http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/anne-frank-today-is-a-syrian-girl.html 2016-09-24 18:15:29 Anne Frank Today Is a Syrian Girl Indifference and paranoia are shaping America’s immigration policy, as they did during World War II. === AMSTERDAM — On April 30, 1941, a Jewish man here in Amsterdam wrote a desperate letter to an American friend, pleading for help emigrating to the United States. “U.S.A. is the only country we could go to,” he wrote. “It is for the sake of the children mainly.” A volunteer found “Oh my God,” she said, “this is the We all know that the Frank children were murdered by the Nazis, but what is less known is the way Anne’s fate was sealed by a callous fear of refugees, among the world’s most desperate people. Sound familiar? President Obama “No one takes their family into hiding in the heart of an occupied city unless they are out of options,” notes Mattie J. Bekink, a consultant at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. “No one takes their child on a flimsy boat to cross the Mediterranean unless they are desperate.” The son of a World War II refugee myself, I’ve been researching the anti-refugee hysteria of the 1930s and ’40s. As Bekink suggests, the parallels to today are striking. For the Frank family, a new life in America seemed feasible. Anne had studied English shorthand, and her father spoke English, had lived on West 71st Street in Manhattan, and had been a longtime friend of Nathan Straus Jr., an official in the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The obstacle was an American wariness toward refugees that outweighed sympathy. After the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews, a poll found that 94 percent of Americans disapproved of Nazi treatment of Jews, but 72 percent still objected to admitting large numbers of Jews. The reasons for the opposition then were the same as they are for rejecting Syrians or Hondurans today: We can’t afford it, we should look after Americans first, we can’t accept everybody, they’ll take American jobs, they’re dangerous and different. “The United States, if it continues to be the world’s asylum and poorhouse, would soon wreck its present economic life,” the New York Chamber of Commerce Some readers are objecting: “When the safety of the country is imperiled, it seems fully justifiable to resolve any possible doubts in favor of the country, rather than in favor of the aliens,” the State Department News organizations didn’t do enough to humanize refugees and instead, tragically, helped spread xenophobia. The Times published a In this political environment, officials and politicians lost all humanity. “Let Europe take care of its own,” argued Senator Robert Reynolds, a North Carolina Democrat who also A State Department official, Breckinridge Long, systematically tightened rules on Jewish refugees. In this climate, Otto Frank was unable to get visas for his family members, who were victims in part of American paranoia, demagogy and indifference. History rhymes. As I’ve periodically Today, to our shame, Anne Frank is a Syrian girl.