When I heard about the five-year-old boy who was arrested by ICE (American federal immigration police), I immediately remembered the Diary of Anne Frank. If you recall, Anne’s family went into hiding after Anne’s sister Margot, who was a teenager, received a letter ordering her to go to a German labor camp.

“Margot is sixteen; would they really take girls of that age away alone?” the frightened Anne Frank wrote in her diary.

Anne could not have imagined that not only would they take young girls away alone, but they would murder millions of innocent civilians: babies, children, women, elderly people. The Nazis killed people who had harmed no one and presented no threat to anyone only because they were following orders, rules, and laws. Following their country’s laws was more important to the Nazis than following basic morals: not killing people, not taking children away from their mothers, not separating husbands and wives.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day and I am writing this blog to make a connection between the Holocaust and what is happening in America today. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors and I recently wrote a book about my grandfather’s life, called “How My Grandfather Stole a Shoe and Survived the Holocaust in Ukraine.”

I grew up with nightmares of the Holocaust, but I always reassured myself that nothing similar to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)