Steve Frey
On this date, Jan. 27, in 1945, Soviet soldiers liberated one of the most vile places ever to exist in the world: the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Most often, this camp is just referred to as Auschwitz, although it was a complex of three camps. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, it is estimated that the SS and Gestapo deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945.
Of these, the camp authorities murdered approximately 1.1 million, including almost one million Jews.
The prisoners at Auschwitz died from a variety of causes including disease and starvation, but the German SS killed the majority of the prisoners in gas chambers. One of the Jews killed at Auschwitz was Julius Hermanns.
There is a connection between Julius and current U.S. immigration policy that has touched the New River Valley, but first a little more background information.
Julius Hermanns was a successful textile merchant from Moenchengladbach in eastern Germany. As with most Jews in Nazi Germany, Julius was eventually arrested because of his religion, and he was imprisoned in both Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.
Somehow, probably by his family paying an enormous amount of money, he was released with the understanding that he leave the country immediately or be sent back to prison.
He booked passage on the ship, the S. S. St. Louis, to leave the country, but did not have the money to purchase tickets and permits for his wife Grete and daughter Hilde. Grete and Hilde were later arrested by the Germans and sent to the Riga ghetto in Latvia. They disappeared, and it is believed that they perished sometime during the war.
The St. Louis was scheduled to take 906 German Jews, half of them women with children going to meet their husbands who had left Germany previously, to Cuba.
They were issued visas through an immigration administrator who pocketed their money. When the ship got to Cuba, the president refused to allow them to disembark, citing anti-immigration sentiment believed to be promulgated by Nazi agents.
After being rejected and leaving Cuban waters, the St. Louis spent five days near Florida. It is said that the passengers could see the palm trees in Miami. President Roosevelt was implored to allow them to land, but because of isolationism, plus anti-Semitism prevalent in the United States, Roosevelt denied their entry.
Germany’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, used the incident to claim that no one in the world wanted Jews in their countries, either.
Finally, the St. Louis, with her desperate passengers returned to Europe. Germany refused to take the Jews back, so they were divided between Britain, the Netherlands, France and Belgium.
The latter three countries were soon conquered by Germany, and half of the passengers ended up murdered, just like Julius Hermanns, in concentration camps.
What does this this incident have to do with today?
The U. S. has once again entered a time of isolationism, rejecting immigrants and condemning many to death in their home countries by refusing to allow them entry.
America used to be a land of opportunity, a land Emma Lazarus described on the Statue of Liberty as providing the people of the world, no matter where they came from, hope: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
America is no longer viewed this way by the rest of the world.
Isolationism and misdirected nationalism once again run rampant. Anti-Semitism has been outstripped by anti-Muslim prejudice.
Many Americans are openly racist in their condemnation of people who are a different color, a different religion or speak a different language.
Julius Hermann’s story is, indeed, a cautionary tale for America today. There are thousands of people at this moment who are fleeing war, persecution and certain death at the hands of murderers in their own lands. They are looking for a safe place where they can live free and raise their families.
Many others are simply looking for the opportunity to live the American Dream and become all they are capable of being.
The New River Valley, of course, has a long history of welcoming immigrants.
Almost every person living here, unless you are a Native American or were brought here because of slavery, had relatives from a foreign country, many leaving their home countries because of oppression, poverty or in order to find new opportunities.
The Prestons of Smithfield in Blacksburg came originally from Ireland. Mary Draper Ingles and her husband, William, had parents who also came from Ireland.
William Christian, who is the namesake of Christiansburg, had parents born in Northern Ireland. William Black, for whom Blacksburg was named, had a father also born in Northern Ireland.
Price’s Fork was originally the New River German Settlement. Johan Michel Preisch, who became the Americanized John Michael Price, settled the area. Many early arrivals here from Germany came due to religious persecution in their homeland.
Christiansburg was originally called Hans Meadow after a Dutch priest, Friar Hans. The Pearis family for whom Pearisburg was named came from France.
The Dunkards, who were members of a German religious sect, settled in the area now under Claytor Lake. They were called Dunkers or Dunkards because of an Anglicized version of the German Word “Tunker,” which means “dipper” and referred to their method of baptism. The point is, they were German.
The New River Valley is the home of the sons and daughters of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany, France and other lands earlier, and more recently, Mexico, India, China, Vietnam and virtually all corners of the world.
We are united through our diversity; we are stronger because of our diversity. E Pluribus Unum, our country’s motto, means, “out of many, one. “
Immigrants made America the richly diverse country that it is, and we need them today.
Some areas of southwest Virginia are losing population because more people are moving than staying and the death rate outnumbers the birth rate.
New people coming to an area means new jobs. Growing areas need more classrooms, more stores, more tradesmen, more nurses, more of all occupations and more goods and services of all sorts. Areas losing population can’t sustain businesses.
We can continue to create new jobs, generate taxes, support programs like social security and, well, prosper, with the influx of new people. Immigrants won’t take people’s jobs; they will help to create new ones!
Congress has been working on comprehensive immigration plans for decades, but has not been able to accomplish this task. In the vacuum of their inactivity, the ranks of those who would condemn immigrants as rapists, murderers and leeches off of government services have grown and raised the level of their rhetoric.
We need to return to the values that helped build our country. We can solve the problems with people entering the U.S. without documentation. We can vet people from foreign countries to assure safety. We can solve the problem of the “Dreamers,” who came as children and have lived their whole lives here and know no other country.
We can also invite the best and brightest from around the world to help grow our country, regardless of religion, place of origin or color.
At the same time, we can also allow poorer people to come who will learn the language, demonstrate a strong work ethic and raise their children to become patriotic Americans, just as was the case with our relatives.
In the 1940s, people with names like Hirsch, Grunthal, Dublon, Stein, Koppel and many others who were on the S.S. St. Louis and were rejected by the United States, died with Julius Hermanns in Auschwitz.
Today, other people fleeing death are being rejected by the United States because of the fear and hatred stoked to emphasize differences in people, rather than living up to the values that have enriched the United States and the New River Valley.
On this day, 73 years ago, Auschwitz was liberated. America could have saved some of those desperate, shunned people who were murdered there. Instead, because of bigotry and fear, our country chose not to get involved.
Americans, and those of us lucky enough to live in the New River Valley, have a similar choice today.
Steve Frey is a Radford resident, writer and CEO of Ascendant Educational Services.