Bernie's Jewish Background
Bernie Sanders Opens Up About His Jewish Background
"I’m very proud of my heritage.”
02/26/2016 08:39 am ET
WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders opened up about his Jewish heritage at a town hall that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews hosted on Thursday night.
“I’m very proud of my heritage,” Sanders said. “And what comes to mind so strongly is a kid growing up in Brooklyn and seeing people with numbers on their wrist; you probably have not seen that but those were the people coming out of the concentration camps, and knowing that a good part of my family was killed by the Nazis. And that lesson that I learned as a very young person is that politics is serious business and when you have a lunatic like Hitler gaining power, 50 million people died in World War II. So I am very proud to be Jewish and I’m very proud of my heritage.”
The 74-year-old Vermont senator has rarely discussed his Jewish heritage on the campaign trail, even as he became the first Jew to win a presidential primary or caucus with his victory in New Hampshire.
In his victory speech, he noted that he was “the son of a Polish immigrant who came to this country speaking no English and having no money.” In a previous candidate town hall meeting, he said that his Judaism is a “guiding principle” in his life, but that “everybody practices religion in a different way.”
More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-jewish_us_56d04b59e4b0871f60eaf9e7?section=politics
