“Do not tell anyone; we are going to America. Do not tell anyone because they will try to stop us.” My parents swore me to secrecy. I was 10, and my parents swore me to secrecy.
“Do not tell anyone; they will try to stop us.” An earworm for life. “They will try to stop us.”
I did not understand. I was 10, and I did not understand. So what if my friend called me a “zhid”? So what if someone exclaimed in surprise, “You don’t really look like a Jew”? So what if a classmate drew a Star of David on another boy’s desk, the only other Jew in my class? So what if that boy and his family fled a few months later? So what? I did not understand.
“We were not wanted there,” my mom would say. “We belong in America.”
In the early ’90s, the collapse of the Soviet Union gave way—once again—to rampant antisemitism throughout the fragmented republic; a tornado of prejudice wreaked havoc on the post-Soviet states. The hostility towards the Jewish people was evident. Jews were limited to certain jobs, Jewish entrepreneurs were quickly silenced. Their businesses were demolished. Attaining a diploma or enrolling into a university was only possible to few. (Soviet Jews morosely joked they needed to earn a seven out of five in order to pass a class). The government oppressed the Jewish people in minor, covert, yet significant ways. So no, we weren’t wanted there.
Turns out, we weren’t wanted in America, either.
Xenophobia, deeply buried in most human beings, is the fear of the foreign or the strange. Xenophobia is understandable, inadvertent, and unfortunately governs many of us. And the United States has a long-standing history of fearing the unknown.
'“We were not wanted there,” my mom would say. “We belong in America.”'
In the 1930s, a Gallup poll showed that more than 60 percent of Americans opposed taking in 10,000 Jewish refugee children from Germany, many of whom perished in the Holocaust.
In the 1940s, another Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans once again opposed providing refuge for thousands of people displaced by WWII.
In the 1940s, Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps, a decision fueled by racial prejudice and wartime hysteria.
In the 1970s, 57 percent of Americans opposed welcoming Vietnamese refugees fleeing a repressive communist government.
The battle to accept Soviet Jews lasted numerous decades. After Soviet Jews were granted refugee status, they came in waves. In the early 1990s, on the heels of the Cold War, a final wave of Soviet Jew refugees immigrated to the U.S., despite the opposition of many Americans. Americans believed communism was evil and were legitimately concerned about communist spies sneaking in via refugee status. And yet we came. We were permitted, and we came. We came in spite of the side-eyes. In spite of suspicious whispers.
“Why are you here?”
“Are you a spy?”
We left a place that did not want us. We saw no other option. And yet no one was murdering us in the Soviet Union (anymore). No one was throwing us in concentration camps (anymore). We weren’t displaced from our homes (anymore). We knew we weren’t wanted. We felt the prejudice; it lay dormant and yet blatant. But no one was killing our children in the streets, or bombing our homes. Anymore. But we left nonetheless. The Jews were not welcomed in the Soviet Union. We left.
And now we are here. Watching this terror. Watching the murder, and the camps, and the displacement, and the massive killing of children, and bombing of neighborhoods. Turning away from the photos of death sprawled across Syria. Because if we would actually look, we would actually see. We say, “I can’t even…” But we can and we should. We must. Over 470,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the Syrian war, at least 10,000 of them children. Read that again: 10,000 children. Estimates put the number of people displaced at nearly 5 million. Yet here we are, debating. Hanging on to our irrational fears. Losing sight of facts and statistics. Of humanity and compassion. Consumed by the “what ifs.”
"We left a place that did not want us. We saw no other option."
“If you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts and you knew that in the five-pound bag of peanuts there were about 10 peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids?” they say. That’s what they said about the Jews in 1938, using a slightly different metaphor. We were mushrooms back then. Except the refugees are not peanuts, and they are not mushrooms. They are human beings. Actual human beings.
How can we sit idly by and debate this for so long? How can we close our borders to families, to children, to humans? To people who are ruthlessly murdered. To people escaping the very same terror we are all so fearful of? How can we say no? Do we no longer know empathy? Can we not feel their despair? Their uncertainty? Their anguish? A wave of nausea. I walk among my peers, I read the arguments, and I am disheartened. This is wrong. This debate is inhumane. This debate is immoral. This debate is cruel. This is nothing more than a political game using millions of lives as pawns.
I know you’re scared. You’ve been told to be.
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You’ve watched the news. You’ve seen videos of executions.
You’ve read the articles, the blogs, the think-pieces. You’ve imagined the sadistic tortures.
Fear is powerful. Fear pollinates our every cell. It grabs our lungs, stomps on our gut, burns our esophagus, suffocates our hearts. It buries itself deep into our brain and manifests into a million “what ifs.”
I understand you are scared. But we can’t let fear drive us. We shouldn’t let fear control our decisions. Fear is strong, but we have to be stronger. We should not let fear prevent us from opening our hearts to people fleeing terrorism. Enough with the fearful “what ifs.” I have some other “what ifs” for you: What if the refugees are just humans who need our help? What if the refugees are just children, frightened and displaced and distraught? What if we let compassion control us? What if?
Photo captions (from left to right): Dina, 8 years old in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Dina, 3 years old; Dina, 6 years old.