Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

iluvtennis

(19,897 posts)
Mon Feb 22, 2021, 03:19 PM Feb 2021

Merrick Garland got emotional speaking about grandparents escape from anti-semitic country to US

Last edited Mon Feb 22, 2021, 09:40 PM - Edit history (1)

Ana Navarro-Cárdenas@ananavarro·1h
Wow. Just wow. Please take a minute to watch this poignant moment from the #MerrickGarlandHearing on how his family’s personal history has shaped him. What a refreshing and necessary difference.





----
What a great AG we will have - smart, empathetic, cares about people, and sees his AG position as way to give back to America.
8 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Merrick Garland got emotional speaking about grandparents escape from anti-semitic country to US (Original Post) iluvtennis Feb 2021 OP
Ana Navarro: "Our next Attorney General, ladies and gentlemen. A man of compassion and humility." SunSeeker Feb 2021 #1
Grandparents. WhiskeyGrinder Feb 2021 #2
Yes, i mis-quoted. My apologies. nt iluvtennis Feb 2021 #5
historical kick Behind the Aegis Feb 2021 #3
Very moving. K&R crickets Feb 2021 #4
A moving piece of his personal history ❤️ electric_blue68 Feb 2021 #6
It reminded me of the essay by Dr. David Glosser, and his dismay over his nephew Stephen Miller Tanuki Feb 2021 #7
Yes, I recall this article. thanks for the post. nt iluvtennis Feb 2021 #8

Behind the Aegis

(54,038 posts)
3. historical kick
Mon Feb 22, 2021, 04:07 PM
Feb 2021

It is important to see things like this and the impact it has made on people and not get mired down in irrelevance or ignore it completely.

Tanuki

(14,926 posts)
7. It reminded me of the essay by Dr. David Glosser, and his dismay over his nephew Stephen Miller
Tue Feb 23, 2021, 03:27 AM
Feb 2021

in light of their own shared family history.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351

"Let me tell you a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration.
It begins at the turn of the 20th century, in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now Belarus. Beset by violent anti-Jewish pogroms and forced childhood conscription in the Czar’s army, the patriarch of the shack, Wolf-Leib Glosser, fled a village where his forebears had lived for centuries and took his chances in America.

He set foot on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name. Though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English. An elder son, Nathan, soon followed. By street corner peddling and sweatshop toil, Wolf-Leib and Nathan sent enough money home to pay off debts and buy the immediate family’s passage to America in 1906. That group included young Sam Glosser, who with his family settled in the western Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, a booming coal and steel town that was a magnet for other hardworking immigrants. The Glosser family quickly progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a haberdashery in Johnstown run by Nathan and Wolf-Leib to a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores run by my grandfather, Sam, and the next generation of Glossers, including my dad, Izzy. It was big enough to be listed on the AMEX stock exchange and employed thousands of people over time. In the span of some 80 years and five decades, this family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become a prosperous, educated clan of merchants, scholars, professionals, and, most important, American citizens.

What does this classically American tale have to do with Stephen Miller? Well, Izzy Glosser is his maternal grandfather, and Stephen’s mother, Miriam, is my sister.

I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.

I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him."...(more)

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»Merrick Garland got emoti...