“I’m an immigrant – this puts me at risk”

When I was about 7, my family was on a camping holiday in Queensland, Australia, when my father took me aside and relayed in detail the events that led to his escape from Nazi relocation camps in Austria.

My parents were Holocaust survivors, and part of their worldwide escape took them through several countries to Australia, where they had finally settled and where I was born. I’m an immigrant, and in the United States today, just saying this now puts me at risk of summary arrest and deportation.

My father was an amateur boxer and in excellent physical condition. He had escaped three times from different camps, each time being re-captured. Following his last escape, he hid under the floorboards of his home for three weeks. He then realized he had to leave Austria or he would probably be killed. Over the next several weeks my Dad made his way through Belgium, then to France, and then hiked his way across the Swiss Alps to Switzerland.

Alone and without supplies of any kind, he was finally rescued by a farmer on the Swiss side of the border. Upon descending from the mountains, the farmer’s first words to my Dad were, “What took you so long?” Apparently the farmer had been watching the hills for over a week. Clearly my Dad kept getting lost and covered the same route several times.

In Australia, I grew up in a vibrant community of Holocaust survivors. For years, every Sunday, there was a rotating luncheon get together of a dozen or so families. Some of my darkest and enduring memories are of those lunches and of the concentration camp numbers tattooed on the arms of these survivors. The tattoos were testimonies to their internment and survival at Nazi death camps. The stories of their torture, and the sadness in their eyes of friends and families lost has stayed with me all these years.

During the Holocaust, Gypsies, homosexuals and Jews were rounded up, arrested and sent to prisons and death camps. There were no trials, no recourse. They were rounded up by elite army units known as the Gestapo. The Gestapo was violent and operated with 100% authority and with impunity.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen images of America’s secret ICE army dressed in black, their faces covered, their unmarked cars, their impunity, kidnapping people off the street and in businesses and spiriting them to ICE prisons, to ICE relocations, with no trial, no recourse and no appeals. People are being detained indefinitely and without legal representation. Thousands, of immigrants and citizens. Immigrants in the process of following the rules of the United States and applying for citizenship, yet people are being kidnapped right out of their courtroom  hearings.

You can see how the conduct of America’s ICE army mirrors the horrors we witnessed during Germany’s Nazi Gestapo.

The United States is heading down a road of darkness where there is only pain and suffering.  The conduct of the ICE army is beyond shocking; for those of us who came to an America we saw as a beacon of freedom, refuge and safety, watching this is frightening, shocking and deeply alarming.

This conspiracy of conduct shocks the senses. Perhaps last but not least, these arrests and detentions violate the U.S. Constitution.

Recently, Congressman Doug LaMalfa, who represents California’s First District, held his first town hall in Chico in eight years. I was fortunate to make it through the line to speak, and this is what I asked Mr. LaMalfa:

Good morning. My parents were Holocaust survivors. I have known what an authoritarian fascist government looks like since I was 7 years old.

Manzanar, the Japanese American relocation camp is just a short drive from here. Earl Warren was the governor of California and approved the relocation of Japanese Americans to that detention camp. He spent the rest of his life trying to atone for what he did in those years in the 1940s.

People being kidnapped without arrest warrants, without trial, without recourse, by the president’s ICE armies is clear evidence of how a fascist authoritarian government works.

We are not headed toward an authoritarian fascist government, we are already there.

Twenty years from now, when history will be re-written yet again, the real question is, will the name LaMalfa be mentioned in the same sentence as Goebbels and Mengele and Trump?

LaMalfa seemed to be listening to my question. But in the end, his answer was just one word, No. Then he turned away and walked to the other side of the stage.

George Gold is a Chico resident and occasional contributor to ChicoSol.