Ann Frank and the victims of persecution then and now

The other evening, I listened to a segment of the so-called news program 60 Minutes. This was about an investigation into the person who informed on the family of Ann Frank in Amsterdam to the Nazis who had political control of the city in the 1940s. Frank’s family hid from the Nazis for two years before they were arrested for being Jewish. Ann Frank is the author of her autobiography that is one of the most read books in the world. Frank, her sister, and mother were eventually murdered in a German concentration camp.

Authorities in Amsterdam asked a 30-year retired veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to head up the investigation. There might have been about twenty or more people who gave the retired FBI agent assistance.

When I heard that an FBI agent was heading this investigation, immediately I understood there was a serious problem. In this country, the FBI worked as an enemy of the labor, civil rights, Black power, socialist, and immigration movements. With that kind of record, I would oppose the use of an FBI agent heading up an investigation of anything.

The conclusion of this investigation argued that it was probable that a Jewish man informed on the Frank family to save his and his family’s life. This person had managed to avoid the concentration camps by becoming an informant.

Commentators on this story argued that this was a clear example of the horrors the Nazis organized. While the informant might have been guilty of causing the deaths of the Frank family, the main criminals were the Nazis. 

Millions of deportations in the United States

Clearly, we do not live in the environment Jewish people lived in with the Nazi occupation. Today we have the right to protest government policies we object to. Those rights come from literally centuries of struggle on many issues.

However, today there are about twelve million immigrants living in this country. Most of those immigrants come here to avoid living conditions where wages are between one and ten dollars per day. 

Clearly none of us have any control over who our parents are or where we are born. The Nazis executed Ann Frank because her parents were Jewish. The United States government working with the FBI has deported literally millions of immigrants who were living in this country. When those deported immigrants had children born in this country, they were separated from those children possibly never to see them again. We might also think about the fact that the United Nations estimates that every day about 30,000 children die of easily preventable diseases in the world.

We can also say that the life expectancy in this country for many Black, Latino, and Native American people is much lower than the rest of the population. This is because of institutionalized racist discrimination. So, I believe that when we talk about liberty and justice, it needs to be for everyone, and not just for some and not others. 

This is why I found it ironical that a retired agent of the FBI would head-up an investigation into the horrors of the Nazis. We also need to have an investigation into the fact that Democratic and Republican Presidents in this country have deported millions of immigrants. Most of those deportees return to nations where the prevailing wages are between one and ten dollars per day.