It’s been more than 70 years since Aaron Elster survived the Holocaust by hiding in a Polish family’s cold, dirty attic.
But President Donald Trump‘s executive order targeting Muslim immigrants last weekend brought it all back for the 83-year-old Lincolnshire man.
"I don’t know if you want to know what I’d say to the president if he was here," said Elster, whose parents and younger sister were murdered by the Nazis. "For somebody to come along and say, ‘these people cannot come in,’ I believe that’s a sliding slope. It starts that way. What group will be next?"
Elster was one of several Holocaust survivors who now help run the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center to speak out Thursday against the president’s move to block immigration from seven overwhelmingly Muslim countries.
Speaking with quiet dignity at the Skokie museum, Elster, Ralph Rehbock, also 83, and museum President Fritzie Fritzshall, 87, urged Trump to revoke his ban. And museum CEO Susan Abrams accused the White House of "soft-core denial" of the Holocaust for deliberately omitting any mention of anti-Semitism or the murder of 6 million Jews from the president’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement.
Fritzshall, who was liberated by the Russian army while on a death march from the Auschwitz concentration camp and came to the U.S. in 1946, said a ban like Trump’s might have condemned her to death had it been in force at the time.
Holocaust museum Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune
Susan Abrams, CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, left, thanks Holocaust survivor and museum President Fritzie Fritzshall, center, as they leave the podium with museum Vice President Aaron Elster on Feb. 2, 2017. The three condemmed President Donald Trump’s immigration policy at a news conference at the museum.
Susan Abrams, CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, left, thanks Holocaust survivor and museum President Fritzie Fritzshall, center, as they leave the podium with museum Vice President Aaron Elster on Feb. 2, 2017. The three condemmed President Donald Trump’s immigration policy at a news conference at the museum.
(Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
"People are singled out again because of religion," she said. "Because of how they look."
Though the White House has said the ban is only "temporary," Fritzshall recalled her own experience and said that for people whose lives are in danger, "90 days is a lifetime."
She added that the current situation is not yet directly comparable to what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 40s, but said, "Does history repeat itself? Yes."
Rehbock, whose family was spared after American consul workers in Berlin came in to work on their day off and issued his family a visa in 1938, said his family owed its existence to Americans who were "upstanders, not bystanders."
All three survivors said that they felt a deep responsibility to share their stories with future generations and that, while they understood the need for vetting of immigrants, said Trump’s measures paint too broad a brush. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
"You dehumanize people and then its OK to do what you want with them," said Elster, who fought in the U.S. Army in Korea before he even became a citizen.
"First we were dehumanized, our citizenship was taken away and then we were restricted to live in awful places, ghettos surrounded by walls," he added. "You might not think that could happen here, but look at World War II what happened with the Japanese, who were put into concentration camps. So we as survivors must stand with the people that are trying to come into this country to create lives for themselves."
kjanssen@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @kimjnews
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