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Posts Tagged ‘AUSCHWITZ’

THE HIGH COST OF HATRED

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 19, 2026 at 12:10 am

It’s one of the most moving scenes in the 1974 classic, “The Godfather: Part 11”: Nine-year-old Vito Corleone and a cargo ship crammed with Italian refugees arrive at Ellis Island. They’re sitting or squatting on the deck when, suddenly, the Statue of Liberty looms over them. 

And, just as suddenly, they rise as one and look up with expectant faces at the symbol of the new country in which they will soon live.

Statue of Liberty - Wikipedia

Statue of Liberty

Today, 125 years after Vito’s cinematic arrival in New York Harbor, the United States is seen as a far less welcoming place for would-be immigrants.

A far better description of its policies toward immigration can be found in the 1989 spectacular, “Saving Private Ryan.”

It’s 1944, shortly after the D-Day landings to liberate France from Nazi rule. As a squad of American soldiers prepare to assault a building held by Germans, a loudspeaker from the enemy side blares: “The Statue of Liberty is kaput.”

In 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that more than 2.5 million illegal aliens left the United States, including about 1.9 million self-deportations and over 622,000 formal deportations.

Most of the deported came from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba and Venezuela.

Since taking office as President on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has made deporting illegal aliens—and even holders of green cards—the top priority of his administration.

Head-and-shoulders shot of Trump with a serious facial expression, his right eye partly closed. He is wearing a dark blue suit, a pale blue dress shirt, a red necktie, and an American flag lapel pin. Parts of the image are slightly out of focus. The background is black.

Donald Trump

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reported hiring over 12,000 new officers and agents. This surge, largely occurring in late 2025, more than doubled the agency’s operational workforce from approximately 10,000 to over 22,000 personnel.

US Immigration & Customs | Rome PD

How to Pass the Secret Service Special Agent Entrance Exam (SAEE)

SERVING THE LORD—OR THE DEVIL

In History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 17, 2019 at 12:06 am

Right-wingers, who support many of the same policies of Adolf Hitler, often attack liberals as Nazis.

This was especially true when President Barack Obama held office.  

But in 2016 a genuine authority on Fascism came forward to assess the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination.

“If Donald Trump become[s] the next president of the United States it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”  

So said Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. As a survivor of Auschwitz, Schloss knows something about Nazis.

Related image

Eva Schloss

Then 86, Schloss met Anne in Amsterdam as a fellow refugee.  Both their families had taken refuge there after fleeing Nazi Germany.

Anne Frank spent four years hiding in an attic and keeping a diary. But in 1944 she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  

She was 15 when she died there of typhus in March, 1945. After the war, Eva Schloss’ mother, Fritzi, married Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

Image result for Images of Anne Frank

Anne Frank

Eva was detained at the same time as Anne and sent to Auschwitz. She survived when the camp was liberated on January 27,1945.

In a January 27, 2016 essay for Newsweek, Schloss warned of dire consequences if Donald Trump became President: 

“During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.”  

She was 11 when her family immigrated to Belgium after Hitler forcibly annexed Austria in 1938.  

“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture….

“I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders,” said Schloss, who lives in London. “Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees.”  

And on February 18, 2016, Pope Francis also waded into the 2016 Presidential race with his own assessment of Trump.  

During a six-day trip to Mexico, a reporter asked the Pontiff: What did he think  of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border and expel millions of illegal aliens now living in the United States? 

“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian,” replied the Pope. “This is not the gospel.” 

Related image

Pope Francis

Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” to Trump because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently.

But he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”

Trump, a Presbyterian, responded minutes later: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

Trump has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama—a self-described Christian—as a secret Muslim.

Donald Trump

On February 21, 2016, for example, he tweeted: “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of [Supreme Court] Justice [Antonin] Scalia if it were held in a mosque.”  

Obama had paid tribute to Scalia at the Supreme Court on the day prior to the funeral. He declined to attend the service because his heavy security detail might disrupt the ceremony.

“I am proud to be a Christian,” added Trump, “and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”  

Nor did he stop there: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.  

“ISIS would have been eradicated, unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.” 

Trump thus implied that the Pope’s future security depended on the United States generally—and on Trump in particular.  

And he ignored the fact that, since September, 2014, the United States Air Force had been bombing ISIS convoys in Iraq and Syria.

On Easter Sunday, 2019—more than two years into Trump’s Presidency—ISIS bombed a series of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, killing at least 321 people.

Trump has long been critical of the Pope’s stand on immigration.

As the Pope undertook his trip to Mexico, Trump told Fox Business Network that he didn’t think Francis understood “the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.

“I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is,” he said. “They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.” 

A Vatican spokesman replied: “The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace.”  

For millions of Jews and Christians, the election of 2016 has turned into a referendum:  Am I serving the Lord—or Satan?

TRUMP: THE LORD OR THE DEVIL?

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2016 at 9:48 am

Ironically, Right-wingers, who support many of the same policies of Adolf Hitler, often attack liberals as Nazis–especially President Barack Obama.  

But now a genuine authority on Fascism has come forward to assess the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination.

“If Donald Trump become[s] the next president of the US it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”  

So says Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. As a survivor of Auschwitz, Schloss should know something about Nazis.

Related image

Eva Schloss

Now 86, Schloss met Anne in Amsterdam as a fellow refugee.  Both their families had taken refuge there after fleeing Nazi Germany.

Anne Frank spent four years hiding in an attic and keeping a diary. But in 1944 she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  

She was 15 when she died there of typhus in March 1945. After the war, Eva Schloss’ mother, Fritzi, married Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

Image result for Images of Anne Frank

Anne Frank

Eva was detained at the same time as Anne and sent to Auschwitz. She survived when the camp was liberated on January 27,1945.

In a January 27th essay for Newsweek, Schloss warned of dire consequences if Donald Trump became President.

“During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.”  

She was 11 when her family immigrated to Belgium after Hitler forcibly Annexed Austria in 1938.  

“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture….

“I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders,” said Schloss, who lives in London. “Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees.”  

And on February 18, Pope Francis also waded into the 2016 Presidential race with his own assessment of Trump.  

The comment came in answer to a question by one of several reporters who were accompanying the Pope to Rome from a six-day trip to Mexico.  

What, a reporter asked the Pontiff, did he think of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border and expel millions of illegal aliens now living in the United States?

“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian,” replied the Pope. “This is not the gospel.” 

Related image

Pope Francis

Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” to Trump because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently.

But he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”

Trump, a Presbyterian, responded minutes later: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

Trump has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama–a self-described Christian–as a secret Muslim.

Donald Trump

On February 21, for example, he tweeted: “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of [Supreme Court] Justice [Antonin] Scalia if it were held in a mosque.”  

Obama had paid tribute to Scalia at the Supreme Court on the day prior to the funeral. He declined to attend the service because his heavy security detail might disrupt the ceremony.

“I am proud to be a Christian,” added Trump, “and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”  

Nor did he stop there: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.  

“ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.”

Trump thus implied that the Pope’s future security depended on the United States generally–and on Donald Trump in particular.  

And he clearly ignored the fact that, since September, 2014, the United States Air Force has been bombing ISIS convoys in Iraq and Syria.

Trump has long been critical of the Pope’s stand on immigration.

As the Pope undertook his trip to Mexico, Trump told Fox Business Network that he didn’t think Francis understood “the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.

“I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is,” he said. “They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.” 

A Vatican spokesman replied: “The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace.”  

For millions of Jews and Catholics, the election of 2016 may turn on how they answer the question: Am I serving the Lord–or the devil?