For longer than I care to admit I have been working on a book about my grandmother’s narrow escape from Nazi Germany in 1939.
In her recollections before she died in 2004, my grandmother, Susi, detailed having to turn in her passport, being forced to read “Mein Kampf,” stopping and saluting when Nazi soldiers marched by on the street, and hearing Hitler’s harsh voice on the radio shouting for peace without the Jews.
So, when I turned on Rachel Maddow and saw men in black masks, waving swastika flags and chanting “Weimar conditions, Weimar solutions,” and saluting Sieg Heil, I assumed it was vintage footage. But after listening, I realized it was 2023 Ohio with Neo Nazis protesting a drag queen event at a library.
Yet another example of Neo-Nazis in this country stepping out of the shadows: Over Thanksgiving a Jewish friend went to visit her brother in Dallas and sent a photo she took of several masked men standing on the street corner, one waving a huge red flag with a black swastika and another carrying a sign that said “The Jewish Threat” with a caricature of a man with an enormous nose curled up in the shape of an elephant trunk.
I live in San Francisco, a liberal bubble, that I long assumed protected me from this kind of public vitriol. But then I went to my local gym at the Jewish Community Center and was greeted by several heavily armed guards and two police cars out front. I had to cross this just to go to yoga class? But it turns out it was the National Day of Hate, which organizers intended to be a day of mass antisemitic action.
A Jewish friend confided in me that she looks at her non-Jewish friends now and thinks, “Would you hide me?” I was momentarily stunned, thinking it overly dramatic, but then wondered, should I be thinking that way too?
One of my sisters came over to look through Susi’s documents to see if there was anything she could use in her application for German citizenship. She wants to have an exit plan for her family in the event our next election goes to a fascist who has clearly stated his goals to get rid of “vermin” plaguing American society. The irony is rich in that the country that once forced Susi out might now serve as a haven for her grandchildren.
In my book club of seven educated, articulate, politically liberal women, we got sidetracked from our discussion when one (non-Jewish) member said she needed a new car but ruled out the Tesla due to Elon Musk’s recent endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory (which he later recanted). Yet another member challenged the need for that stance. Why not buy the best car you can?
I wondered who around this table would hide me?
Nearly 85 years after Susi narrowly escaped the Nazis I wonder if I need to be paying closer attention. Should I be forming an exit strategy from my own country?
And if so, where would I go? While Israel is an obvious choice, two of my relatives were taken as hostages into Gaza, so I’m not so sure anymore.
My family tree is literally the story of the wandering Jews.
My father’s parents were Lithuanian Jews who fled their country as children to emigrate to South Africa where my father grew up. As a young man he left apartheid behind and found his way to the United States. My mother’s parents were German Jews who escaped World War II by living in El Salvador before moving to San Francisco. Both my parents proudly became U.S. citizens.
So now, do I, the first American-born in our family tree, need to think about escaping yet again?
Robin Meyerowitz is a writer, editor and educator living in San Francisco.