her, I was overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness — though not so much over my great-grandmother’s fate. At this distance in time, there is nothing I, or anyone else, can do about that tragedy. Rather, it was for the Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans displaced by war that shows no signs of abating.
Humans are hard-wired for empathy. Seeing suffering, our impulse is to extend a helping hand — especially when someone’s plight reminds us of our loved ones. My family is hardly unique. Millions of Americans are descendants of immigrants who came here seeking asylum from the horrors of war, famine and religious persecution.
We are a nation of refugees.
The Irish were colonial subjects of Great Britain, outsiders in their own homeland. When the potato crop failed in the middle of 19th century, 1 million died of starvation. Upward of 2 million emigrated, many to Chicago. Echoes of their experience can be heard in the bittersweet wail of bagpipes when the police or firefighters bury one of their own.
German nationalists wanted their homeland unified when it was a grab bag of big and small states. That seemed at hand during a revolutionary uprising of 1848. When it was crushed, the revolution’s supporters fled for their lives. Many came to Wisconsin, which is why you can get good beer, brats and sauerbraten in Milwaukee.
When Germany was unified in 1871, its rulers came from the Protestant part of the country. Determined to homogenize the nation, Otto Von Bismarck — nicknamed the “Iron Chancellor” — declared war on the Catholic Church. The lot of German Catholics was similar to that of the Kurdish minorities in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Rather than surrender their faith, many German Catholics packed and left. Those who came to Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood built the 245-foot twin spires of St. Paul’s Catholic Church with their own hands. Looking up at them, you can feel the joy those refugees felt in finding religious freedom.
The church’s parishioners are now largely Mexicans. Many came here to escape poverty and drug lords. Poles, whose homeland was partially under German rule, came to America because their Catholic faith was also marked for extinction by Bismarck.
Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli wars came. So, too, did Jewish refugees from Muslim countries. Hungarians came after their 1956 uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks.
We’re tempted to forget our refugee roots. In a California mall crowded with boat-people refugees from Southeast Asia, my father once said to my uncle: “A gantzen tog, men hort nisht ein wort Anglish.” (Yiddish for: “In a whole day, you wouldn’t hear one word of English.”) He wasn’t pleased with my observation that it’s funny to condemn those who don’t speak English while you are speaking a foreign language
But that, in a way, is a fringe benefit of being here: A family can quickly pass from new arrival to true-blue American. Still, in even the most assimilated households there can be signs of why its forebears came: A faded photograph from the old country. A grandmother repeating stories she heard from her grandmother of arriving at Ellis Island.
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What better way to honor our refugee ancestors than by making a contribution to an organization working with today’s Middle Eastern refugees? A few bucks to buy a Syrian child a toy or clothe a family. It doesn’t have to be much. It’s the thought that counts.
Here is suggestion: Do it by check, and write on the memo line: “In loving memory of …” Fill in the blank with the name of a refugee forebear. If there’s room, add: “And with profound gratitude to the United States of America for taking my family in.”