It seems we learned nothing from Anne Frank.
History warns us that the line between security and persecution can be dangerously blurred. The idea of an immigrant registry in the U.S. — a system that tracks people based on their nationality or religion — is not only discriminatory but reminiscent of one of history’s darkest chapters: the Holocaust. When we said never again, we meant never again for anyone.
But here we are, nearly 100 years later, dangerously repeating history.
In 1930s Nazi Germany, one of the Hitler regime’s first steps toward genocide was bureaucratic. Jews were registered, identified and separated from the rest of the population through lists, identity papers and census data. These records made it possible to enforce increasingly repressive laws, restrict the rights of those on the registry or required to register, and eventually, orchestrate mass deportations and murder.
It didn’t happen all at once. The first thing that happened — including to our (Rabbi Mordechai’s) parents — was that their papers were stamped “Jews.” It began with a registry. With “just tracking.”
The parallel we see unraveling is disturbing. The administration’s proposal to create a registry for immigrants, particularly those from Latin and Muslim-majority countries, isn’t about national security; it’s about racism and oppression. We already have extensive immigration tracking and vetting systems. Instead, these ideas are about branding entire populations as suspicious because of their faith or place of birth. It’s not about what people do — it’s about who they are.
That distinction is the root of injustice, and it’s the root of evil. The Torah tells us in Exodus 1, “a new king came to power in Egypt, he was fearful of the power and number of the Hebrew people.” This led to a regime of oppression and forced labor to exert his power over the people. Matthew 2:16 reads, “Herod ordered the extermination of boys under 2 years old in Bethlehem.” The root of this evil was fear. We hear these echoes today of how immigrants are dehumanized and punished.
America is not Nazi Germany, but the administration’s behaviors are leading us down the same road. It would be a grave mistake to assume we are immune to the same temptations that led to its horrors. Germany in the 1930s was a highly advanced, educated society. Its descent into fascism was gradual, built on fear, nationalism and the belief that some people were inherently dangerous. And the incremental isolation that blinded people from the mass horror taking place made the Holocaust sneak into society almost quietly. Many people participated in piecemeal injustice to support the massive force of the Nazi regime.
Normalizing dangerous and discriminatory policies is not hypothetical — it’s historical.
Japanese internment camps were justified as national security measures during World War II. It took generations before we, as a nation, acknowledged that these were shameful violations of American principles.
The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of tens of thousands of First Nations, including the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes, from their ancestral lands in the southeastern U.S. to designated “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi River during the 1830s. This brutal journey, carried out under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, resulted in the deaths of thousands due to disease, exposure and starvation. It is estimated that 90 percent of the people of this land were exterminated. The land they were given to settle did not respect their sacred traditions nor their humanity, as they were sent to a land that was not as fertile as where they originally resided.
Registries based on identity lay the groundwork for systemic oppression. They make it easier to target, exclude and ultimately harm. They don’t make us safer — at best they make us smaller, morally and constitutionally. At worst, we lose our own humanity and enact a regime of impunity and total depravity.
America’s strength lies in its diversity and its values: liberty, equality and due process. When we single out groups based on identity, we abandon those values. We trade freedom for fear. And we betray the very idea of democracy.
History has already written the outcome of such paths. We must have the courage to learn from our past — and refuse to walk those paths again.
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling is a board member at Faith in Action, and is the son of Holocaust survivors; all of his grandparents, aunts and uncles were killed. Pastor Julio Hernandez is the executive director of Congregation Action Network, a federation of Faith in Action. He organizes interfaith-rooted communities to protect and uplift immigrant communities through advocacy, accompaniment and collective action.
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