Bernie is Jewish. Please don't minimize his minority status by calling him "another white person"

[SnohoDem]

211. Good post

but I think Bernie will be fine.

The two days I've been proudest to be an American was when we landed on the moon and when we elected Barack Hussein Obama as president. Like Boomer said above, there's a lot to celebrate. We're breaking down these walls. I support Bernie now and I'll support Hillary if she wins the primaries.

I'm old, white, male, and not Jewish, but I want to talk about antisemitism. Please indulge me.

The only incident I ever saw was when I was in the fourth grade and a boy called another boy a 'dirty Jew'. I didn't understand and my mom just said, "Don't ever do anything like that." Pretty complex concept for a ten year old, and she kept it simple. We studied WW2 in high school and I understood a little more.

It hit home when I was about 19 (1974-75) and working as a counselor in a Jewish Community Center in Houston, Texas. The lady in the little cafe downstairs seemed old because I was so young. She taught me to love bagels and was always trying to feed me because I was quite thin. She was just the sweet old lady that ran the cafe in the basement. She had a German accent.

One day she served me and her sleeve pulled up and I saw the tattoo on the inside of her forearm. I knew what it was. I almost started crying. She saw the horror and revulsion on my face, I guess, and SHE consoled ME. "Oh, schatz, don't worry. It was a long time ago. I'm fine." She never told me which camp. It wasn't important. We never spoke of it again. The little old lady who treated me like a nephew had survived a concentration camp.

Sounds like a scene from a movie? I think it's been done more than once. But this really happened. It hit me like a train. It's been used in movies because the effect is so strong. You know the history, but the history is just numbers. The tattoo was just numbers, too.

Thanks for reading.