Over fifteen years ago I wrote the following after attending a lecture by a survivor of the Holocaust, which was also called “The Final Solution.”  This Jewish man knew first hand how dangerous German Christian Nationalism could be.  The 400 year old writings  of a sick and embittered Martin Luther had been resurrected and reprinted in order to encourage anti-Semitic feelings in the “German Christian Church”.

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That so many of the “Religious Right” are so comfortable echoing racial sentiment is personally very painful, and disappointing, as were Martin Luther’s racist rantings of the late 1500′ s which unfortunately found fulfillment in the Holocaust of the mid twentieth century. According to an article in Wikipedia, Luther advocated that:

they should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.

A few years ago, I attended a lecture given by David Fabor, a Holocaust survivor. I cannot express the depth of my feelings when he recalled the nightmare of his youth:

Our Christian neighbors were directing the German troops to our houses. We looked just like our neighbors. We didn’t have “Jew” written on our foreheads. Why didn’t our neighbors know that their Jesus was a Jewish teacher who taught love for others?

Indeed!

In recent years we have seen a wall being constructed, detention centers built and filled, and families deported. However, of greater concern to me is the growth of the wall of negative energy against the Latino community in the United States.

We are dealing with human beings, and laws do not exist for the sake of law itself. There are life-altering implications to any legislation.

Is there no room for considering the plight of the poor who come to this country motivated by the desire to make things better for their families?

Is there no consideration that can be given to undocumented young people who have grown up in this country, and who see themselves as USAmericans, with little or no memory of having lived anywhere else?

Cannot we move beyond the amnesty-no amnesty logjam, and acknowledge the contributions that the Latino workers have made and are making to our economy?  And can we not be historically honest and admit that when times are good we invite them into the workplace, and when times get bad we throw them out of both workplace and country?

Must we always view them as “foreigners determined to overrun our country and take our jobs”, when this simply is neither true nor fair?

When our retail outlets choose to print up English-Spanish signs and labels, rather than responding with resentment, cannot we understand that these families are far more “assimilated” than is conventionally thought, renting homes, buying household goods and groceries–fully participating in the USAmerican economy?

Do we even think about how difficult it is to learn and speak a second language, or must we simply maintain our smug pride in our superior ability to speak the one and only language that we have ever or will ever learn, a language that we learned passively?

Are we willing to assist a Hispanic adult in learning English, or at least willing to show appreciation for the many who have learned?

For all these immigration tensions our country desperately needs resolution.  My fear is that with so much racism, we will seek some sort of final solution.