As an American Jew I Always Have a Current Passport

In Jordana Horn’s May 24, 2021, Kveller article “American Jews Need Allies Against Antisemitism,” her last sentence really struck home with me:

But in the past two weeks, many of us have had to realize what generations before us have realized: it’s possible that, as Jews, we are not safe anywhere.

As an American Jew born in 1948 three years after the end of World War II and two months before the birth of the State of Israel, I remained unaware of the anti-Semitism in the small town of Elgin, Illinois, where I grew up. With one synagogue and a small number of Jewish families, none of whom to my knowledge had members who had experienced the Holocaust firsthand, we felt American.

The only Jewish student in all my classes, I proudly recited the Pledge of Allegiance each morning in elementary school. Only as an adult did I learn that my parents had protected my three younger siblings and me from the anti-Semitism my father faced as a CPA in Elgin.

Finally I got to college (Michigan State University), excited to be among other Jewish students for the first time, only to be the third wheel in a dorm room meant for two. And my two assigned roommates were anti-Semitic – one from a wealthy Detroit suburb and one from a blue collar section of Detroit.

I’ll skip this freshman year experience except to say I joined a Jewish sorority, AEPhi, and moved to the sorority house the following year.

And then I met my future husband, Mitchell R. Miller, on the editorial staff of the daily college newspaper, the State News, and he was in ROTC. While his childhood experience with anti-Semitism growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia that at first had no other Jewish families was different than mine, he also did not come from a Holocaust survivors Jewish community.

Fast forward to September 1970 when Mitch and I arrived at the Munich train station during Oktoberfest courtesy of the U.S. Army:

Little did we know that being stationed in Germany only 25 years after the end of World War II would change our lives forever.

To summarize this experience, we spent our year and eight months visiting (on a very tight travel budget) the remnants of Jewish life in Western Europe. (Both of us had security clearances and were not allowed to travel to Eastern Europe.) In addition, we were influenced by the Orthodox Jewish chaplain and his family stationed in Munich when we first arrived.

Perhaps most importantly, we were impacted by the Jews and non-Jews, particularly in the U.S. Army community, who we met while stationed in Munich.

When we returned to the U.S. in May 1972 (a few months before the infamous Munich Olympics), we had changed in two significant ways – both influenced by the Holocaust:

First, we had decided to keep kosher and become more observant as our small way of honoring the lives of six million Jews brutally stamped out by the Nazis.

Second, we realized that as American Jews we were no more safe than the seemingly assimilated Jews of Germany (including those with the Iron Cross for valor in World War I).

And this brings me to always having a current passport:

We resolved to always have a current passport and to ensure that our future children would have their own always current passports so they could be taken out of the U.S. (rescued) by anyone.

To later carry out this resolve for our two children – when each child was a few months old and could be propped up by herself for a passport photo – we got the child a passport and kept it current.

Yet what could be called passive resistance is not enough today.

And this leads me to my current project to combat antisemitism and hate, one that resulted from my no longer being able to read the daily anti-Semitism reports around the globe and do nothing.

My free nonfiction Holocaust theater project Thin Edge of the Wedge presents the firsthand accounts of survivors and saviors. The goal of the project and the accompanying resources is to both educate about history and to encourage critical thinking skills today. The project is especially developed for students to use in their classrooms.

Now I read the daily reports of anti-Semitic acts around the globe and, instead of shaking my head and turning to other news, I reach out if possible to the attacked individuals with the offer of my free project to combat antisemitism and hate.

If you would like to read the play in English or German (www.SchritteInDenAbgrund.com), you can contact me through www.ThinEdgeOfTheWedge.com

The 6-page script for the Zoom trailer recording of the project can be read at www.millermosaicllc.com/trailer-script/

The answer to anti-Semitism in the U.S. today is NOT just getting a current passport. The answer is to speak up before it is too late.

We cannot hope, the way prominent German Jews did in the early 1930s, that attacks on Jews will disappear. These acts against American Jews are here to stay UNLESS we stop them now.