When I was in the third grade, my teacher made the entire class do a project on a historical figure. While looking through a pile of elementary-level biographies, a cover with a picture of a young girl and the word "diary" on the cover caught my attention. It was a biography on Anne Frank.
My 8-year-old self couldn’t completely comprehend why such a young girl was subjected to such a horrible fate. When I read her actual diary just two years later, a I received a brighter, more intimate picture of Anne Frank’s devastatingly short life. Since picking up that biography in the third grade, I became interested in reading more narratives of Holocaust victims, specifically children. I can’t count how many of these books that I’ve read in my lifetime, but the tragic stories of these people weigh heavily on my heart-- especially Anne Frank.
Growing up I often heard that we would “never forget” the Holocaust. That we would never let such an atrocity occur again. Those promises are ones that I took to heart.
Syria has been in a devastating civil war for nearly six years now. Although it is a complicated conflict with many different sides, what is not difficult to understand is that the civilians are suffering the worst. As of April 23, 2016, more than 400,000 civilians have died as a result of the war. I imagine the number is much higher now.
We are constantly hearing about the refugee crisis. We see it on the news and all over social media. We have seen the death of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old refugee boy whose body washed up on the shore of Turkey. We have almost become desensitized as the crisis has become a major topic in political debates, with many of the refugees being reduced to less than human in an effort to support political platforms.
The lack of humanity on behalf of many of our politicians has been disgraceful. All of this culminates with Trump signing an executive order that bars any refugees from immigrating to the United States from seven countries in the Middle East — one of them being Syria — on Holocaust Remembrance day, no less.
People defend this order by saying “America first” and arguing that it’s for the sake of keeping “terrorists” out of the country. Yet we are a country built upon immigration, our culture a melting pot of the many different people who found refuge here. Refugees seeking asylum is ingrained deep within our history; it is our legacy. None of the countries listed in Trump’s executive order have produced any terrorist attacks in the United States, which goes to show that this is nothing more than an exhibition of Islamophobia and racism.
Politics aside, this is a humanitarian crisis that is getting worse by the day. Even though the world should be coming together and acting as united front to help these Syrian refugees, we have become more and more divided by refusing to let any of them seek asylum within our borders.
History is happening right now, and many people are on the wrong side. Many of us are forgetting that these refugees are not much different than us. Imagine watching your home be destroyed by bombs. Imagine witnessing your loved ones being killed in the process. Imagine trying to cross the Mediterranean on a raft with dozens of other people and almost drowning in the process. Imagine that small flicker of hope being extinguished when you’re denied asylum. These people have hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Many are children who can’t comprehend why such terrible things are happening to them.
What will our grandchildren say when they’re learning about this in their history classes? Are we going to allow the xenophobic orders of our politicians to continue and then preach “never again” 50 years from now?
Anne Frank’s family was denied visas to enter the United States, as many of America’s policies were designed to guard against the influx of refugees seeking asylum. She could have been alive today, but instead she died at the age of 15 years old in a concentration camp. Syrian refugees are not pawns in a political game, they are human beings like you and me. What side of history are you on?
Here's a list of organizations working to help with the Syrian Refugee Crisis.
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” - Anne Frank
